https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. The sun is not only our closest stellar neighbor, it's also the star we understand the most. As we've observed it over the centuries, we've learned that the sun is not an immortal constant. It goes through active and quiet cycles, it has become warmer over geologic time scales, and it occasionally batters Earth with solar flares. We've generally thought that other main sequence stars behave in much the same way, but when it comes to solar flares, that isn't always true. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-solar-flares-stellar-differently.html Astronomy Mon, 05 Jan 2026 08:43:23 EST news686824981 Scientists have captured an exceptionally rare, high-resolution view of an active region that produced two powerful X-class solar flares—an achievement rarely possible from Earth. Using the GREGOR solar telescope in Tenerife, researchers recorded the explosive activity of the sun's most energetic sunspot group of 2025, revealing twisted magnetic structures and the early stages of flare ignition with unprecedented detail. The flares triggered fast coronal mass ejections that lit up Earth's skies with vivid auroras in the nights that followed. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-rare-high-resolution-flare-prolific.html Astronomy Fri, 28 Nov 2025 12:31:26 EST news683555461 Since ancient times, the sun has been known as a giver of light and heat, a source of life. Plants are coaxed from the Earth by its rays, bringing spring, followed by bountiful harvests. https://phys.org/news/2024-11-sunspots-solar-flares-sun-magnetism.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 14 Nov 2024 12:30:02 EST news650809494 Using modern techniques, researchers have re-examined Johannes Kepler's half-forgotten sunspot drawings and revealed previously-hidden information about the solar cycles before the grand solar minimum. https://phys.org/news/2024-07-kepler-sunspot-solar-mysteries-years.html Planetary Sciences Fri, 26 Jul 2024 09:07:04 EDT news641203621 Scientists studying sunspots have found important clues about magnetic features in their decay that will help understand the evolution and real origin of these mysterious magnetic phenomena. The findings are published in The Astrophysical Journal. https://phys.org/news/2024-01-decay-sunspot-pair-elucidates-properties.html Astronomy Tue, 30 Jan 2024 12:00:01 EST news625835077 Solar rotation, a fundamental characteristic of the sun, is second in importance only to the Schwabe cycle, an approximately 11-year cycle. The energy and matter of the solar atmosphere originate from the interior of the sun and drive the rotation of the solar atmosphere from the inside out. https://phys.org/news/2023-12-revealing-secrets-sun-magnetic-coronal.html Astronomy Wed, 13 Dec 2023 10:16:03 EST news621684961 Researchers at the Center of Excellence in Space Sciences India at IISER Kolkata have discovered a new relationship between the sun's magnetic field and its sunspot cycle, that can help predict when the peak in solar activity will occur. Their work indicates that the maximum intensity of solar cycle 25, the ongoing sunspot cycle, is imminent and likely to occur within a year. The new research appears in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters. https://phys.org/news/2023-11-solar-peak-year.html Astronomy Tue, 28 Nov 2023 14:51:03 EST news620405461 Sunspots change in number depending on how much magnetic activity the solar dynamo generates. But there's not total chaos: These changes occur in a cycle, which lasts about 11 years on average. The sun also experiences extended periods of low activity that can last for decades, called grand minima. The Maunder minimum, which occurred between 1645 and 1715, is often viewed as an archetypal example of the sun's behavior during these abnormal periods. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-aurora-reveal-shortened-solar-maunder.html Astronomy Tue, 10 Oct 2023 16:15:02 EDT news616173301 In 1859, the Carrington Event, the most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history, created spectacular auroral displays around the globe, illuminating the night skies so brightly that birds began singing and laborers set off for work, mistakenly believing the sun had risen. Telegraph systems around the world—essential for communication at the time—began to fail as fires sparked and telegraph poles toppled, plunging the "Victorian Internet" into chaos. The cause? A massive solar flare with the energy of 10 billion atomic bombs was spewing electrified gas and subatomic particles toward Earth. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-lessons-sun-solar-safer-future.html Astronomy Tue, 18 Jul 2023 14:04:04 EDT news608907841 Scientists from Skoltech and their colleagues from the University of Graz & the Kanzelhöhe Observatory (Austria), Hvar Observatory (Croatia), and the Belgian Solar-Terrestrial Center of Excellence—SILSO, Royal Observatory of Belgium presented a new method to predict the strength of the 11-year solar cycle. The results are important for anticipating and mitigating space weather effects on astronauts, pilots and modern technological systems both in space and on Earth. The study will be published in Astronomy & Astrophysics. https://phys.org/news/2022-07-method-year-solar-strength.html Astronomy Fri, 01 Jul 2022 11:26:26 EDT news575893578 A sunspot pointing toward Earth has the potential to cause solar flares, but experts told USA TODAY it's far from unusual and eased concerns over how flares would affect the Blue Planet. https://phys.org/news/2022-06-panic-sunspot-potential-solar-flares.html Astronomy Wed, 22 Jun 2022 13:40:43 EDT news575124041 It's a fascinating thought to consider. https://phys.org/news/2021-04-galileo-sunspot-modern-deep-ai.html Space Exploration Thu, 15 Apr 2021 08:29:13 EDT news537694149 In direct contradiction to the official forecast, a team of scientists led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is predicting that the Sunspot Cycle that started this fall could be one of the strongest since record-keeping began. https://phys.org/news/2020-12-sunspot-strongest.html Space Exploration Mon, 07 Dec 2020 16:32:04 EST news526581120 The sun has entered its 25th solar cycle and is about to wake up. For the last few years our star has been pretty sleepy, with few sunspots, bright flares or massive ejections of magnetized plasma emanating from its surface. This quiet period is known as the solar minimum, but things are starting to heat up again. https://phys.org/news/2020-10-solar-sun.html Astronomy Fri, 30 Oct 2020 09:40:01 EDT news523268792 Every morning, astronomer Steve Padilla takes a short walk from his home to the base of a tower that soars 150 feet above the ground. Tucked in the San Gabriel Mountains, about an hour's drive north from Los Angeles, the Mount Wilson Observatory has long been a home for space science—it's Padilla's home too, one of the perks to his work as Mount Wilson's sun observer. Mount Wilson has several solar system sentinels; the telescope perched at the top of this tower keeps constant watch on the sun. Observers study the sun closely, so we can better understand the life and activity of our star. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-scientists-world-track-solar.html Astronomy Wed, 16 Sep 2020 06:59:42 EDT news519458377 On May 29, 2020, a family of sunspots—dark spots that freckle the face of the sun, representing areas of complex magnetic fields—sported the biggest solar flare since October 2017. Although the sunspots are not yet visible (they will soon rotate into view over the left limb of the sun), NASA spacecraft spotted the flares high above them. https://phys.org/news/2020-06-sunspots-potentially-herald-solar.html Astronomy Mon, 01 Jun 2020 09:33:23 EDT news510222798 The past decade (2010-2019) was the hottest on record and five of the top 10 warmest single years have all occurred since 2015, according to reports released by the UK Met Office and the World Meteorological Organisation. https://phys.org/news/2020-01-graphs-blame-climate-solar.html Earth Sciences Fri, 24 Jan 2020 09:50:04 EST news499081221 In a pair of new papers, scientists paint a picture of how solar cycles suddenly die, potentially causing tsunamis of plasma to race through the Sun's interior and trigger the birth of the next sunspot cycle only a few short weeks later. https://phys.org/news/2019-07-terminators-sun-trigger-plasma-tsunamis.html Space Exploration Wed, 24 Jul 2019 12:34:21 EDT news483190446 On Sep. 1, 1859, solar astronomer Richard Carrington witnessed sunspots that suddenly and briefly flashed brightly before they disappeared. Just before dawn the next day, auroras erupted over most of the Earth, reaching as far south as the Caribbean and Hawaii while southern lights were seen as far north as Chile. The event produced not only a visible light show in areas where they do not typically appear, but it also sent telegraph systems around the world haywire. https://phys.org/news/2019-07-solar-weather-real-material-effects.html Space Exploration Thu, 11 Jul 2019 09:10:33 EDT news482053106 Scientists charged with predicting the sun's activity for the next 11-year solar cycle say that it's likely to be weak, much like the current one. The current solar cycle, Cycle 24, is declining and predicted to reach solar minimum—the period when the sun is least active—late in 2019 or 2020. https://phys.org/news/2019-04-scientists-sun-weak-solar.html Space Exploration Mon, 08 Apr 2019 08:43:04 EDT news473931779 The sun's activity influences environmental conditions in space adversely affecting satellites and space-based technologies such as telecommunications and navigational networks. The sun is also the primary natural source of energy for the Earth's climate. The sun's activity level changes but predicting these changes has been challenging. Now a team of two scientists from the Center of Excellence in Space Sciences India at IISER Kolkata has come out with a prediction for the upcoming sunspot cycle which reveals the expected conditions in space over the next decade. Their research work appears today in the journal Nature Communications. https://phys.org/news/2018-12-scientists-imminent-sun-cooling-climate.html Earth Sciences Thu, 06 Dec 2018 08:53:35 EST news463308808 The sun's activity waxes and wanes periodically and holds sway over our space environment. Sunspots, strongly magnetized blotches on the solar surface, sometimes release fierce storms in space that severely impact our satellite based communication and navigational systems and occasionally, render satellites useless. However, a complete understanding of all aspects of the sunspot activity cycle remains elusive. One of its curious features is the long observed lopsided activity of its two hemispheres. Sometimes, the northern hemisphere becomes more active, sometime the south, with no apparent way to predict when this might happen. https://phys.org/news/2018-07-plasma-jets-sun-unequal-hemispheres.html Astronomy Fri, 13 Jul 2018 08:28:58 EDT news450689325 Using more than a half-century of observations, Japanese astronomers have discovered that the microwaves coming from the sun at the minimums of the past five solar cycles have been the same each time, despite large differences in the maximums of the cycles. https://phys.org/news/2017-11-solar-minimum-surprisingly-constant.html Space Exploration Fri, 17 Nov 2017 06:37:02 EST news430123010 Few people have heard of Hisako Koyama, but the dedicated female solar observer, born in Tokyo in 1916, created one of the most important sunspot records of the past 400 years, according to new research. https://phys.org/news/2017-10-highlights-hidden-figure-sun-watchers.html Space Exploration Mon, 02 Oct 2017 16:09:12 EDT news426179340 (Phys.org)—A pair of researchers affiliated with the Natural History Museum in Chemnitz and Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg, both in Germany, has found evidence in ancient tree rings of a solar sunspot cycle millions of years ago similar to the one observed in more modern times. In their paper published in the journal Geology, Ludwig Luthardt and Ronny Rößler describe how they gathered an assortment of petrified tree samples from a region in Germany and used them to count sunspot cycles. https://phys.org/news/2017-01-ancient-tree-sunspot-ongoing-million.html Earth Sciences Fri, 20 Jan 2017 08:50:01 EST news404120616 You can be thankful that we bask in the glow of a relatively placid star. Currently about halfway along its 10 billion year career on the Main Sequence, our sun fuses hydrogen into helium in a battle against gravitational collapse. This balancing act produces energy via the proton-proton chain process, which in turn, fuels the drama of life on Earth. https://phys.org/news/2015-03-solar.html Space Exploration Mon, 30 Mar 2015 08:00:02 EDT news346920501 In the latter half of October, huge sunspots were observed on the surface of the Sun. These sunspots appeared at the east limb of the Sun on Oct. 16, and moved to the west as the Sun rotated. They rotated out of view after Oct. 30. On Oct. 26, the total area of these sunspots became almost 66 times larger than the Earth's cross section. This was the largest sunspot area in this solar cycle, and the largest observed in the last 24 years (since Nov. 18, 1990). In the middle of November, these sunspots appeared again at the east limb, as the Sun's rotation brought them back into view. https://phys.org/news/2014-11-huge-sunspots-magnetic-hinode.html Space Exploration Thu, 27 Nov 2014 08:00:36 EST news336297620 Approximately every 11 years, the sun undergoes a complete personality change from quiet and calm to violently active. The height of the sun's activity, known as solar maximum, is a time of numerous sunspots, punctuated with profound eruptions that send radiation and solar particles out into the far reaches of space. https://phys.org/news/2014-09-clues-solar.html Space Exploration Wed, 03 Sep 2014 17:28:50 EDT news328984112 Over the past few months night sky watchers in the southern parts of Australia have been presented with lots of beautiful displays of the Aurora Australis or Southern Lights. https://phys.org/news/2014-07-southern-night-sky.html Space Exploration Mon, 07 Jul 2014 09:22:54 EDT news323943754 The surface of the sun has been surprisingly calm of late—with fewer sunspots than anytime in in the last century—prompting curious scientists to wonder just what it might mean here on Earth. https://phys.org/news/2013-11-calm-solar-prompts-impact-earth.html Space Exploration Sun, 24 Nov 2013 05:06:23 EST news304491944