Organization profile

The Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research (CSTR) is an international leader in ground- and space-based solar and terrestrial physics, with a particular interest in understanding the effects of the Sun on the geospace environment. CSTR operates the Big Bear Solar Observatory and Owens Valley Solar Array in California, the Jeffer Observatory at Jenny Jump State Forrest in New Jersey and the Automated Geophysical Observatories distributed across the Antarctic ice shelf. The Center also manages a large number of instruments at South Pole Station, McMurdo Station and across South America and the United States. CSTR is one of the principal investigators in NASA’s Van Allen Probes mission, which explores the radiation and plasma environment around Earth, and houses the Space Weather Research Laboratory, which conducts scientific research in the area of space weather with the mission to understand and forecast the magnetic activity of the Sun and its impact on Earth. Such instrumentation and data resources enable scientific studies ranging from the Sun’s surface to its extended atmosphere, and into Earth’s atmosphere.