Learning About the Sun in Alaska's Far North

Alaska’s extreme seasonal swings make it an unusual but valuable place to study the Sun and space weather. The state is the only U.S. one that lies partly within the Arctic Circle, where the difference between summer and winter daylight grows with latitude and can produce 24 hours of sunlight or darkness.

Sounding rockets provide a low-cost way to gather space science, and the Poker Flat Research Range in interior Alaska is a key site. Poker Flat is the largest land-based rocket research range in the world and the only high-latitude rocket range in the United States, positioned inside the auroral oval so rockets can reach hundreds of miles over the sparsely populated tundra to study auroras and other heliospheric phenomena.

NASA’s FOXSI campaign—designed as the agency’s first dedicated solar flare research effort—has used Poker Flat for solar observations.

United States, Poker Flat, Alaska

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