Courage Center Handiham System

NASA will study the birthplace of space weather, the phenomenon that drives so much of amateur radio HF propagation.

NASA: Sept. 5, 2008: Next April, for a grand total of 8 minutes, NASA astronomers are going to glimpse a secret layer of the sun.

Researchers call it "the transition region." It is a place in the sun's atmosphere, about 5000 km above the stellar surface, where magnetic fields overwhelm the pressure of matter and seize control of the sun's gases. It's where solar flares explode, where coronal mass ejections begin their journey to Earth, where the solar wind is mysteriously accelerated to a million mph.

It is, in short, the birthplace of space weather.

Read the entire story:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/05sep_sumi.htm?list6529