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.

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 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.

Solar Orbiter’s new views are the closest images of the sun taken so far.

A new timelapse from NASA’s SDO Observatory condenses an entire solar cycle into 1 hour.

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.

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.