Groundbreaking New Images Peel Away Layers of a Stellar Mystery
An international team of scientists, including three researchers from New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), has shed new light on one of the central mysteries…
Sun
Solar Spicules Launched by Magnetic Reconnection on Sun’s Surface
New observations of solar spicules, ubiquitous jet-like plasma features that punctuate the Sun’s atmosphere, suggest they are generated by the energy released as the two…
Mercury Transit: Important Details for Observing Stunning Phenomenon
Today, November 11, 2019, we’re in for a rare treat, as the innermost planet, Mercury, passes directly in front of the Sun for a few…
Watch Mercury Glide Across the Sun in Rare Transit
A rare transit of Mercury will take place on Monday, November 11, 2019, when the smallest planet in our Solar System will pass directly between…
The Real Facts on NASA’s Flaming Jack-o’-Lantern Image
Recently, this image from NASA showing the sun looking quite a bit like a flaming Jack-o’-Lantern has been all over mainstream news outlets. Although the…
Scientists Thought It Was Physically Impossible: Magnetic Instability Discovered in Sun’s Rotating Plasma
An overlooked piece of the solar dynamo puzzle: Researchers demonstrate particular form of magnetic instability. A previously unobserved mechanism is at work in the Sun’s…
The Sun Won’t Become a Black Hole – Here’s Why
Will the Sun become a black hole? No, it’s too small for that! The Sun would need to be about 20 times more massive to…
Solar Phenomena Including Sunspots Explained by Plasma Flow Near Sun’s Surface
For 400 years people have tracked sunspots, the dark patches that appear for weeks at a time on the sun’s surface. They have observed but…
Moon Contains Clues to the Ancient Mysteries of the Sun
The Sun is why we’re here. It’s also why Martians or Venusians are not. When the Sun was just a baby four billion years ago,…
Solar Coronal Rain on Our Sun Links Two Mysteries
For five months in mid 2017, Emily Mason did the same thing every day. Arriving to her office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in…
Scientists Discover Solar Tadpole-Like Jets Coming Out Of The Sun
Scientists have discovered tadpole-shaped jets coming out of regions with intense magnetic fields on the Sun. Unlike those living on Earth, these “tadpoles” — formally…
Scientists Show Sun’s Magnetic Waves Behave Differently Than Believed
New research undertaken at Northumbria University shows that the Sun’s magnetic waves behave differently than currently believed. Their findings have been reported in the latest…
SDO Image Shows Our Sun in Different Wavelengths
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory views our Sun in ten different wavelengths because each wavelength reveals different solar features. This September 21, 2018, view of the Sun uses…
FOXSI Mission Will View The Sun With X-Ray Vision
Without special instrumentation, the Sun looks calm and inert. But beneath that placid façade are countless miniature explosions called nanoflares. These small but intense eruptions…
New Research Suggests Solar Eruptions Have Interesting Shapes After All
As the saying goes, everything old is new again. While the common phrase often refers to fashion, design, or technology, scientists at the University of…
SWEAP Investigation Will Directly Measure Ionized Gas in the Solar Atmosphere
When NASA’s Parker Solar Probe launches into space from the Kennedy Space Center, it will begin its journey to the Sun, our nearest star. The…
Ancient Blue Crystals Reveal What the Early Sun Was Like
Our Sun’s beginnings are a mystery. It burst into being 4.6 billion years ago, about 50 million years before the Earth formed. Since the Sun…
Parker Solar Probe Will Face Several-Million-Degree Fahrenheit Temperatures
This summer, humanity embarks on its first mission to touch the Sun: A spacecraft will be launched into the Sun’s outer atmosphere. Facing several-million-degree Fahrenheit…