The Sun, we are told, is some 93 million miles from Earth (and equal distance from our Moon)

In the Northern Hemisphere, at Winter Solstace (Dec 22 each year) the Earth is said to be closest to the Sun by some 2.9 million miles.  During winter in the Northern Hemisphere the Earth is said to be tilted on its back at 23.5 degrees, or 1/4 of center, or some 2,200 miles.

So the Sun is nearly 3 million miles closer in the winter, less a couple thousand miles, yet somehow is always colder in the Northern Hemisphere.

*******

Southern Hemisphere climates tend to be slightly milder than those at similar latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, except in the Antarctic which is colder than the Arctic. This is because the Southern Hemisphere has significantly more ocean and much less land; water heats up and cools down more slowly than land.

Antarctica is a continent surrounded by water, while the Arctic is an ocean surrounded by land. Wind and ocean currents around Antarctica isolate the continent from global weather patterns, keeping it cold.

The Antarctic has some 5X snow mass than the Arctic Ocean, yet is in the hottest half of the hemisphere. How can that happen?

*****

how we are told the seasons change.  Tilt of the earth in the north is closer to the sun in summer in N. Hemisphere and tilt is farther away in winter.

The Sun is 93 million miles away as the Earth travels 530 million miles around it each and every year traveling 68,000 mph.

Additionally, the Earth spins at the Ecuador at 1,000 mph each day. In Wintertime in the N. Hemisphere at Winter Solstace daylight is 2-3 hours less per day and 2-3 hours more around Summer Solstace.

Look at the above picture’s. The first is the change in seasons diagram where the tilt of the earth is what we are told changes the seasons. The second light represents the sun shining millions of miles away.

The Earth should be bathed in sunlight evenly, always except for changes at the poles due to the Earth’s tilt.  There should be 12 hours of daylight followed by 12 hours of sunlight according to the change of season reasoning, yet that is not what happens.

This means the Earth must also move horizontally, up and down, oscillating so that sunlight is greater for a season on one half the planet and then move to the other extreme…..but it doesn’t.

hmmm.

****

Moon Temperatures  avg. + 225 to minus – 243 (yet astronots had no problems on the moon surface!)

Since the Moon is relatively equal in distance to the moon ~ How is it possible that the Earth’s temperature variants are less than one half of that on the moon? Can it be solely to the Earth’s atmosphere that keeps us in a goldilocks climate?

*****

How hot is the Sun?

At the core of the sun, gravitational attraction produces immense pressure and temperature, which can reach more than 27 million degrees F (15 million degrees C). Hydrogen atoms get compressed and fuse together, creating helium. This process is called nuclear fusion.

Nuclear fusion produces huge amounts of energy. The energy radiates outward to the sun’s surface, atmosphere and beyond. From the core, energy moves to the radiative zone, where it bounces around for up to 1 million years before moving up to the convective zone, the upper layer of the sun’s interior. The temperature here drops below 3.5 million degrees F (2 million degrees C). (Source)

So the Sun emits temperatures it’ corona at some 1.5 – 2 million degrees F.

The orbits of STEREO, twin satellites is said to be halfway between Earth and Sun or some 46 million miles from the Sun.  With no atmosphere we can assume the satellite gets full heat of the Sun. (Remember, the Moon varies plus and minus over 200 degrees).

So temperatures of the Sun half way to the moon must be in the thousands of degrees, in not tens of thousands, yet the STEREO, made up of solar panels, computers, antennas and plastic is able to function just fine.

STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) is the third mission in NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Probes program (STP). The mission, launched in October 2006, has provided a unique and revolutionary view of the Sun-Earth System. The two nearly identical observatories – one ahead of Earth in its orbit, the other trailing behind – have traced the flow of energy and matter from the Sun to Earth.

The principal benefit of the mission is stereoscopic images of the Sun. In other words, because the satellites are at different points along the Earth’s orbit from the Earth itself, they can photograph parts of the Sun that are not visible from the Earth. This permits NASA scientists to directly monitor the far side of the Sun, instead of inferring the activity on the far side from data that can be gleaned from Earth’s view of the Sun. The STEREO satellites principally monitor the far side for coronal mass ejections—massive bursts of solar wind, solar plasma, and magnetic fields that are sometimes ejected into space.

Sun Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation (SECCHI) has five cameras: an extreme ultraviolet imager (EUVI) and two white-light coronagraphs (COR1 and COR2). These three telescopes are collectively known as the Sun Centered Instrument Package or SCIP, and image the solar disk and the inner and outer corona. Two additional telescopes, heliospheric imagers (called the HI1 and HI2) image the space between Sun and Earth.

Flight computers

STEREO’s onboard computer systems are based on the Integrated Electronics Module (IEM), a device that combines core avionics in a single box. Each single-string spacecraft carries two 25 megahertz RAD6000 CPUs: one for Command/Data-handling, and one for Guidance-and-Control. Both are radiation hardened RAD6000 processors, based on POWER1 CPUs (predecessor of the PowerPC chip found in older Macintoshes). The computers, slow by current personal computer standards, are typical for the radiation requirements needed on the STEREO mission.

 

 Additionally, there are Corona Mass Ejections (CME’s) spewing mass radiation outward in all directions at times.  And the satellites operate just fine. hmmm.

CMEs: a Fundamental Science Challenge

Solar ejections are the most powerful drivers of the Sun-Earth connection. Yet despite their importance, scientists don’t fully understand the origin and evolution of CMEs, nor their structure or extent in interplanetary space. STEREO’s unique stereoscopic images of the structure of CMEs will enable scientists to determine their fundamental nature and origin.

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs), are powerful eruptions that can blow up to 10 billion tons of the Sun’s atmosphere into interplanetary space. Traveling away from the Sun at speeds of approximately one million mph (1.6 million kph), CMEs can create major disturbances in the interplanetary medium and trigger severe magnetic storms when they collide with Earth’s magnetosphere.

Large geomagnetic storms directed towards Earth can damage and even destroy satellites, are extremely hazardous to Astronauts when outside of the protection of the Space Shuttle or the International Space Station performing Extra Vehicular Activities (EVAs), and they have been known to cause electrical power outages.