Despite its familiarity, the Sun is a very different presence from the friendly yellow circle in children’s paintings. Our star is a broiling mass of plasma, with its powerful magnetic fields, twisted by its rotation, capable of producing dramatic events of spectacular beauty and power. Using results from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe – the fastest moving human-made object ever – and ESA’s Solar Orbiter, this spectacular lecture took a new look at the mysteries of the Sun, and its effects on the Earth.

https://www.gresham.ac.uk/sites/default/files/transcript/2024-01-14_1258_%20Lintott-T%28final%29.pdf
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1904814/episodes/16495628-touching-the-sun-chris-lintott.mp3?client_source=small_player&download=true

Further reading

The best general introduction to the Sun and its physics is ’15 million degrees’ by Lucie Green, (Penguin, 2016). Professor Lintott drew on it heavily in preparing this lecture.

The Solar Dynamics Observatory provides up to date images of our Sun and its activity: https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/

A new generation of telescopes are getting ready to study the Sun from the ground: see https://est-east.eu/ and https://nso.edu/telescopes/inouye-solar-telescope/ for details of these astonishing instruments.

In the UK space weather forecasts are provided by the Met Office: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/specialist-forecasts/space-weather and more specific forecasts of UK aurora activity are maintained by AuroraWatch: https://aurorawatch.

Professor Chris Lintott

Gresham Professor of Astronomy (2023-)

Professor Chris Lintott is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford, and a Research Fellow at New College.
Having been educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge and University College London, his research now ranges from understanding how galaxies form and evolve, to using machine learning to find the most unusual things in the Universe, to predicting the properties of visiting interstellar asteroids. He is Principal Investigator of the Zooniverse citizen science platform, which provides opportunities for more than two million online volunteers to contribute to scientific research, and which was the topic of his first book, ‘The Crowd and the Cosmos’.

Professor Lintott is best known for presenting the BBC’s long-running Sky at Night program, and as an accomplished lecturer. Away from work, he cooks, suffers through being a fan of Torquay United and Somerset cricket, and spends time with a rescued lurcher, Mr Max, with whom he presents the Dog Stars podcast.

https://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/our-people/lintott
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Lintott
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/4jgzzH6CBH7b5K0qblb73nZ/professor-chris-lintott
Chris Lintott’s Universe chrislintott.net
https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=AwrIeQgkjZ5nCQIAUHUM34lQ;_ylu=Y29sbwNpcjIEcG9zAzIEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Ny/RV=2/RE=1739653668/RO=10/RU=https%3a%2f%2ftwitter.com%2fLintottChris/RK=2/RS=gPQkFfdA2eSKCpCugMwlWhHXalk-
Zooniverse: Real Science Online http://www.zooniverse.org