A photo from open sources
The atmosphere of our planet, as many remember from school, consists of the troposphere (whose upper boundary is 20 kilometers), stratosphere (50 kilometers), mesosphere (85 kilometers), thermosphere (690 kilometers) and exosphere (10 thousand kilometers).
However, a new international study led by scientists from the Russian Space Research Institute RAS shows that the atmosphere of our “blue ball” is much more complicated than previously thought, and its borders extend … far beyond the limits of the moon.
The space that is the outer part of the earth’s exosphere, called a geocorona and is a cluster of atoms hydrogen luminous in ultraviolet radiation. Because, that this cloud of atoms is extremely rarefied; the measurement of its boundaries is very difficult. Previous studies have suggested that hydrogen extends to a distance of about 200 thousand kilometers from Earth’s surface, and there the planet’s gravity already overlaps solar wind pressure.
The shape of the geocorona is elongated, like an egg. Solar radiation presses gas to the illuminated half of the planet, making a cloud hydrogen on this side is denser and more compact. On the night side Earth it is more sparse and extended.
A photo from open sources
Domestic scientists and their colleagues from France and Finland recently found that in reality the border geocorona is much further: at least at an altitude of 630 thousand kilometers from the illuminated side of the Earth! It is very curious since the maximum distance he Earth to the moon reaches 406.7 thousands of kilometers. So a natural satellite, with from a technical point of view, never leaves our atmosphere the planet. As a result, the person, in fact, never left her, even when American astronauts flew to Selena.
This conclusion was made by experts on the basis of data, obtained by a highly sensitive solar anisotropy meter SWAN on board the SOHO Observatory, designed to observations of the sun. It is reported that from the Earth to measure the geocoron impossible, since hydrogen atoms are obscured by the lower layers atmosphere, so the device “SOHO”, launched into space in 1995, proved to be indispensable for tracking hydrogen signatures.
The bad news is that the corona of the earth comes out, always interfered and will interfere with astronomical observations, conducted by orbiting telescopes that are even not far from the moon. If ever humanity, like previously planned, wants to install ultraviolet in Selena telescopes, the emission of hydrogen atoms will be significant an obstacle to the correct operation of this optics.
Moon
