Earlier results from SOHO established that the gas of the fast wind leaks through magnetic barriers near the Sun's visible surface. Straight, spoke-like features called plumes have also been seen rising from the solar atmosphere at the polar regions, where much of the fast wind comes from. According to previous ideas, the gas of the fast wind streams out in the gaps between the plumes.

"Not so," says Alan Gabriel of the Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale near Paris, France. Careful observations with SOHO now suggest that most of the fast wind leaves the Sun via the plumes themselves, which are denser than their surroundings. Gabriel and his team tracked gas rising at about 60 kilometres per second to a height of 250,000 kilometres above the Sun's visible surface.

"If this controversial result is right, it will clear up a big misunderstanding," says Bernhard Fleck, ESA's Project Scientist for SOHO. "We need to know how the fast wind is subsequently accelerated to 750 kilometres per second. To find out, we'd better be looking in the right places."

SOHO has also investigated the origin of a slower wind, half the speed of the fast wind, which comes from the Sun's equatorial regions. The gas of the 'slow' wind leaks from triangular features called 'helmets', which are plainly protruding into the Sun's atmosphere during a solar eclipse. Blasts of gas called 'coronal mass ejections' also contribute to the solar wind in the equatorial zone of the Sun.

The ESA/NASA Ulysses spacecraft has twice passed over the poles of the Sun and signalled the relative importance of these fast and slow winds. Its measurements show that the fast wind predominates in the heliosphere, which is a huge bubble blown into interstellar space by the Sun's outpourings, and extending far beyond the outermost planets. In interplanetary space, the fast wind often collides with the slow wind. Like the mass ejections, the collisions create shock waves that agitate the Earth's space environment.

The four satellites of ESA's Cluster mission are now studying the interaction between the solar wind and our planet's defences. The Earth's magnetic field creates a bubble within the heliosphere, but it does not give us perfect protection from Sun's storms. Ulysses, SOHO, and Cluster together provide an extraordinary overview of solar behaviour and its effects, both near and far in the Solar System.

Note to editors

The new solar wind results, obtained with the SUMER instrument on SOHO, are published by A.H. Gabriel, F. Bely-Dubau and P. Lemaire in the Astrophysical Journal, 20 May 2003. SOHO is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

For more information, please contact:

Bernhard Fleck
ESA - SOHO Project Scientist
ESA Space Science Department
Tel: +1 301 286 4098
Fax: +1 301 286 0264
E-mail: bfleck@esa.nascom.nasa.gov

USEFUL LINKS FOR THIS STORY

* More about SOHO
http://sci.esa.int/soho/

* More about Ulysses
http://sci.esa.int/ulysses

* More about Cluster
http://sci.esa.int/cluster/

IMAGE CAPTIONS:

[Image 1: http://sci.esa.int/content/searchimage/searchresult.cfm?aid=14&cid=12&oid=32356&ooid=32357] Polar plumes as seen by SOHO.

[Image 2: http://sci.esa.int/content/searchimage/searchresult.cfm?aid=14&cid=12&oid=32356&ooid=31106] SOHO found fast solar wind coming from our Sun. SOHO is stationed 1.5 million kilometres away from the Earth, directly in line of the Sun. There, it constantly watches the Sun for activity, returning spectacular pictures and data of the storms that rage across its surface. SOHO was launched in 1995 by a NASA Atlas-IIAS/Centaur rocket and was designed to work for three years. It is still working today.

[Image 3: http://sci.esa.int/content/searchimage/searchresult.cfm?aid=14&cid=12&oid=32356&ooid=12435] Ulysses circles the Sun's poles, examining solar wind.