Solar astronomy is an interesting field. It's the one type of astronomy that has a real impact on the average human being. During the 80's I was a US Air Force engineer attached to Sacramento Peak National Solar Observatory in southern New Mexico.
http://nsosp.nso.edu/
I helped develop the USAF's global network of then current generation solar observatories. Most people don't know it, but the Air Force has been working on solar weather
forecasting since the early 70's. There is a network of observatories that basically ring the planet, so that (weather permitting) at least one observatory is looking at the sun at all times, with sites in New Mexico, Hawaii, Western Australia, Italy, Puerto Rico and Massachusetts. They actually draw the forecasting staff from Air Force meteorologists.
There are a LOT of ways that solar weather effects our little chunk of space. For example, the Solar Max of 1979 (the sun has an 11 year prime cycle) is what caused the space station Skylab to fall out of orbit. Beta storms and coronal mass ejections also cause a phenomenon called 'Space Charging' where sections of a space craft or satellite that are in direct sunlight can build up an electrical potential of hundreds of thousands of volts compared to the areas in shade. If this discharges through the electronics, it can be disastrous. There have been several commercial and at least one military satellite that was killed this way. There are also the biological dangers from bursts of Gama radiation during a solar flare that astronauts have to worry about. When I was working in the field, the International Space Station wasn't built yet, but there were a LOT of shuttle missions going on. Solar forecasters had
ONE MINUTE to alert NASA if there was a solar event detected that was headed this way. The protocol was to stop any EVA and turn the heat shield of the shuttle toward the sun until the danger was past.
That's not even considering all the effects that solar weather has here on the planet. Geomagnetic storms can cause power grid failure, radio, radar and satellite communication disruption, and aircraft navigation errors. They play holy he11 with VLF radio transmissions that submarines use, and was the cause of at least one nuclear armed submarine incident during the cold war that had the potential of kicking off a HOT war.
All in all it's a fascinating subject, and sobering example of how little we are in the grand scheme of things.
