NJIT in the News

New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) will make available live color photos illustrating the rare Transit of Mercury. Big Bear Solar Observatory, Big Bear, Calif., managed and operated by NJIT, will begin capturing these images at 2 p.m. E.S.T. using its 6 inch (15 centimeter) Singer Full-Disk Telescope. The telescope will use a special filter to look at chromosphere, a layer in the solar atmosphere about a thousand miles above the sun’s visible surface.

Scientists who monitor Earth's reflectance by measuring the moon's earthshine have observed unexpectedly large climate fluctuations during the past two decades.  By combining eight years of earthshine data with nearly twenty years of partially overlapping satellite cloud data, they have found a gradual decline in the Earth’s reflectance that became sharper in the last part of the 1990’s, perhaps associated with the accelerated global warming in recent years.  Surprisingly, the declining reflectance reversed completely in the past three years.  Such changes, which are not understood, seem to be a natural variability of the Earth’s clouds.

Big Bear Solar Observatory reopened Monday November 3 after a six-day shutdown cause by California’s wildfires.  Mandatory evacuation mean the center’s director Philip Goode had to leave his home on Big Bear Lake and return to New Jersey, where the observatory is managed by the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) in Newark. But no harm came to observatory staff, property, or equipment.

A major solar flare, possibly the second largest ever recorded, erupted today at 6:30 a.m. The intensity of the flare has sent a space storm careening towards the Earth. If the storm’s magnetic field is in the right direction – opposite that of the earth – it could cause problems when it reaches us Wednesday. It could knock out power grids, upset satellites and disrupt GPS signals. More benignly, if the weather is clear, people who peer into the northern sky on Wednesday night could see a shimmer of lights known as an aurora,” says NJIT physicist Dale Gary.

Newark, N.J.--The "weather" in space may have just gotten a bit more predictable. Using new digital equipment, a team of NJIT researchers has gotten a better look at the surface of the sun and what happens to it both before and during solar flares. Working at NJIT's Big Bear Solar Observatory in California, a team led by physics professor Haimin Wang, Ph.D., produced a series of new images. They show for the first time that rapid changes in the magnetic fields emanating from the sun's surface are associated with flares and mass ejections of energy from the sun's corona. These eruptions are typically near areas known as "sunspots", which appear dark through telescopes because they have a lower surface temperature than that of their surrounding surface. "This is good news for the researchers of space weather, because our information will enable scientists in industry and government to better understand and predict the likelihood of flares and prepare for and mitigate adverse consequences," says Wang. Wang is scheduled to present the findings this week at the American Astronomical Society's solar physics division meeting at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. Solar flares are violent eruptions that send electromagnetic radiation into space, ultimately causing problems on earth by disrupting the atmosphere. The flare-ups can interfere with satellite-based communications and television and radio broadcasts. That can mean disruptions in cell-phone service and flight communications. Wang and colleagues produced images showing how the sun's surface changed during an after a flare. The research should enable scientists to predict when solar flares will erupt, how disruptive they will be, and how long they will last, he says. Crucial to producing the images was a new imaging system known as a "digital magnetograph system" built by NJIT doctoral student Tom Spirock. The team's work was also supported by grants from NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the Office of Naval Research.

A $440,000 research grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Early Career Development Award Program has been awarded to a professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) to build the brains of a solar telescope.