Book contents
4 - The Sun and its atmosphere
Summary
The Sun plays a central role in virtually all of space physics, and is itself a rich plasma physics laboratory for everything from nuclear fusion to shocks, plasma waves, and particle acceleration. In this chapter we focus on general attributes of the Sun that control planetary upper atmospheres and their ionospheres, and the interplanetary medium with all its phenomena. In particular, the many processes in the interplanetary medium that control the dynamics of planetary magnetospheres have their origins at the Sun.
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- Space PhysicsAn Introduction, pp. 94 - 144Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016