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The Radiation Belts!

Trapped Particles in the Cosmos.

The Earth has its van Allen Radiation Belts, but it is not the only place in the universe where magnetic fields and charged particles interact with each other! Here is a short gallery of other objects in the cosmos where space plasmas and fields interact.

The sun is a massive ball of plasma, laced with magnetic fields. Sometimes these fields pop through the surface. When they do, they carry billions of tons of plasma with them, trapped like fireflies in a magnetic bottle. This giant prominence photographed by Skylab astronauts in the 1970's is the largest one ever seen. [MORE]

A prominence of plasma, heated to 10,000 degrees K erupts from the solar surface. The luminous, trapped atoms of hydrogen and helium light up the magnetic field. Movement of the magnetic lines of force near the foot points of the prominence heats up the plasma, causing it to flow up the lines of force. [MORE]

The radiation belts of Jupiter are a thousand times more powerful than Earth's van Allen Belts, making them even more deadly to future astronauts and unmanned space missions visiting that world. This image shows the radio waves emitted by the hot plasma as it moves in the planet's intense magnetic field. [MORE]

The Milky Way has its own magnetic field, detected through studies of pulsars and other means. This field is very weak, but it is responsible for trapping and amplifying cosmic rays. As the figure to the left shows, with its many arrows, this field is directed along the spiral arms [MORE]. A proposed NASA satellite to map this field would let us study just how complex this field is at interstellar-scales. [MORE] It would also help astronomers understand just how this field is being continuously created. The strength of this field is more than a million times weaker than the average Sun's surface field.

Astronomers have used radio waves to map the magnetic fields in distant galaxies. The radio waves are produced by electrons moving at nearly the speed of light in these distant magnetic systems. By carefully measuring the polarization of this light they can deduce how the magnetic field is oriented. Radio waves mapped from the galaxy M83 show that, like the Milky Way, its magnetic field spans the entire galaxy, and is also lined-up with its spiral arms. [More]

The galaxy Messier-87 squirts out a jet of plasma at near-light speed. This plasma is magnetically confined until it enters intergalactic space, where it dissolves into clouds of dilute gas seen only by their radio emission (yellow-green). The size of this magnetic cloud is nearly a million light years across. (Courtesy NRAO/AUI and F. Owen) [MORE]

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The Radiation Belts!
Trapped Particles in the Cosmos. The Earth has its van Allen Radiation Belts, but it is not the only place in the universe where magnetic fields and charged particles interact with each other! Here is a short gallery of other objects in the cosmos where space plasmas and fields interact.
	The sun is a massive ball of plasma, laced with magnetic fields. Sometimes these fields pop through the surface. When they do, they carry billions of tons of plasma with them, trapped like fireflies in a magnetic bottle. This giant prominence photographed by Skylab astronauts in the 1970's is the largest one ever seen. [MORE]
	A prominence of plasma, heated to 10,000 degrees K erupts from the solar surface. The luminous, trapped atoms of hydrogen and helium light up the magnetic field. Movement of the magnetic lines of force near the foot points of the prominence heats up the plasma, causing it to flow up the lines of force. [MORE]
	The radiation belts of Jupiter are a thousand times more powerful than Earth's van Allen Belts, making them even more deadly to future astronauts and unmanned space missions visiting that world. This image shows the radio waves emitted by the hot plasma as it moves in the planet's intense magnetic field. [MORE]
	The Milky Way has its own magnetic field, detected through studies of pulsars and other means. This field is very weak, but it is responsible for trapping and amplifying cosmic rays. As the figure to the left shows, with its many arrows, this field is directed along the spiral arms [MORE]. A proposed NASA satellite to map this field would let us study just how complex this field is at interstellar-scales. [MORE] It would also help astronomers understand just how this field is being continuously created. The strength of this field is more than a million times weaker than the average Sun's surface field.
	Astronomers have used radio waves to map the magnetic fields in distant galaxies. The radio waves are produced by electrons moving at nearly the speed of light in these distant magnetic systems. By carefully measuring the polarization of this light they can deduce how the magnetic field is oriented. Radio waves mapped from the galaxy M83 show that, like the Milky Way, its magnetic field spans the entire galaxy, and is also lined-up with its spiral arms. [More]
	The galaxy Messier-87 squirts out a jet of plasma at near-light speed. This plasma is magnetically confined until it enters intergalactic space, where it dissolves into clouds of dilute gas seen only by their radio emission (yellow-green). The size of this magnetic cloud is nearly a million light years across. (Courtesy NRAO/AUI and F. Owen) [MORE]