Sentinels of the Sun: Forecasting Space Weather

The Halloween Storms of late 2003, one of the largest series of solar storms in history, caused power failures, the rerouting of airline flights, satellite and space-station problems, and the failure of multimillion-dollar instruments on the Mars Odyssey orbiter and the ADEOS-2 spacecraft. The dramatic activity underscored the limitations of our understanding of the Sun. With the tremendous technological advancements over the past hundred years, we are now forced to examine the workings of the Sun and its effect on our daily lives. This book takes a look at space weather and the Space Environment Center, a federal agency devoted to the study of the Sun. It will give readers a scientific understanding of how the Sun will affect each of us who talks on a cell phone, finds our way with a GPS receiver, flies to the top of the world or beyond, or simply sits out under the northern lights pondering such beautiful displays.