Manuela Temmer is associate professor of Astrophysics [1] at the University of Graz, Austria and Head of the Heliospheric Physics Research Group. [2] She is an expert in the science underpinning space weather forecasting. [3]
Manuela Temmer is associate professor of Astrophysics [1] at the University of Graz, Austria and Head of the Heliospheric Physics Research Group. [2] She is an expert in the science underpinning space weather forecasting. [3]
Temmer completed her PhD at the university in Graz in 2004, before taking up a post-doctoral research scientist post at Hvar Observatory, Zagreb. She returned to Graz for further post-doctoral work before securing a senior research fellowship in 2014 at Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory, Palo Alto. She returned to Graz in 2015. [4]
Temmer has published more than 200 scientific papers on solar and heliospheric physics. [5] Of note is her work on solar flares [6] and coronal mass ejections, particularly their evolution from Sun through interplanetary space, to their impacts at Earth. [7] She has developed methods for forecasting space weather at Earth and Mars, and heads up an International Space Weather Action Team [8] under the auspices of COSPAR.
2021: Leader of the ISSI international team on open solar flux. [9]
2021: Member of the ESA Solar System and Exploration Working Group [10]
2018: Science Co-I Solar Orbiter/STIX (Spectrometer/Telescope for Imaging X-rays)
2018: Member of editorial board for the journal Solar Physics [11]
2014: NASA Group Achievement Award to RHESSI Science and Data Analysis Team
2010: Elise Richter fellowship (Career Development Programme for Women) from the Austrian Science Fund [12]
2008: APART (Austrian Programme for Advanced Research and Technology) fellowship from the Austrian Academy of Sciences
2005: Erwin Schrödinger Scholarship from the Austrian Science Fund
The solar wind is a stream of charged particles released from the Sun's outermost atmospheric layer, the corona. This plasma mostly consists of electrons, protons and alpha particles with kinetic energy between 0.5 and 10 keV. The composition of the solar wind plasma also includes a mixture of particle species found in the solar plasma: trace amounts of heavy ions and atomic nuclei of elements such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, neon, magnesium, silicon, sulfur, and iron. There are also rarer traces of some other nuclei and isotopes such as phosphorus, titanium, chromium, and nickel's isotopes 58Ni, 60Ni, and 62Ni. Superimposed with the solar-wind plasma is the interplanetary magnetic field. The solar wind varies in density, temperature and speed over time and over solar latitude and longitude. Its particles can escape the Sun's gravity because of their high energy resulting from the high temperature of the corona, which in turn is a result of the coronal magnetic field. The boundary separating the corona from the solar wind is called the Alfvén surface.
A solar flare is a relatively intense, localized emission of electromagnetic radiation in the Sun's atmosphere. Flares occur in active regions and are often, but not always, accompanied by coronal mass ejections, solar particle events, and other eruptive solar phenomena. The occurrence of solar flares varies with the 11-year solar cycle.
Space weather is a branch of space physics and aeronomy, or heliophysics, concerned with the varying conditions within the Solar System and its heliosphere. This includes the effects of the solar wind, especially on the Earth's magnetosphere, ionosphere, thermosphere, and exosphere. Though physically distinct, space weather is analogous to the terrestrial weather of Earth's atmosphere. The term "space weather" was first used in the 1950s and popularized in the 1990s. Later, it prompted research into "space climate", the large-scale and long-term patterns of space weather.
The solar cycle, also known as the solar magnetic activity cycle, sunspot cycle, or Schwabe cycle, is a nearly periodic 11-year change in the Sun's activity measured in terms of variations in the number of observed sunspots on the Sun's surface. Over the period of a solar cycle, levels of solar radiation and ejection of solar material, the number and size of sunspots, solar flares, and coronal loops all exhibit a synchronized fluctuation from a period of minimum activity to a period of a maximum activity back to a period of minimum activity.
A coronal mass ejection (CME) is a significant ejection of plasma mass from the Sun's corona into the heliosphere. CMEs are often associated with solar flares and other forms of solar activity, but a broadly accepted theoretical understanding of these relationships has not been established.
Advanced Composition Explorer is a NASA Explorer program satellite and space exploration mission to study matter comprising energetic particles from the solar wind, the interplanetary medium, and other sources.
Eugene Newman Parker was an American solar and plasma physicist. In the 1950s he proposed the existence of the solar wind and that the magnetic field in the outer Solar System would be in the shape of a Parker spiral, predictions that were later confirmed by spacecraft measurements. In 1987, Parker proposed the existence of nanoflares, a leading candidate to explain the coronal heating problem.
The Solar Orbiter (SolO) is a Sun-observing probe developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) with a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) contribution. Solar Orbiter, designed to obtain detailed measurements of the inner heliosphere and the nascent solar wind, will also perform close observations of the polar regions of the Sun which is difficult to do from Earth. These observations are important in investigating how the Sun creates and controls its heliosphere.
Solar physics is the branch of astrophysics that specializes in the study of the Sun. It intersects with many disciplines of pure physics and astrophysics.
Astronomical Observatory of Trieste is an astronomical center of studies located in the city of Trieste in northern Italy.
The heliospheric current sheet, or interplanetary current sheet, is a surface separating regions of the heliosphere where the interplanetary magnetic field points toward and away from the Sun. A small electrical current with a current density of about 10−10 A/m2 flows within this surface, forming a current sheet confined to this surface. The shape of the current sheet results from the influence of the Sun's rotating magnetic field on the plasma in the interplanetary medium. The thickness of the current sheet is about 10,000 km (6,200 mi) near the orbit of the Earth.
The International Space Science Institute (ISSI) is an Institute of Advanced Studies based in Bern, Switzerland. The institute's work is interdisciplinary, focusing on the study of the Solar System, and encompasses planetary sciences, astrophysics, cosmology, astrobiology, and the Earth sciences. A main activity is the interpretation of experimental data collected by space research missions. ISSI provides various scientific opportunities, such as funding for International Teams and Workshops, to space scientists around the globe to meet and collaborate. With the Johannes Geiss Fellowship, it supports established international scientists to make further demonstrable contributions to Space Science.
Eberhard Grün is a German planetary scientist who specialized in cosmic dust research. He is an active emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (MPIK), Heidelberg (Germany), research associate at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) in Boulder (Colorado), and was a professor at the University of Heidelberg until his retirement in 2007. Eberhard Grün has had a leading role in international cosmic dust science for over 40 years.
Vigil, formerly known as Lagrange, is a space weather mission developed by the European Space Agency. The mission will provide the ESA Space Weather Office with instruments able to monitor the Sun, its solar corona and interplanetary medium between the Sun and Earth, to provide early warnings of increased solar activity, to identify and mitigate potential threats to society and ground, airborne and space based infrastructure as well as to allow 4 to 5 days space weather forecasts. To this purpose the Vigil mission will place for the first time a spacecraft at Sun-Earth Lagrange point 5 (L5) from where it would get a 'side' view of the Sun, observing regions of solar activity on the solar surface before they turn and face Earth.
Space climate is the long-term variation in solar activity within the heliosphere, including the solar wind, the Interplanetary magnetic field (IMF), and their effects in the near-Earth environment, including the magnetosphere of Earth and the ionosphere, the upper and lower atmosphere, climate, and other related systems. The scientific study of space climate is an interdisciplinary field of space physics, solar physics, heliophysics, and geophysics. It is thus conceptually related to terrestrial climatology, and its effects on the atmosphere of Earth are considered in climate science.
Eckart Marsch is a German theoretical physicist, who worked from 1980 to 2012 at the originally named Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy, from 2004 on named Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Katlenburg-Lindau on the physics of the solar wind, solar corona and space plasmas and taught at the University of Göttingen.
Nancy U. Crooker is an American physicist and professor emerita of space physics at Boston University, Massachusetts. She has made major contributions to the understanding of geomagnetism in the Earth's magnetosphere and the heliosphere, particularly through the study of interplanetary electrons and magnetic reconnection.
Janet G. Luhmann is an American physicist and senior fellow of the Space Sciences Laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley. She has made major contributions to a wide range of topics in planetary, solar, magnetospheric, and heliospheric physics. She is the principal investigator of the IMPACT instrument suite on the twin-spacecraft STEREO mission. IMPACT stands for In-situ Measurements of Particles and Coronal mass ejection (CME) Transients. It consists of a, "suite of seven instruments that samples the 3-D distribution of solar wind plasma electrons, the characteristics of the solar energetic particle (SEP) ions and electrons, and the local vector magnetic field."
Dr Natchimuthuk "Nat" Gopalswamy is an Indian American Solar physicist. He is currently a staff scientist at the Heliophysics Division of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
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