The Earth's magnetic field extends from pole to pole and is strongly affected by solar wind from the sun. This "wind" is a stream of charged particles constantly ejected from the sun's surface. Occasional sudden flashes of ...
General Physics
Aug 29, 2018
1
67
Using Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, PSI Associate Research Scientist Elizabeth A. Jensen's team observed radio signals from the MESSENGER spacecraft and discovered that solar eruptions known to cause communication ...
Space Exploration
Aug 27, 2018
56
75
The first ever spacecraft to fly directly toward the Sun is poised to blast off Saturday, on a mission to plunge into our star's sizzling atmosphere and unlock the mysteries of the center of the solar system.
Space Exploration
Aug 11, 2018
1
479
Something mysterious is going on at the Sun. In defiance of all logic, its atmosphere gets much, much hotter the farther it stretches from the Sun's blazing surface.
Space Exploration
Jul 27, 2018
67
199
The Sun's corona, invisible to the human eye except when it appears briefly as a fiery halo of plasma during a solar eclipse, remains a puzzle even to scientists who study it closely. Located 1,300 miles from the star's surface, ...
Space Exploration
May 8, 2018
15
242
The more solar observatories, the merrier: Scientists have developed new models to see how shocks associated with coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, propagate from the Sun—an effort made possible only by combining data from ...
Space Exploration
Mar 9, 2018
1
219
Space physicists at University of Wisconsin-Madison have just released unprecedented detail on a bizarre phenomenon that powers the northern lights, solar flares and coronal mass ejections (the biggest explosions in our solar ...
General Physics
Jan 30, 2018
16
545
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory came across an oddity that the spacecraft has rarely observed before: a dark filament encircling an active region (Oct. 29-31, 2017). Solar filaments are clouds of charged particles that ...
Space Exploration
Nov 9, 2017
3
167
September 2017 saw a spate of solar activity, with the Sun emitting 27 M-class and four X-class flares and releasing several powerful coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, between Sept. 6-10. Solar flares are powerful bursts of ...
Space Exploration
Oct 27, 2017
1
250
There are currently about fifty known exoplanets with diameters that range from Mars-sized to several times the Earth's and that also reside within their stars' habitable zone – the orbital range within which their surface ...
Astronomy
Oct 23, 2017
16
40
