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 upper atmosphere of the Sun, called 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 materials found in the solar plasma: trace amounts of heavy ions and atomic nuclei such as C, N, O, Ne, Mg, Si, S, and Fe. There are also rarer traces of some other nuclei and isotopes such as P, Ti, Cr, 54Fe and 56Fe, and 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.
Space weather is a branch of space physics and aeronomy, or heliophysics, concerned with the time varying conditions within the Solar System, including the solar wind, emphasizing the space surrounding the Earth, including conditions in the magnetosphere, ionosphere, thermosphere, and exosphere. Space weather is distinct from, but conceptually related to, the terrestrial weather of the atmosphere of Earth. The term "space weather" was first used in the 1950s and came into common usage in the 1990s. Later, it was generalized to a "space climate" research discipline, which focuses on general behaviors of longer and larger-scale variabilities and effects.
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 magnetic field and accompanying 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.
The Solar Orbiter (SolO) is a Sun-observing satellite developed by the European Space Agency (ESA). SolO, 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 deals with detailed measurements that are possible only for our closest star. It intersects with many disciplines of pure physics, astrophysics, and computer science, including fluid dynamics, plasma physics including magnetohydrodynamics, seismology, particle physics, atomic physics, nuclear physics, stellar evolution, space physics, spectroscopy, radiative transfer, applied optics, signal processing, computer vision, computational physics, stellar physics and solar astronomy.
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.
Heliophysics is the physics of the Sun and its connection with the Solar System. NASA defines heliophysics as "(1) the comprehensive new term for the science of the Sun - Solar System Connection, (2) the exploration, discovery, and understanding of Earth's space environment, and (3) the system science that unites all of the linked phenomena in the region of the cosmos influenced by a star like our Sun."
The interplanetary magnetic field (IMF), now more commonly referred to as the heliospheric magnetic field (HMF), is the component of the solar magnetic field that is dragged out from the solar corona by the solar wind flow to fill the Solar System.
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.
ESA Vigil, formerly known as Lagrange, is a planned solar weather mission by the European Space Agency. In development is a spacecraft to be positioned at the fifth Lagrangian point, L5. From there 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."
Erich Otto Ernst Rieger is a German astrophysicist who spent his research career at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) near Munich. He is notable for his 1984 discovery of the period of ~154 days in solar flares. Since the discovery, the period has been confirmed in most heliophysics data in the Solar System, including the interplanetary magnetic field, and has become known as the Rieger period (PR).
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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