PROVO — A research tool built in part by Brigham Young University students helped NASA capture images of electrified gas trapped in Earth's magnetic field, a feat scientists previously were unable to accomplish.

Images published today in the journal Science give the world its first global look at magnetic storms and proves the existence of a suspected but unseen "tail" of electrified gas that flows away from Earth toward the sun.

That's a welcome sight for the team of 10 BYU students and professors who worked for more than two years on three uranium-coated mirrors that acted as lenses for the image-making device that snapped the real-time pictures.

It was one of six instruments on a $153 million craft, which was the first satellite with the mission of studying the Earth's magnetic field.

"I think this is absolutely incredible," said David Balogh, a physics student from Santa Cruz, Calif., who worked on the project. "We're going to have to go over to the library and demand all their copies."

Scientists say the images provide never-seen-before views of the gas inside Earth's force field, an area called the magnetosphere, which is highly affected by solar activity.

According to NASA, this region controls the electrically charged particles near Earth and shields the planet from solar wind. Solar activity can charge the magnetosphere with energy, causing magnetic storms that can damage and disable communication satellites and power grids.

With information gleaned from the images — which NASA says are difficult to "obtain because the magnetosphere extends beyond the moon on the night side of the Earth" —

researchers can gather more information about magnetic storms and when they are most likely to occur.

It took more than two years for BYU students and their advisers to design and create the bowl-shaped mirrors for NASA's extreme-ultraviolet imager.

Each mirror is 5 inches in diameter and is coated with eight layers of uranium and seven layers of silicon. The coating gives the mirrors the ability to absorb some types of light and reflect others.

The mirrors don't reflect visible light. Rather, the mirrors reflect extreme ultraviolet light — 20 times more energetic than visible light — and direct it to an electronic detector that translates it into large-scale pictures scientists can study.

"They told us they needed a mirror that can do the impossible," said Balogh. "So we we did the impossible."

Matt Squires, a member of BYU's team who is from Layton, weekly tracked the satellite's location. The graduate student who eventually wants to teach college classes never thought he'd contribute to research that would appear in Science.

"The feeling is great to know something we worked on is such high quality," Squires said.

Shannon Lunt worked on the project until she left for an LDS mission in 1999. She was completing her volunteer church service in Russia when the satellite was launched, but her parents sent her newspaper clippings and other updates.

"It was fun telling people that something I helped make was in space," said Lunt, who recently returned to the university.

Researchers are analyzing the images. NASA says the tail shape seen in the pictures is believed to be the result of solar wind distorting the shape of the magnetic field.

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David Allred, a BYU physics professor who advised the undergraduates as they worked on the mirrors, said the project helped confirm suspicions about the magnetosphere.

"This is so neat," Allred said. "The tail is one thing nobody had seen before. They always thought it was there, they just hadn't seen it. It's exciting to see the overall picture come into better focus."


For additional information, see NASA's Web site at www.gsfc.nasa.gov/GSFC/SpaceSci/sunearth/imagescience.htm

E-MAIL: jeffh@desnews.com

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