 Yeah, we got about another minute to go until we officially start. Awesome. I'm getting out of the weather for you today. Gorgeous. Really lovely. All right, it's six o'clock and so hello everyone and welcome to the July NASA night sky network member webinar hosting tonight's webinar from various domiciles. The Astronomical Society of the Pacific in San Francisco, California and other various places. Davis actually is way up there closer to Canada than to anything else in New York. We're very excited to present this webinar this evening with our guest speaker, Dr. Teresa Nivas from got NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Also welcome to everyone who's joining us on the live stream. We're very happy to have you with us. There are monthly events for members of the night sky network, though we look forward to continuing to live the live stream bees into the future. For more information about the NASA night sky network and the Astronomical Society Pacific, either Vivian or Dave will put some links into the chat. Before we get to our to Teresa here is Dave prosper with just a couple of announcements. Everyone. So we have, I just have one brief thing and some of you may know this already. We have some new resources to help with your virtual events. We've added the event type of virtual event to the main calendar, which is really handy for folks that are looking for online astronomy events that are kind of location independent that they can join via computer as you're doing right now. We have some new folks and joining from all over the world. So if you posted events to your night sky network calendar, and you want to make them available in the to the virtual event listings as well. You can just go back to that event and edit it and instead of an observing event or club event or community event check the new virtual event save it. It'll pop on to that virtual event calendar. You can also show up in the main night sky network calendar as well. And if you don't want the event seen by everyone around the world then set you can set the privacy for these virtual events to members only as well. The trick with these is the virtual events do not use a location. So if you try to create a virtual event, it will complain if you try to say physical location so you know, more options for everyone, always fun. Speaking of them. We also have new resources to help with them, in particular page full of best practices and recommendations for holding your online virtual style events. And if you're actually now holding in person events we've also created a little flyer to help with some best practices mostly you know sanitation distancing that kind of thing, and I'll post links to all of these resources in the chat. In one second. Scroll down to get them all. I was just posting them all. Oh cool. Thank you. Thank you Vivian. And with that, we're done. And Brian, back to you. All right, thanks Dave. So for those of you who are on zoom. You can also send us an email at the chat window and the Q&A window at the bottom edge of your zoom window on your desktop. Please feel free to greet each other in the chat window or let us know if you're having any technical difficulties. You can also send us an email at night sky info at astro society.org. If you have a question you would like our guest speaker to answer please type it into the Q&A window. And there will be a much better chance that we'll be able to get to it if it's in the Q&A window. Also, for those of you that are chatting, make sure that you go down there to the little blue button and select all panelists and attendees so that everyone can see your greeting. So let me hit this recording button. And so welcome again to the July webinar for the NASA night sky network. This month we welcome Dr. Teresa Navies to our webinar. Dr. Navies is a research astrophysicist in the heliospheric physics laboratory in the helios physics science division for NASA. In 2018 she started to work with as the NASA project scientists for the solar orbiter collaboration. She is serving as the NASA deputy project scientist. Her research efforts at Goddard are motivated to understand the nature of coronal mouse ejections and their interactions with the solar wind, planets and the earth. Her main contributions to the field has been providing a new perspective to the theoretical analytical flux rope model for magnetic structures embedded in the interplanetary CMEs. So, you know, that's a pretty, pretty great stuff. She was a high school teacher for seven years. I have a fondness for teachers having been one myself. In Spain before her journey to the United States with a commitment with a new generation of scientists. She's currently raising a young family of two girls and in their spare time. She enjoys reading, walking, watching shows and traveling. Maybe not so much traveling these days. Please welcome Dr. Teresa Navies. Thank you very much for that. And thank you all for having me tonight. It's a huge pressure to share with you all the adventures that we are having with solar orbiter. Let me share my screen, right? Okay. Can you see my screen now? It looks great. Thank you very much. So, right. So I'm Teresa Nieres-Cintilla. I'm the NASA Deputy Project Scientist for the Solar Orbiter Collaboration. I'm here tonight, here in DC, to talk about Solar Orbiter, which is the latest mission, Solar Eleospheric Mission, for these two agencies for ISA, a European Space Agency, and NASA. It's a collaborative mission which has the goal to investigate the biosphere. So, tonight, I'm going to talk, I'm going to divide my presentation, let's say, in three blocks. In the first one, I'm going to talk about the science, which is actually, which motivates these missions, and Solar Orbiter, obviously. And then I'm going to talk later about the mission itself, the spacecraft, and the journey to, that we have been going through to get this mission moving. And then I'm going to share with you the latest images and observations, the first light that we released a few days ago to the public. And it's so exciting to share also tonight with you. So, you are astronomers, all of you. And then I know you are very aware that we actually live in the atmosphere of one star, the sun. This atmosphere is actually a bubble of magnetic-side plasma that envelops the solar system and defines the boundaries with the interstellar medium. And this bubble, the biosphere, is created by the solar wind. The solar wind flows out in the radial direction all the way from the sun, and sometimes reach the Earth. We know all that the sun is our main source of energy, but in a way, we are also electromagnetically connected with our star. Let's see how. So, again, you are astronomers, you know, even more than me, probably about these facts. We know that, so I'm going to go very quickly. Our sun is a young star. It's not so old. It's not so young. It's just in the mid-page. It was created 4.6 million years ago, and it's probably around for another 5 billion years. It's located in the Milky Way, serving the space, with 250 billion of similar stars. And the orbit, the priority of this orbit is this big number. It has aware of this tiny portion of the orbit of our star around the core of the galaxy. The rotation around its axis is 27 days, and it's an average number, and it's not so precise, so I will be back to this number later. But we know that it's 109 times larger in size than our Earth. In terms of the mass, you can put a 2 and 30 zeros right after the 2, and these are kilograms that are mainly concentrated in the core of the star. And we know for sure that it counts for 99% of the solar system mass. According to the observations, we estimate that the core of the sun produces 620 billion hydrogen tons into 606 million helium tons per second. The remaining mass is converted into an energy based on this formula, very well known. The energy released in the core takes around 200,000 years to reach the surface, but the light from the surface gets the Earth in just 8 minutes. The sun global magnetic field, which is dominated in the sphere, and this is for sure we know that, is generated by something similar to the magnetic dynamite. And I say something similar because the magnetic dynamite is a very good model. But there are pieces in the understanding of this dynamo that are lacking in our, and that we need to find exactly where it's lacking. So, for instance, when I was talking about the, my screen is in this side, sorry, the big screen, so I'm looking at the camera all the time. So in the, when I talk about the periodicity of the rotation around the axis, the periodicity is not the same at the equator, but in the poles of the sun is actually slower in the poles than in the equator. These different in the speed of the plasma generate some kind of currents, and the currents and the gradient in the, in the, in the, in the speed and the currents accumulate the energy, the magnetic energy and what we call sun spots. The sun spots are highly magnetic side plasma that accumulate a lot of energy, and they are dark because the temperature is colored that is surrounding plasma. We have been counting sun spots for years, then to this, we know a, you know, all astronomers have been counting right. So, and we, at this point, we know that, more or less, the number of sun spots in the sun change with the time and the periodicity on the numbers, the cycles change every around 11 years. However, if you take here in the plot in the graph, in the, at the bottom right, you can see the last four solar cycles, and you can see that the, the width of the solar cycle change with the time. Actually, we don't know why the last few solar cycles are wider than the previous one. And we don't know why the number of the sun spots decrease in the, with the solar cycle. So in this understanding of the solar dynamo and the behavior and how generate the magnetic field, our son, there are pieces that are still we don't really understand. So if you see the movie, I think you're right, you can see the big explosion in the sun. This is a movie and a series of observations from SDO, SDO is the Solar Dynamic Observatory. It's an observatory, a satellite that is located with the Earth in front of the sun, observing the sun and walking with the, with the Earth around the sun. This energy that is accumulated in the solar cycle need to be released in a way. And that one way to release such energy is through these coronal mass ejections. Big explosions. Here is, this is one of the big ones. The one that is reaching the Earth could damage a lot of technology in the space. You see, there is a plasma that is emerging from the sun. This is a prominence and it can stay there for days, even weeks sometimes, and eventually, and we don't really know why it just emerged. Just evacuate the sun and initiate the propagation and the journey throughout the area. And these big explosions can be very damaging to the technology and the, in the space, even in the ground level in our Earth. Here we have another example. This is a movie from, this is very popular coronal mass ejections observed in 2000 by Soho. This is another satellite that is located with the Earth in front of the sun, monitoring the sun. And this instrument is a coronal graph. And we are going to see more coronal graphs in this presentation. A coronal graph is just an artificial eclipse. We cover the sun's surface, the sun's disk, to avoid the light from the disk blocking the light in the corona, and allow us, by blocking the sun's surface, allow us to see the corona, to observe the faint corona around. And then, if you have seen, you observe like two branches of increasing the brightness and eventually a big bubble coming to us, coming to the spacecraft. These white dots in the camera are energetic particles. These energetic particles saturate the camera and eventually can damage, permanently, in cases, the camera. So these are very dangerous. And as you see from the beginning, they can just be at the spacecraft in less than two minutes. Here we have another example of coronal mass ejections. This is actually several coronal mass ejections. And this movie is a composition of two spacecraft, two instruments, one from the stereo. The stereo are two twin spacecraft moving away from the Earth around the sun at one astronomical unit, which is the distance between the sun and the Earth. And in SDO, which is the previous, it's located at the Earth and observing. So with the stereo, we have the coronal graph, so the disk, the dark, the black disk is the coronal graph. And we have located the image from the SDO at the center, which is the sun. So we can track what is happening in the sun, all the way in the corona. And as you see these coronal mass ejections, we identified them by the increase in the intensity, the brightness in the images, and also by this kind of bubble shape. They are very particular, very interesting in our research because they drag this magnetic field special and a legal magnetic field configuration. And actually, like the coronal mass ejections, one disk coronal mass ejection evacuates from the sun and starts to journey through the heliosphere. We think these are the big bubbles that are expanding. And these bubbles confine plasma, contain plasma and magnetic field, and sometimes even energetic particles and radiation. They move radially once they go eject from the sun, they move radially from the sun, and they can go everywhere. Sometimes they reach the Earth, but because we have super sealed, we are super sealed, the magnetosphere protect us from this energy. And sometimes the coronal mass ejection just pass without putting any energy in our system. But sometimes, and we know more or less why our shield, our magnetosphere is broken and allow the entrance of these energetic particles and radiations. The good side of these events is we can see the aurora borealis or the northern lights. The bad side is as our technology is more and more in the space can be damaged by this energy. So our cell phones, our GPS may not work because of these events. So this is why more and more the society is being aware of the hazard from these events, how can we can be affected by this variability of the sun. And we have reports from in the history. The first event, very well known is the Carrington event, you probably have heard about that. And it was Carrington was an astronomer, as you are all, and he was just counting sunspots and observing a group of sunspots, and he observed next to the sunspots an increase of the brightness. And a few days later, the aurora borealis increase, they observe a lot of aurora borealis and also the telegraph system was affected by, you know, some kind of currents that they don't know where they come from. So more recently we have in 1921, a big huge event that I will talk also later about a little bit more. It was ten times larger than the event of 1989. However, because the technology, the society by that time was less advanced than in the 1989, the consequences of the societies were less obviously. In the case of 1989, the city of Quebec was without power for more than eight hours. So we have many events that we have been now, you know, coming back and revisiting. And we now can associate these kind of events with solar activity with the variability in the solar system. So some cases are like these satellites. Some of them were lost forever just because of the solar activity. In the case of the space weather, when we talk about the space weather, we refer all the activity that goes from the sun in the solar system, I mean, in the solar wind, interplanetary medium, the magnetosphere, the ionosphere, the thermosphere, and to get the ground, the ground level. So we start to identify how, you know, every, you know, level or liar can be affected by the variability. We know that the satellites can drags, can suffer drags, and we can have problem in radio communications, satellite communications, GPS transmission. We start to understand the consequences on the health and the astronauts, but also in the crew from the airlines. So we start, now we are starting to learn more about the consequences of the sun activity in our lives, in our regular lives. So for instance, in the report that I include here, they just estimate that in the case of having an extreme event similar to the one in 1921, 130 million of people can be affected without power. And the, the estimate and cost, it will be between one to two trillion dollars, million trillion dollars during the first year. This is an estimation and we don't want to test, right? So we have eventually to be able to make predictions and to keep our technology safe. Obviously, also it's very important for something that is going to happen in the next few years. So with Artemis program in 2024, we are going to bring the first woman and the next man to the moon to develop the first colony of the humans in the space. And then we need to protect also our astronauts. So this is why it is important to understand our star, not just because, because we want to advance in the understanding, in the knowledge of our, you know, the universe of stars. It is also because we need to protect our technology, our societies. So this is why we need to understand, we need to, to know how does the sun create and control the heliosphere. And this is a big question. So that's why Solar Orbiter is focused in this four questions. The first one is why, what is the origin of the magnetic field and what drives the solar wind that creates the heliosphere. We also want to know how does the solar dynamo work actually and drive connections between the sun and the heliosphere. And we also want to understand how these huge coronal mass ejections drive the heliospheric variability and how the solar eruptions produce the radiation that fills the heliosphere. So these are the main questions that are, you know, focused on Solar Orbiter and the teams and instruments. And here is Solar Orbiter. So Solar Orbiter will help to explore the sun and heliosphere connection. And it was the mission was launched in the past February 9 in 2020. This was February from Cape Canaveral. It was launched in a rocket at last five in the configuration 411. The phase of the mission that we have three phases, and I'll talk about that in the next slide, I think. Yeah, so I'll talk about that in the next slide, but basically it's going to be 10 years of mission. The cruise phase will be for 18 months. Then we have the nominal phase and the extended mission for three more years in the orbit will bring a Solar Orbiter to the closest distance of 0.28 astronomical units being one. The distance between the sun and the earth, one astronomical unit. And something very particular of this mission is that we are going to bring a Solar Orbiter out of the cliptic plane. And you know, I know you know what is the cliptic plane is the plane that basically contains all the planets are, you know, knowledge. So it requires a lot of energy to take the satellite out of the cliptic plane. And this is going to be a big milestone for this mission in the nominal mission will get the 24 degrees of inclination in the orbit. And during the extended mission will reach the 33 degrees during the all the mission, the in situ, in situ set of instruments and in situ, I mean, and I say in situ I mean instruments that are going to be taking measurements of the plasma magnetic field particles and waves around the spacecraft and they are going to be working all the time providing information and observation that what is happening around the spacecraft and the remote sensing observations and when I talk about remote sensing I mean, and you astronomers know very well are the instruments that provide observations from the light that they receive from the star. And this instrumentation are going to be on during the three dedicated windows that I'll talk in the next slide during the nominal mission. Something also very particular of this mission is the reduced relative rotation. It means that, you know, if you think about Soho, for instance, the satellite that I, you know, it was monitoring the sun from the earth is, you know, more or less static with respect to the sun. So when we observe as a structure, the structure as is evolving at the same time the sun is rotating. So eventually is going to be missed lost in the, you know, in the in the backside of the sun, and maybe if we stay there for 27 days. We can see later again back, but however with solar orbiter, we are going to synchronize the satellite rotation, the orbit with the rotation from the sun so eventually we are going to be able to track structures over the time. So we are going to resolve a temporary scales also. So the and this is very critical for this mission. So here you see when we launch solar orbiter, it was ballistically literally was launched and it was launched over the Venus. So with the Venus, it's going to use the gravity assistance from Venus to alter the trajectory of the spacecraft and save a lot of energy. And then to get the orbit that is required in the mission, you know, with every gravitational assistance maneuver from Venus and Earth, we are going to, you know, get the maximum approach to the sun and the inclination of the orbit, and then that is required for the mission. Here in the and the on your left, you can see the plots of the orbit, the change in the orbit with the time at the top, you have the latitude and the bottom you have the distance so we launch the distance to this to the sun. We have we land at one astronomical unit, and we just we launched in February 2020, and we just passed the first very helium. Now in June 15. So now we officially start the cruise phase, and we are going to be doing the cruise phase for 18 months until and then we are heading right now to Venus to have the first in December, the first gravity assistance maneuver. And then later next year, we are going to have the second gravity assistance maneuver and start the nominal phase. Once we start the nominal phase during each orbit, the spacecraft is going to have three windows as you see in the maximum and minimum latitude and also in the maximum approach in each window or the remote sensing instruments are going to be observing the sun. And later once we pass the nominal, as you see in the latitude and inclination of the orbit is increasing over the time, and we are going to get the 24 degrees by the end of the nominal phase. And starting with extended mission, we are going to get the maximum inclination inclination of 33 degrees. In the nominal mission is when we are going to get the maximum approach to the sun at 0.28 astronomical units. So again, this is a mission as a team effort between two agencies is for NASA is a part of the living with the star program for is the cosmic vision program. This is a mission lead by is a is a compromise to develop the satellite and the integration of the payload, 10 instruments, nine of them were developed by the European is European states and one of them was developed here in the US. And NASA provide the launch and I'm son of the sensors in one of the payload instrument. So just mentioned here that the collaboration between these two agencies agencies is a long standing tradition of collaboration. We have two examples here we have Soho. Soho was launched in 1995, and it was a mission for two years, and it's still alive. It's amazing, right. And then we had also Ulysses Ulysses was a mission or polar mission as solar orbiter is, but it was just within C2 instruments was so the difference is solar orbiter will provide the first by the first time images of the sun poles. And here is solar orbiter. So, this is a three axis extra stabilized a satellite is pointing toward the sun. And because we are going to get this 0.28 astronomical unit of distance, we are going to receive the satellite is going to receive certain times the magnetic flux that any satellite or spacecraft receive at one of you. And that's why we need to protect the satellite and the payload, and we have this heat field that is going to be pointing to the sun. So it is very interesting because this technology has been developed for the satellite is, you know, carbon fiber composite with several layers of titanium and is, you know, with a gap between layers that allow to resolve the heat. And is that the isolation that some of the instruments require heaters to warm up the instruments and to, you know, get the nominal working level. So, also, it's something very interesting in the satellite is in the heat field that are small windows through which each instrument can pick through and make the observations. Obviously, the instruments need to be also protected from the heat flux. Sorry. And also, it's very interesting because of the orbit is going to be changing in distance or to the sun, we need to protect for instance the solar rays, the solar rays are articulate in a way that when we are very close to the sun. I articulate to minimize the surface exposed to the sun. And as the space cat is going farther from the sun is going to change to maximize the surface exposed and to get all the energy required for this system and subsystems in the satellite. And with the high gain antenna which is required to communicate to with the ground segment here. And it can be articulate to protect the when it's very close to the sun or a unfold when it's far from the sun and allow the communication with the spacecraft. Sorry. So here is that architecture of the spacecraft. So, there are 10 instruments. And when we talk about collaboration. I put always the here the flags because it's not about just two agencies. There are 10 instruments with leading each instrument by different countries. And even in each instrument there are, you know, consortions of several countries. So this is a very, very strong international collaboration. And this is also, you know, challenging. Now here is, you know, something that we need to be proud of. The architecture of the spacecraft, you see that most of the instruments are behind the heat seal. But we have also some of them that are located in the in the boom that they need to be isolated from the electromagnetic currents. I'm going to go later through each of the instruments with the first slide images. Let me move to the next one, which is the very plus also solar orbiter has been, you know, traveling. It was Airbus, which is the partner from Issa was the in charge of the spacecraft development and the integration of the payload, and it was a carry out in the center that they have in UK. Here you can see one of the pictures from the of the of the satellite of the actual satellite right before to move from UK to Germany where it was a testing for environmental testing thermal acoustic or testing that was accomplished in Germany. And then a from there was moved in November 1999 2019 to Florida to Cape Canaveral, Kennedy Center, where, you know, in astrotech was the final integration of the spacecraft to the rocket and the launch. And here you can see the launch. At least I recommend you to probably you have done already to see in YouTube. Here it was a life experience for many of us. We were watching obviously from the phone from outside, but we have here the camera that you a incorporate in several parts of the rocket, and we can track a from outside what is happening with the rocket and inside all the, you know, things that are happening with the spacecraft. And here you can, we can see the last image of the of the satellite when they started a her journey to accomplish her mission. Excuse me one second I think that your microphone is scratching maybe against your shirt if you could just put a little bit and then yeah no worries, I just want everybody can hear you. Okay. Thank you. So I'm here with you see is the so part of the is a team experts in Asteroid that were tracking a solar orbiter from Earth. So these are picked this picture is also a picture that I took the night before to the land I was just myself in the path with this rocket. And it was as I said, you know, life experience for me. This is so I took this in this website, you can track the solar orbiter. I did a few minutes ago in Europe is already 24. So you can see here is a solar orbiter. Here is the Earth, the distance between both is 0.1 0.49 astronomical units and we just passed the first perihelion. It was on a June 15. So and the maximum approach that we read this time was 0.5 astronomical units in halfway between the sun and Earth. So during all this time from lunch to June 15 around June 15, it was what we call commissioning activities. This commissioning activities is just the period of time where project manager engineers and scientists work together to switch on and calibrate the spacecraft and the instruments during this phase during this part. All the instruments were on. So before starting the cruise phase, even the remote sensing instruments were on and we got images from, you know, these instruments. So now in September, just to mention before going to the to the first light images in September, the in situ data. So right now the teams are working in the calibration of the data. The in situ data will be released to the public and the community to, you know, explore new knowledge in the space science. And here you have, you can see the first images, the first light from the 10 instruments. Let me go because when I talked before about connect connecting dots. You can see that with a solar orbiter with distant instruments, we can go from a small scales in the sun to big explosions in the sun, track all of them from the sun surface to the corona and later the eliosphere and eventually to touch them with the in situ instruments. So let me start with a extreme ultraviolet image. So this is measuring the weight of extreme ultraviolet and it's observing the from the sun surface to the lower corona and we can, you know, see the plasma movements and the activity in this area. So from here, we can go to the polarimetric polarimetric and eliosystemic imager, the FI instrument. The FI instrument is going to provide information of the magnetic feeling the surface of the sun. And eventually with a technique that is called eliosystemology, we are going to be able to infer the movement of the activity right below the sun surface. So we are going to be able to track what is happening right below the track surface or all the way to the to the surface and eventually in the lower corona. And this is going to be possible here. Let me see because I have a sticks right here. A stick is the X-ray, a telescope is going to observe in X-ray wavelength, obviously, and then it's going to be able to observe the most energetic activity in the sun. So if something happens like a flare, so X-ray stick is going to be able to observe. So and if it's something happening right here. So like a big explosion from the sun with the coronograph with Metis right here and the top right, the coronograph is going to be able to provide information of the corona. So Metis is also very special and I will show later some images, more images from Metis is very special, not just because coronographs are very useful in the community. We have several coronographs, but in this case it's going to provide observations in two wavelength in white light and also in ultraviolet. And this is something ultraviolet wavelength never has been provided these observations to the community. So it's something very new and very interesting and also because we are going to be very close to the sun, we are going to be observing areas in the corona never observed before. So more information because of the coronograph is blocking the sun, the disk with the sun disk with the coronograph. We are not observing the corona right in front and that's why we have a spice right here. A spice is able to, it's a spectrometer that is able to provide information of the corona in the disk. So in addition to the information of the corona is also providing information about the composition. And this is also very interesting because we usually observe the plasma movements, electrons, protons, helium, but with this instrument we are going to be observing also heavy ions. This is in connection, this remote sensing of a telescope is going to be very connected with the one of the instrument in the solar wind analyzer that is going to be measuring this composition by the first time in the inner sphere in connecting a spice, what we observe with the light, with what we observe with the in-situ instrument. So as I say, if we have big explosions with x-rays right here, so energetic particles are going to be injected into the in-situ sphere and the APD, the energetic particle detector right here is going to provide the link and the connections between the remote sensing and the in-situ. So we have obviously a magnetometer. A magnetometer provides measurements of in-situ measurements of the magnetic field which is amassed in an heliospheric observatory because of the magnetic field dominate completely the heliosphere. And then we will have also, and I don't want to forget, waves provide an instrument in between remote sensing and in-situ instrument because we are observing radio waves, but also we are observing plasma waves. So it is an instrument that link remote and in-situ instrumentation. So here is an overview of the first light images from our satellite from Solar Orbiter. And here let me go in detail about some of the highlights of these images. Here we have a detail of the extreme ultraviolet instrument, the UI. We have several sensors in this instrument. We have the full disk view that provides an overview that is what is happening in the sun. And then we have a high resolution in-detector that provides just parcels of the sun at a very high resolution. And because we are going to be very close to the sun, we are going to be able to resolve a small scale extractor. And actually with this first light, we have done so. So we have been observing, I'm going to highlight one of the parcels here. We have been observing multitude of small floating loops and features. We have demons, we have, you know, the loops here, fibrous moving. And we have been, the team, the instrument team has been observing and reporting to the science team in the mission. This is a small increase of intensity. So they were working very, from the beginning, very, very, very, very hard to try to see if it was something, you know, from the instrument or the calibration issue. But they actually saw a lot of these small scale flares, let's say, they start to call them campfires, and probably you have heard about that. So why is important these campfires? So there is a long standing question in our field. There is a region between the sun's surface atmosphere and the lower corona. That is called the transition region. In this transition region, the temperature in the area increase. So you will expect as you move away from the sun, the temperature decrease. After the transition region, the temperature decrease again. But just in this small area, in the small region, the temperature increase. And the scientists has been trying to explain this for years. And we don't really, we don't really understand why the temperature, the plasma is heated too much in that area, in that region. So we, because UI is observing in that area, we, the team think the hypothesis is that these are like small nano flares or small flares that in the flares there are process of the recommended connection. And in this magnetic connection, there are no release of energy, thermal energy that can heat the plasma. And it could be an explanation for this or an answer for this question. So we are looking forward, the scientists are working to prove that, you know, this hypothesis is actual, the right one. So we'll see in the next few months what they say we say. And here, just for illustration, one more, it is the color is just this arbitrary color. And because of the illustration, illustrate different web lengths in the, in the extreme ultraviolet, the, the one in yellow is 17 nanometers, and the pink one is 120 121.6 nanometers. In this web length, we are observing the granulation of the plasma because of the movement of the magnetic field in the, in the sun and surface. So, as I say here, we have metis, there are two days here we have the colors are just white light in the case of green and ultraviolet in the case of the pink. The composition of the corona is very normal is in the, in the minimum phase where we are, we are raising out, raising, rising out now to the, to the solar cycle 25. So, and this is very interesting to see in different web length. And here we have finally, as you, as I said, we have the coronagraph, we have the UI, and then if you see the line right here be below, we have the solar distance. This is we coronagraph is going to go to 5.8 solar radius. And from 10 solar radios to 70, sorry, 85 solar radios. We are going to have solo high. So low high is the leochferri imager that we are going to allow us to track the structures all the way to the eliosphere. In this case, in the first image from solo high, we observe Mercury, and this increase of these white features right here are just because the team is still working in the calibration. This is the corona. And this is a feature from the solar arrays that need to be removed eventually. So, just to finish, just thank you that I want before leaving you, I want to introduce part of the team is just part of the people that have been working for years in this mission. At the top we have the project scientists in the NASA and ESA. This is the team, the NASA team, project team, or the design team in the ESA. And right here in front of the rocket at the last five, we have part of the science and instrument team the day before of the launch. Thank you very much. Michael, that's fantastic. This is really, really interesting. So, we do have a few quite a number of questions here and so I mean I kind of go in reverse order you've got some having to do with the instrumentation. Ron was wondering about, are the instruments always pointed at the sun regardless of the spacecrafts position. So, so the spacecraft is the one which is pointing to the sun. So the instruments are all the located, I mean, behind the heat shield. So it's very important to keep the pointing, you know, very static, because of first because we don't have to have, you know, kind of movement can expose the instrument to the sun flags that can damage to the instruments and also because of the remote sensing instrument the telescope requires some kind of stability. In order to, you know, make the observations. Same as the telescopes when we use them here at the ground. All right, so let's see related to that. And so, given the heating problem. How long can the openings be open for each instrument to gather data is on the range of minutes, hours, you know, because they are protected, the instruments are going to be the remote sensing. I mean, the instruments that are right behind the heat shield and they don't need to be looking at the sun. We are going to be always taking measurements. For those that need to look at the sun, they have their own protection. During the three dedicated windows of 10 days around, they are going to be observing all the time. They are not. And also, and actually the kind of material has been developed for this mission, the degradation of the material is very low. And they have been testing for years. And we, I mean, we are pretty sure that it's going to be for, you know, lasting for the 10 years of the mission. I also have a question here. And I know that you talked about this, but I'm not sure if you answered this specifically. So what's the main purpose of having the spacecraft out of the plane of the ecliptic. This is very important question that I didn't emphasize during the talk. So we don't, we don't never have seen the solar, the samples, never. So we don't know how they are. And why is it important to see and to look at the sun poles, because they are playing an important role in the dynamic and the connections between the magnetic field when I talk that the rotation in the equator and the poles are different. So it seems that they are an area around the poles that play a significant role in this kind of accumulation of energy. And by observing with these instruments and the poles, we are going to be able to better understand the solar model, the global model of the sun, how to generate the magnetic field. All right. So here's an interesting question that, you know, a lot of people have been observing the comet neowise. And I know that a lot of the older missions have observed comet some of the sun grazing comets. Were you able to observe this current comet with solar orbiter at all? There was one comet right before the last one. It was called Atlas. And actually, if you allow me, let me go here. This is the comet. This is the atlas. So we learn about this comet. It was about June 5th, I think, June, May 30, June 5th. And then we track the orbit of the comet and the orbit of our satellite. And we believe that we were crossing the tail of this comet with solar orbiter. Still, we are gathering the data and trying to analyze that we observe was part of the tail or is not. I mean, still we are test calibrating the data and learning about that. But it was very interesting. The comets are very interesting lately. So we have a few questions here about CMEs and the effect on our planet and others. And so we had a question. Have we observed how the CMEs affect other planets or moons other than just the Earth? Yeah. So actually, there are many scientists trying to, obviously, we have Mercury, which is completely devastated by the solar radiation and solar activity. But we have also learning about how Mars can be affected by the sun variability and the coronal mass ejections. So there are many theories about that. The planet has been degraded because of the solar activity. But they are ongoing research to learn about how the sun variability affect to the planets in the solar system and in other solar systems also. So here's an interesting question. And I'm guessing that it has to do with CMEs. If we had a really big CME hit Earth, could it potentially break our magnetic field? If it did, could we survive? I mean, if it breaks our magnetic field and take the magnetic field with it, we are going to be just saying bye to this universe forever. But the point is, we can have a very strong coronal mass ejection. And this is an extreme event that I was talking about. These extreme events can damage the magnetosphere and allow the entrance of a lot of energy. And eventually, you know, disrupt our lives, our satellites. So the extreme events are going to bring disruption in our technologies. But the magnetosphere is going to stay there for a few more years, then to this. Then to this. That's good. So back to the sun's magnetic field, speaking of magnetic fields, does one pole on the sun have a greater influence on the solar magnetic activity? Say again. Is there a difference between the sun? So, yeah, on the sun's pole is one of the poles dominant. In fact, they change. So they change every 11 years. So the polarity is changing. So actually, when I talk about the 11 years solar cycle, but actually is 22 years of solar cycle because the polarity change every 11 years. So it's actually 22 years. So we, we've got a time for just a couple more questions. And then I know that we're after, after, you're on the East Coast, so it's after 10. And so you said that we haven't looked at the poles, but one person said, well, didn't Ulysses fly over the poles? And so we had a view of it in the past. But Ulysses took in situ measurements, no remote sensing observations. It didn't have a telescopes to observe with light the poles. It's just in situ, I mean, taking measurements of what was around the spacecraft. Ah, okay. So it really wasn't a solar observing mission. No, it was more really a spheric observatory. Okay. Let's see. So let's go for one more. This will be the last question. So all solar probes after their service time, what's going to have, what are you going to do with a solar orbiter when it's done with its service? You know, we were talking because there are, there is not a plan by itself. After 10 years, the agencies can, I mean, probably Issa is the one who is, which is going to be making the decision about that. So I don't have, and I was trying to explore because I knew that I was going to have this question eventually, but there is no plan for now. Okay. Well, let's have yours to about 10 years worth of really good science. Go ahead and stop sharing your screen. Okay. Sorry. It's been fun seeing the, the comment. Well, we've got a lot more questions, but it's well after time. And so we want to, you know, be considerate of your time. Thank you so much. I mean, you have my email. So if anyone is, you know, want to make questions and talk with the scientists, I'm very happy to, to keep talking later or another moment. And you had that at the beginning or the end at the end of your, your presentation. Was it in, was it in your slides, one of your slides headed on it? I don't know, no, but I can put my, you want my slides. I just wondering, because we have the one that would be nice. Yeah. I can give you my presentation and then I can put my email. So you can use the movies and all this stuff. I just don't want to go sharing your email with, with the world if we don't, you know, without your permission or something. I mean, it's in the website and that's a website. You can see my email. So. Okay. Great. We would love to have your slides. And so that's all for tonight, everyone. And thank you. Thank you for joining us this evening and thank you everyone for tuning in. And so everyone, you'll be able to find this webinar. It's going to be Monday now. We're not going to be able to get to it until after the weekend. So be able to find this webinar along with many others on the night sky network website in the outreach resources section. And this page also features additional resources and activities. And if we get your slides, we will be posting those up there as well. And this will also be on, well, since we've been live streaming it automatically recorded, but we'll be updating that in the next few days as well with some links. And this is for our next webinar on August 25, when Dr. Cynthia Evans from NASA's Johnson Space Center will share with us how NASA is searching for meteorites in Antarctica. So we can go from, you know, a really, really warm place to a really, really cold place all in the space of a month. Thank you so much again. Thank you very much for having me. It has been a pleasure. Thank you so much, Carolyn for, for making the introductions and for joining us. And so we have one of the other NASA heliophysics team members here with us this evening too. So it's, you're very welcome anytime. So, and thank you, Teresa. All right. Well, thank you so much. And take care and have a great evening. You too. Okay. Bye. Thank you. Take care. Dave, are you still there? Dave. I am. Yes. That was weird all of a sudden and I didn't get a chance to read what you had said.