The big picture

A weather satellite that spies on space storms is giving researchers their
first glimpse of the solar wind as it buffets the bubble of diffuse ionised gas
around the Earth. NASA’s IMAGE spacecraft, which has antennas longer than the
Empire State Building is tall, uses radio pulses to image the plasmasphere. Its
pictures, the first of which were released last week, will let researchers watch
magnetic storms and the aurora borealis from space. “It will revolutionise our
study of the magnetosphere,” says principal investigator James Burch.