As solar wind blows, our heliosphere balloons

What happens when the solar wind suddenly starts to blow significantly harder? According to two recent studies, the boundaries of our entire solar system balloon outward—and an analysis of particles rebounding off of its ...

The space weather forecast for Proxima Centauri B

Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Earth (only 4.28 light-years away) is getting a lot of attention these days. It hosts a planet, Proxima Cen b, whose mass is about 1.3 Earth-mass (though it could be larger, depending ...

Coming to a sky near you: Comet SWAN at its best

Comet C/2020 F8 (SWAN), perhaps the brightest comet we will see this year, is at its best from now until mid-June. It should be visible in from the UK in the northwestern sky after sunset, close to the horizon.

A new state of Venus's ionosphere

Observations from NASA's Pioneer Venus orbiter, which reached Venus in 1978, suggested that Venus's ionosphere had two states: a magnetized state with a large- scale horizontal magnetic field and an unmagnetized state with ...

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