While busily investigating bedrock types on Mars' Mount Sharp and preparing for a drill test, NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has also been looking up frequently to monitor sunspots on the face of the sun that is turned away ...
Space Exploration
Jul 13, 2015
1
76
The famous sunspots on the surface of the sun result from the dynamics of strong magnetic fields, and their numbers are an important indicator of the state of activity on the sun. At the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the ...
Space Exploration
Apr 30, 2015
4
5591
Groundbreaking images of the Sun captured by scientists at NJIT's Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) give a first-ever detailed view of the interior structure of umbrae - the dark patches in the center of sunspots - revealing ...
Space Exploration
Apr 29, 2015
1
743
The launch of Solar Orbiter, an ESA mission to explore the Sun in unprecedented detail, is now planned to take place in October 2018. The launch was previously targeted for July 2017.
Space Exploration
Apr 14, 2015
5
48
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 ...
Space Exploration
Mar 30, 2015
25
36
The Sun is the Earth's principal source of energy and climate driver. Yet sometimes it sends more light to the Earth than other times. Astronomers working with Natalie Krivova at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System ...
Space Exploration
Mar 18, 2015
4
581
Counting sunspots over time helps in knowing the activity of our star but the two indices used by scientists disagree on dates prior to 1885. Now an international team of researchers has tried to standardise the historical ...
Space Exploration
Feb 9, 2015
0
26
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 ...
Space Exploration
Nov 27, 2014
2
0
Magnetic fields emerging from below the surface of the sun influence the solar wind—a stream of particles that blows continuously from the sun's atmosphere through the solar system. Researchers at NASA and its university ...
Space Exploration
Nov 26, 2014
0
0
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 ...
Space Exploration
Sep 3, 2014
20
0
