Living with a Star

"Living with a Star" is the name given to a NASA program that fosters research into the variable activity of our own star, the Sun, and its consequences at Earth. Solar radiations and ejected material impinge on the Earth's atmosphere and sometimes have deleterious effects on satellite systems, communications, and power distribution networks. As society becomes increasingly dependent on sophisticated technologies it becomes more important that we be able to predict solar variability. An increasing number of governments support studies of so-called "Space Weather". This talk will describe some of the relevant observations and include a number of awe-inspiring spacecraft images. Some of the many questions concerning Space Weather will be discussed in more detail, including the speaker's specialty of how high energy particles are generated.

Dr Hilary Cane is a graduate of the University of Tasmania and lives on Bruny Island. She works at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center for a few months every year. Her work is funded through the Living with a Star program.

She is a highly respected leader in the field of interplanetary high energy particles, plasma and magnetic field research. She has been at the forefront of interpretation of multiple spacecraft observations of energetic particles, the solar wind and the magnetic field carried by it and has been particularly active in the area of coronal mass ejections and solar proton event studies. Her research is published frequently in major international journals.

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