WVUniverse presents: How to Sail the Solar Storms: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Explosive Events at the Sun and Beyond

Who doesn’t like the Northern Lights? The sources of such fascinating phenomena - and of a lot of potential damages to human technologies, including frying satellites and power grids - are the even more fascinating eruptions taking place all over the atmosphere of the Sun and across the interplanetary space. All these explosive events - solar flares, coronal mass ejections, spicules, erupting filaments - have one thing in common: magnetic field lines snap like uncooked spaghetti, releasing huge amounts of energy in a process called magnetic reconnection. In this WVUniverse talk, we will figure out together how to understand magnetic reconnection, and how to model, predict and forecast the most dramatic eruptions of the Sun.

Join us for the first WVUniverse talk of the year! WVUniverse talks are general audience, outreach talks that explore different fields of astronomy like cosmology, instrumentation, astrobiology, planetary science and more. Each talk is designed for all ages. Bring your friends and family and stay for the fun Kahoot quiz for a chance to walk away with a prize.

January 30, 2026
6:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.
WVU Planetarium (in White Hall, take elevator to floor PL to reach the Planetarium dome)
135 Willey Street
Morgantown, WV 26506