Danielle Pahud Colloquium

Fri. Mar. 10 12:30 PM - Fri. Mar. 10 01:20 PM
Location: 3M69

Danielle Pahud, Instructor, Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Manitoba

Stellar Winds : A Sun-centered historical perspective

For thousands of years, the Sun was thought to be a perfect, unchanging orb. Observations of comet tails, eclipses, sunspots, and the northern lights each suggested that this was not the case. Together, these puzzle pieces led to the discovery of an omnipresent, variable solar wind. Each of these observations reveal insight about the Sun, the typical structure of the solar wind, and its evolution. These in turn inform our knowledge of winds around other stars. I will describe structures in the solar wind that are of particular interest to us on Earth, Coronal Mass Ejections and Corotating Interaction Regions, and how Earth's proximity to our Sun affects our every day lives. I'll end with a discussion on how our knowledge of the solar wind informs the potential habitability of planets around other stars.