Posted by Eleanor Imster in Human World | Sun|1 month ago
The US Postal Service announced that they’ll be releasing a series of stamps highlighting images of the sun captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.
Posted by Deborah Byrd in Sun | Today's Image|1 month ago
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory has been continuously observing the sun since its launch in 2010. From its vantage point above Earth, it sees the moon pass in front of the sun 2 to 5 times a year.
Solar Cycle 25 is here, and that means – in the years ahead – more solar flares and more coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. People sometimes use the words interchangeably, but they’re not the same thing. Here’s the difference.
Posted by Deborah Byrd in Earth | Sun|2 months ago
Sun pillars, or light pillars, are shafts of light extending from the sun or other bright light sources under the right atmospheric conditions. They’re caused by ice crystals drifting in Earth’s air.
A study of oppositely charged magnetic field bands, moving in the sun’s northern and southern hemispheres, suggests the coming sunspot cycle – Cycle 25 – will be a particularly strong one. This result contradicts an earlier expert forecast, suggesting a weak Cycle 25.
This video, merging more than 2 decades of footage from SOHO cameras, captures thousands of sunspots, flares, and coronal mass ejections breaking out from the sun.
The sun is becoming active again as it enters Solar Cycle 25. This week, scientists’ predictions of sunspots were proven via photos from astronomers around the world. Giant sunspot AR2786 can be viewed with proper filters and may create strong flares that reach Earth.
Posted by Graham Jones in Human World | Space | Sun|5 months ago
Solar storms pose risks for society, but more accurate space weather forecasts appear to be coming soon. A team of researchers in Japan has developed a physics-based method for predicting large solar flares, including powerful and potentially dangerous X-flares.
The sun has passed from one of its 11-year activity cycles into another. Scientists predict the new cycle – Solar Cycle 25 – will be about as calm as the previous one.
Posted by Deborah Byrd in Human World | Space | Sun|9 months ago
Solar Orbiter swept as close as 50 million miles (77 million km) to our sun’s surface. Now scientists are at work testing the spacecraft’s 10 science instruments, including the 6 telescopes on-board. New images, to be released in mid-July, will be the closest of the sun ever captured.
Posted by Deborah Byrd in Space | Sun | Today's Image|1 year ago
ESA’s sun-exploring Solar Orbiter will be the first spacecraft ever to fly over the sun’s poles. It’ll study the origin of the solar wind, which has the potential to affect earthly technologies.
Posted by Deborah Byrd in Human World | Space | Sun|1 year ago
Solar Orbiter – aka SolO – will take the first direct images of the sun’s poles. Following Sunday’s launch, the spacecraft will take a loopy path through the inner solar system, borrowing thrust from the powerful gravitational fields of Earth and Venus.
The clarity of these images from the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii is thanks to the telescope’s 4-meter mirror, the world’s largest for a solar telescope. “It’s the biggest jump in our ability to study the sun since Galileo’s time,” a scientist said.
Activity on the sun affects Earth’s magnetic field. It can cause geomagnetic storms, the same events that create the beautiful aurorae, or northern and southern lights. Are these storms dangerous?
A new kind of magnetic explosion, called forced magnetic reconnection, was seen for the first time in images from NASA’s SDO spacecraft. Learn more in this beautiful video.
Parker Solar Probe – now in its 4th orbit around the sun – can endure heat and radiation like no previous mission. This week, 4 new studies in Nature reveal new insights about the sun’s mysterious corona and solar wind.