The term heliophysics means "physics of the Sun" (the prefix "helio" (Attic Gree

k: helios) means Sun), and appears to have been used only in that sense until qu
ite recently. For example, the Debrecen Heliophysical Observatory is an astronom
ical observatory owned and operated by Konkoly Thege Mikls Astronomical Institute
of Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and has provided solar data and images of the
solar surface since the middle of the nineteenth century. In the early times, h
eliophysics was concerned principally with the superficial layers of the star, a
nd was synonymous with what is now more commonly called "solar physics". Usage w
as extended explicitly 1981 to its literal meaning, denoting the physics of the
entire Sun: from center to corona. As such it was a direct translation from the
French hliophysique, which had been introduced to provide a distinction from phys
ique solaire (solar physics). It thus became a subdiscipline of heliology.[1] Ea
rly in the current century the meaning of the term was extended by Dr George Sis
coe of Boston University to include the physics of the heliosphere (the space ar
ound the Sun beyond the corona, in principle out to the shock where the solar wi
nd encounters the interstellar medium, but excluding the planets and other conde
nsed bodies), although Siscoe's view of the discipline appears not to contain mo
st of the true realm of endeavour. The term was subsequently adopted in Siscoe's
restricted sense by the NASA Science Mission Directorate to denote the study of
the heliosphere and the objects that interact with it most notably, but not limit
ed to, planetary atmospheres and magnetospheres, the solar corona, and the inter
stellar medium. Heliophysics combines several other disciplines, including solar
physics, and stellar physics in general, and also several branches of nuclear p
hysics, plasma physics and space physics. The recent extension of heliophysics i
s closely tied to the study of space weather and the phenomena that affect it, a
nd consequently to climatology. To quote Siscoe from a recent conference present
ation