en http://www.sunearthplan.net/ The Sun Earth Plan aims to learn more about the region of space dominated by our sun. The Sun rotates from east to west. As newly-formed sunspots are created on the eastern half of the Sun, its rotation carries them inexorably across the visible disc, where our instruments can get a clear look at them. However, the story is very different for new sunspots forming in the west. Even before those sunspots drift completely around the far side of the Sun, they begin to disappear. Many of them are not seen at all, and remain invisible.A ... http://www.sunearthplan.net/2/701/Invisible-spots-on-the-Sun Hinode – meaning ‘sunrise’ in Japanese – was launched to study magnetic fields on the Sun and how they heat up the corona and drive eruptions, such as solar flares. Despite decades of research, many aspects of solar flares are still not well understood, but predicting them would be invaluable since they damage satellites and pose a radiation hazard to astronauts. Using Hinode’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Spectromete ... http://www.sunearthplan.net/2/668/The-Suns-hot-secrets Atoms as we know them cannot survive in the Sun’s atmosphere, called the corona, where temperatures can exceed 2 million degrees Celsius. Instead they are stripped of their electrons to become plasma. The positively and negatively-charged particles of the plasma spiral along the magnetic field and move with it, like children on a helter-skelter. But large-scale movements of the plasma can also move the magnetic field, equivalent to the chil ... http://www.sunearthplan.net/2/582/Modelling-the-Suns-explosive-corona Sun|trek  (www.suntrek.org) is packed with spectacular images and movies of the Sun from solar space observations which can be downloaded for classroom work. As well as including material relevant to the 'Earth and Beyond' part of the curriculum, Sun|trek covers environmental issues such as alternative energy sources and can also be used to illustrate many physical concepts, such as electromagnetic radiation (UV and X-rays), waves, magnetis ... http://www.sunearthplan.net/2/142/Suntrek-goes-live While most of the telescopes onboard the spacecraft look towards the Sun, a British-built instrument, called the Heliospheric Imager, constantly monitors the space between the Sun and the Earth, watching for any CMEs heading our way. These storms contain a billion tons of electrified gas traveling at a million miles an hour, and this gas, known as a plasma, is at temperatures around one hundred thousand degrees. When such a cloud reaches the Eart ... http://www.sunearthplan.net/2/140/The-Sun-in-3D Why, then, is the surface of the Sun (the photosphere) so much cooler than its atmosphere (the corona)? The photosphere's temperature is about 5500 degrees Celsius, while the corona is more than 2 million degrees. An unknown energy source appears to be pumping extra heat into the corona. Magnetic fields could be the culprit, but the precise mechanisms are still under debate. Several teams among the UK Solar Physics community are studying detaile ... http://www.sunearthplan.net/2/15/The-Suns-wrong-way-around-heat The magnetic fields in the Sun’s atmosphere are amazing structures; the ones we study reach thousands of miles up into the atmosphere, and are revealed by the glowing hot gasses trapped along them. They change over time, with new structures forming and old structures dying. During their lifetime they show signs of being twisted and distorted. This can lead to them becoming unstable, which could explain why CMEs occur. This area of research ... http://www.sunearthplan.net/2/13/When-the-Sun-erupts