Tag Archive for 'Sun'

This illustration depicts the asteroid Phaethon being heated by the Sun. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / IPAC.

Sodium Vapor Outgassing Explains Asteroid Phaethon’s Cometlike Activity

Aug 17, 2021 by News Staff

The 5.8-km-wide (3.6-mile) near-Earth asteroid Phaethon, which is the source of the annual Geminid meteor shower, brightens as it gets close to the Sun....

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe approaching the Sun. Image credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio.

Parker Solar Probe Reveals New Insights on Electric Field of the Sun

Jul 14, 2021 by News Staff

Using data from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, a team of solar physicists calculated the distribution of electrons within the electric field of the Sun;...

An artist’s impression of a ‘Snowball Earth.’ Image credit: NASA.

Changes in Our Planet’s Orbit May Have Allowed Life to Survive during ‘Snowball Earth’ Glaciations

Jul 8, 2021 by News Staff

A team of researchers led by Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Professor Ross Mitchell has studied a succession of rocks laid down when most of Earth’s...

Hubble’s image of the Orion Nebula with proplyd highlights. Image credit: NASA / ESA / M. Robberto, Space Telescope Science Institute & ESA / Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team / L. Ricci, ESO.

Massive Stars near Solar System’s Parent Molecular Cloud Affected Composition of Its Building Blocks

Jul 6, 2021 by News Staff

In 2011, planetary researchers using samples of the solar wind collected by NASA’s Genesis spacecraft found that solar system planetary bodies have a...

Proximity to Sun’s Magnetic Field Determines Composition of Rocky Planets, Study Says

Jul 2, 2021 by News Staff

Terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) are differentiated into three layers: a metallic core, a silicate shell (mantle and crust), and a...

This artist’s impression shows the view from the surface of one of the exoplanets in the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system. Image credit: ESO / M. Kornmesser / Spaceengine.org.

Alien Astronomers around 2,034 Nearby Stars Have Front-Row Seat to See Earth as Transiting Exoplanet

Jun 24, 2021 by News Staff

A team of astronomers from Cornell University and the American Museum of Natural History has identified 1,715 stars within 100 parsecs (326 light-years)...

Solar System and the interstellar medium. Image credit: NASA / IBEX / Adler Planetarium.

IBEX Produces 3D Map of Heliosphere

Jun 15, 2021 by News Staff

Astronomers using NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) satellite have mapped the boundary of the heliosphere, the vast region of space surrounding...

Sketch of the relative positions of NASA’s and ESA’s spacecraft that observed the February 12, 2021 coronal mass ejections; ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft was ‘behind’ the Sun from the perspective of Earth; the Earth was about 12 degrees west of Sun-center as seen from Solar Orbiter; ESA’s Proba-2, which orbits the Earth, and the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), which is located in orbit around the Lagrange point 1, 1.5 million km in front of the Earth towards the Sun, also viewed the coronal mass ejection; NASA’s STEREO-A (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) also caught a glimpse of the event from its viewpoint away from the direct Sun-Earth line; together the spacecraft provide valuable, different perspectives on the same event. Image credit: ESA.

Solar Orbiter Observes Two Huge Eruptions on Sun

May 18, 2021 by News Staff

The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI), the Heliospheric Imager (SoloHI) and the Metis coronagraph onboard the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter captured different...

Illustration of NASA’s Voyager spacecraft showing the antennas used by the Plasma Wave Subsystem and other instruments. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Voyager 1 Detects Plasma Waves in Interstellar Medium

May 12, 2021 by News Staff

Launched in September 1977, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft flew by Jupiter in 1979 and then Saturn in late 1980. In August 2012, it crossed the heliopause...

Venus in real colors, processed from Mariner 10 images. Image credit: Mattias Malmer / NASA.

Parker Solar Probe Detects Natural Radio Emission from Ionosphere of Venus

May 5, 2021 by News Staff

On July 11, 2020, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe made its third flyby of Venus. During 7 min around the closest approach, one of the spacecraft’s scientific...

This composite image shows a Chandra X-ray image of Uranus from 2002 (pink) superimposed on an optical image from the Keck-I Telescope obtained in 2004. Image credit: NASA / CXO / University College London / Dunn et al.

Chandra Detects X-Ray Emission from Uranus

Apr 1, 2021 by News Staff

Uranus, the seventh planet from the Sun, and its ring system appear to mainly produce X-ray emission by scattering solar X-rays, but some may also come...

Computer model of the Antikythera Mechanism’s display: in the center, the dome of the Earth, the phase of the Moon and its position in the Zodiac -- then rings for Mercury, Venus, true Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Date, with ‘little sphere’ markers and smaller markers for oppositions. Scale marks and index letters for the synodic cycles of the planets are inscribed on the planet rings. Surrounding these, the Zodiac and the Egyptian Calendar. The true Sun ring has a ‘little golden sphere’ with ‘pointer.’ When the Moon and Sun pointers coincide, the Moon sphere shows black for New Moon; when the pointers are on opposite sides, the Moon sphere shows white for Full Moon. The Head of the Dragon Hand shows the ascending lunar node; the Tail the descending node. Small triangles on the true Sun ring, near the pointer, show wider and narrower eclipse limits. Eclipses are possible if the Dragon Hand is within these limits. When the Moon pointer is before the Head of the Dragon, the Moon is South of the node; after, it is North of the node -- conversely for the descending node. A Date pointer is attached to a narrow date ring, showing the date in the Egyptian Calendar. Image credit: Freeth et al., doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-84310-w.

Scientists Step Closer to Understanding Full Capabilities of Antikythera Mechanism

Mar 15, 2021 by News Staff

A team of researchers from University College London and the Cyprus Institute’s Science and Technology in Archaeology and Culture Research Center has...

Grapes may help protect against damage to the skin caused by solar UV radiation. Image credit: Bru-nO.

Grape Consumption Protects Human Skin from UV-Induced Photodamage

Feb 5, 2021 by News Staff

Polyphenols, a group of natural compounds found in grapes as well as other fruits and vegetables, are key compounds responsible for ultraviolet (UV)-photoprotection,...

This artist’s impression shows the first interstellar asteroid -- 1I/2017 U1 (’Oumuamua). Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO.

Alien Debris Passed through Solar System in 2017, Astronomer Says

Jan 18, 2021 by Natali Anderson

Professor Abraham (Avi) Loeb of Harvard University believes that 1I/2017 U1 ‘Oumuamua, a fast moving, cigar-shaped object of extrasolar origin discovered...

This visualization represents a 3D map of brown dwarfs (red dots) that have been discovered within 65 light-years of the Sun. The Sun, which is not shown, is located at the center of the view. The disk of the Milky Way appears in the background. Other stars close to the Sun appear as variously colored points in the field. Image credit: NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / J. da Silva.

Astronomers Discover 38 New Cool Brown Dwarfs in Solar Neighborhood

Jan 15, 2021 by News Staff

Astronomers and citizen scientists from the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project have announced an unprecedented census of 525 L, T, and Y-type dwarfs within...

Hayabusa-2 image of the asteroid Ryugu as seen from a distance of 3.7 miles. A particularly large crater is visible near the center of the image. Image credit: JAXA / University of Tokyo / Kochi University / Rikkyo University / Nagoya University / Chiba Institute of Technology / Meiji University / University of Aizu / AIST.

Hayabusa-2 Reveals New Details about Asteroid Ryugu

Jan 6, 2021 by Enrico de Lazaro

The ancient parent body of the near-Earth ‘rubble pile’ asteroid Ryugu had likely dried out in some kind of heating event before the asteroid came...

Flaring, active regions of the Sun are highlighted in this image combining observations from several telescopes. High-energy X-rays from NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) are shown in blue; low-energy X-rays from Japan’s Hinode spacecraft are green; and extreme ultraviolet light from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) is yellow and red. All three telescopes captured their solar images around the same time on April 29, 2015. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / GSFC / JAXA.

Source of Sunquakes is Submerged beneath Solar Surface, Study Shows

Jan 5, 2021 by News Staff

Ultra-impulsive acoustic emission from a solar flare recently detected by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) indicated submersion of its source...

This image, taken by the LASCO C2 camera on SOHO, shows comet C/2020 X3 in the bottom left-hand corner. Image credit: NASA / ESA / SOHO.

SOHO Observatory Spots Newly-Discovered Sungrazer Comet

Dec 22, 2020 by News Staff

C/2020 X3, spotted by the NASA/ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), is part of the Kreutz family, a group of comets with related orbits that...

This image of a sunspot was taken on January 28, 2020 by NSF’s Inouye Solar Telescope’s Wave Front Correction context viewer. The image reveals striking details of the sunspot’s structure as seen at the Sun’s surface. The sunspot is sculpted by a convergence of intense magnetic fields and hot gas boiling up from below. This image uses a warm palette of red and orange, but the context viewer took this sunspot image at the wavelength of 530 nm -- in the greenish-yellow part of the visible spectrum. Image credit: NSO / AURA / NSF.

Inouye Solar Telescope Captures Its First Image of Sunspot

Dec 7, 2020 by News Staff

An image of a sunspot captured by NSF’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope clearly shows the potential of the telescope and its set of state-of-the-art...

Data from more than 1.8 billion stars have been used to create this map of the entire sky. It shows the total brightness and color of stars observed by ESA’s Gaia satellite and released as part of Gaia’s Early Data Release 3. Brighter regions represent denser concentrations of bright stars, while darker regions correspond to patches of the sky where fewer and fainter stars are observed. The color of the image is obtained by combining the total amount of light with the amount of blue and red light recorded by Gaia in each patch of the sky. The bright horizontal structure that dominates the image is the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. It is actually a flattened disk seen edge-on that contains most of the Galaxy’s stars. In the middle of the image, the Galactic center appears bright, and thronged with stars. Darker regions across the Galactic plane correspond to foreground clouds of interstellar gas and dust, which absorb the light of more distant stars. Many of these clouds conceal stellar nurseries where new generations of stars are currently being born. Dotted across the image are also many globular and open clusters, as well as entire galaxies beyond our own. The two bright objects in the lower right of the image are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way. Image credit: ESA / Gaia / DPAC / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO / A. Moitinho.

ESA’s Gaia Mission Releases Data on More Than 1.8 Billion Stars

Dec 3, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers from the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium released today the most detailed ever catalogue of Milky Way stars. The new data set,...

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