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The ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter mission, launched in February 2020, will explore the Sun and heliosphere from close up and from out of the ecliptic plane. It aims to address the overarching questions of how the Sun creates and controls the heliosphere, and why solar activity changes with time. Among the instruments that Solar Orbiter carries is the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (SO/PHI), which is the first magnetograph to leave the Sun-Earth line and to observe the Sun from different directions. Solar Orbiter is still in its cruise phase and SO/PHI is still undergoing various tests, improving its calibration procedures, etc. Nonetheless, already a few glimpses of SO/PHI’s capabilities have become apparent, including the excellent quality of the data. The promise for the science that can be done with SO/PHI data in the future is immense, both with standalone observations by SO/PHI and with SO/PHI data combined with observations made by other Solar Orbiter instruments, or with data
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Extreme weather events such as strong thunderstorms, hail or heat waves have increased in Germany in recent years and in some cases cause major economic and infrastructural damage. The complex physical processes that take place when these weather events occur are being investigated by the Helmholtz initiative MOSES, in which the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is also involved. The aim of the measurement campaign “Swabian MOSES”, which is now starting and coordinated by KIT, is to holistically investigate the causes, effects and interactions of hydro-meteorological extremes. In the study area in Baden-Württemberg, both thunderstorms and periods of heat and drought occur frequently.
As anyone who has ever tried to clean a home knows, ridding yourself of dust is a Sisyphean effort. No surface stays free of it for long. It turns out that space is somewhat similar. Space is filled with interplanetary dust, which the Earth constantly collects as it plods around the sun – in orbit, in the atmosphere, and if it’s large enough, on the ground as micrometeorites.
While specimens may not be large, it turns out such dust particles are reforming scientists’ conception of asteroids and comets and are enough to reconstruct entire scenes in the history of the solar system.