Barely three months after forecasters announced the beginning of the new solar cycle (cycle 24), the old solar cycle (cycle 23) has returned. In fact, it never left.

Last week, three big sunspots appeared and they are all old cycle spots. Scientists know this because of their magnetic polarity. On March 28th the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) obtained a magnetic map of the sun which shows the north and south magnetic poles of sunspots oriented according to the patterns of solar cycle 23.

What are the signs of spring? They are as familiar as a blooming daffodil, a songbird at dawn, a surprising shaft of warmth from the afternoon sun. And, oh yes, don't forget the aurora borealis. Spring is aurora season.

For reasons not fully understood by scientists, the weeks around the vernal equinox are prone to Northern Lights. Canadians walking their dogs after dinner, Scandinavians popping out to the sauna, Alaskan Huskies on the Iditarod trail -- all they have to do is look up and behold, green curtains of light dancing across the night sky. Spring has arrived!

It's as if we took a trip into space with our best friends, and they turned into mutants and attacked us. Electrons are the best friends we've ever had from the subatomic world. We harness their flow as electricity to power all of modern life -- everything from cell phones and laptops to light bulbs.

In space, however, electrons can turn against us. Boosted to almost the speed of light, "killer electrons" can knock out computers, pierce spacesuits, and damage the tissues of astronauts. New research using NASA's STEREO spacecraft is discovering exactly how this happens.

Ulysses, the mission to study the Sun's poles and the influence of our star on surrounding space is coming to an end.

After more than 17 years in space - almost four times its expected lifetime - the mission is finally succumbing to its harsh environment and is likely to finish sometime in the next month or two.

Scientists are now testing a new method that uses SOHO data to predict, in real-time, the approach and intensity of hazardous solar particles that would threaten astronauts and technology in space.

The method was developed eight months ago by Dr Arik Posner, Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), USA, with collaborators from the University of Kiel in Germany, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, USA and the University of Turku in Finland. It shows how latest results from basic solar physics research can be used rapidly for operational applications, such as in space exploration.

The Ulysses spacecraft made a rare flyby on 14 January of the sun's north pole. Unlike any other spacecraft, Ulysses is able to sample winds at the sun's poles, which are difficult to study from Earth.

Ulysses has flown over the sun's poles three times before, in 1994-95, 2000-01 and 2007. Last week, solar physicists announced the first indications of a new solar cycle. Visiting the pole at this time may lead to new insights about solar activity.

The appearance of a very special solar spot on the sun surface a few days ago, signalled to scientists around the world that a new solar cycle had begun. This solar spot also produced two solar blasts.

Each solar cycle lasts an average of 11.1 years. The new solar cycle, called 'Cycle 24', started on 4 January this year, when SOHO observed an event scientists have been anticipating for about a year.

NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft has followed its twin, Voyager 1, into the solar system's final frontier, a vast region at the edge of our solar system where the solar wind runs up against the thin gas between the stars.

However, Voyager 2 took a different path, entering this region, called the heliosheath, on Aug. 30, 2007. Because Voyager 2 crossed the heliosheath boundary, called the solar wind termination shock, about 16 billion kilometers (10 billion miles) away from Voyager 1 and almost 1.6 billion kilometers (a billion miles) closer to the sun, it confirmed that our solar system is "squashed" or "dented" - that the bubble carved into interstellar space by the solar wind is not perfectly round. Where Voyager 2 made its crossing, the bubble is pushed in closer to the sun by the local interstellar magnetic field.

Images from NASA-funded telescopes aboard a Japanese satellite have shed new light about the sun's magnetic field and the origins of solar wind, which disrupts power grids, satellites and communications on Earth.

Data from the Hinode satellite shows that magnetic waves play a critical role in driving the solar wind into space. The solar wind is a stream of electrically charged gas that is propelled away from the sun in all directions at speeds of almost 1 million miles per hour. Better understanding of the solar wind may lead to more accurate prediction of damaging radiation waves before they reach satellites. Findings by American-led international teams of researchers appear in the Dec. 7 issue of the journal SCIENCE.

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) celebrated its twelfth launch anniversary on 2 December 2007. The satellite has witnessed the Sun change through almost a complete solar cycle - from quiet to stormy, and back again.

The solar cycle normally lasts about 11 years. In late 1996, shortly after its launch, SOHO was able to observe the last minimum of the 11-year activity cycle. The minimum was followed by a rapid rise in solar activity, peaking 2001 and 2002.

NASA has stepped up to the challenge of an NRC study by defining a four-spacecraft constellation that will probe known magnetic reconnection sites with the highest-resolution charged particle, electric field and magnetic field measurements yet performed in space.

Magnetic fields are continuously being generated and annihilated throughout the universe. The generation takes place by the motions of conductive fluids in the interiors of planets, the Sun and stars.

Using a computer model simulation, Haruichi Washimi, a physicist at UC Riverside, has predicted when the interplanetary spacecraft Voyager 2 will cross the "termination shock," the spherical shell around the solar system that marks where the solar wind slows down to subsonic speed.

According to Washimi's simulations, the spacecraft is set to cross the termination shock in late 2007-early 2008. To make this forecast, Washimi and his colleagues used data from Voyager 2 and performed a global "magneto-hydrodynamic simulation" - a method that allows for precise and quantitative predictions of geomagnetic disturbances caused by solar activities.

With Cluster data, scientists now have evidence that solar outbursts can generate conditions that slingshot matter in Earth's magnetic environment to speeds higher than 1000 km/s.

The outburst responsible in a recent study was a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), a massive cloud of charged particles coming from the Sun. The study compares observations from the four satellites of the ESA's Cluster mission with global simulations of the magnetosphere.

ESA's Science Programme Committee unanimously approved a proposal to continue operating the highly successful Ulysses spacecraft until March 2009. This latest extension, for a period of 12 months, is the fourth in the history of the joint ESA-NASA mission.

In addition to pursuing its long-term goal of exploring the heliosphere in four dimensions - 3 spatial dimensions and time - Ulysses is a key member of the Heliospheric Network, the international fleet of spacecraft presently operating at many different locations in the heliosphere and beyond. In this context, joint measurements with the twin STEREO probes that were launched in October 2006 are high on the list of priorities for the coming months.

Despite a resounding crunch into the Utah desert floor in 2004, scientists have mined a treasure trove of data from the Genesis mission.

By picking through the debris and analyzing the less-damaged samples, researchers including Los Alamos National Laboratory's Roger Wiens have found just what they were looking for: clues to the evolution of the solar system and the Earth's atmosphere.