A daily update by email. Science news, great photos, sky alerts.
Sun news for September 10: Filaments and prominences take center stage as flaring continues at moderate levels. We await a CME and geomagnetic storms.
Landslide-triggered tsunamis due to melting glaciers and permafrost are becoming more common with global warming. Read more about Alaska and Greenland.
Mercury reaches its greatest elongation - greatest distance from the sunrise - on September 5, 2024. Look east at dawn. It'll brighten for the next few weeks.
Venus after sunset will next reach greatest elongation on January 9-10, 2025. Look for a blazingly bright object in the sunset direction in evening twilight.
Sun activity archive for August 2024. A daily record of flaring, big filaments and prominences, and other sorts of activity, on our local star.
The Webb Space Telescope probed eternal sunrises and sunsets on exoplanet WASP-39b. It found differences in the atmospheres.
Earth farthest from sun ... aka aphelion! It happened on July 5. That's despite the fact that it's summer now in the Northern Hemisphere.
Sun activity archive for July 2024. A daily record of flaring, big filaments and prominences, and other sorts of activity, on our local star.
An omega sunset or sunrise is an inferior mirage. It's produced by a layer of warmer and less dense air close to an ocean surface.
Latest sunsets around now for 40 degrees north latitude. Latest sunrises around now for 40 degrees south latitude. Plus, a word about twilight.
The ecliptic is the path the sun takes across our sky. It's the Earth-sun plane, and, more or less, the plane of our solar system.
If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, your earliest sunrises of the year are happening around now. Southern Hemisphere? Your earliest sunsets are around now.
The moment of the Venus superior conjunction - passing between the sun and Earth - in 2024 is at 16 UTC (11 a.m. CDT) today, June 4.
Sun activity archive for June 2024. A daily record of flaring, big filaments and prominences, and other sorts of activity, on our local star.
Crepuscular rays form around twilight when particles in the atmosphere reflect the sun's light beams toward our eyes. See photos of the phenomenon here.
Did you save your eclipse glasses from the April 8 total solar eclipse? If so, grab them to check out giant sunspot region AR3664, now facing Earth!
Sun activity archive for May 2024. A daily record of flaring, big filaments and prominences, and other sorts of activity, on our local star.
Save the Frogs Day - a global amphibian conservation effort - is today, Sunday, April 28, 2024. Amphibian health is an important marker of ecosystem quality.
Watch for the moon in the morning sky - after sunrise - for a few days after full moon. Look west after the sun comes up!
Comet Pons-Brooks makes its closest pass by the sun on April 21. Look for it after sunset in the west; it will soon slip into southern skies.