Want to save all the calories from Mother’s Day brunch? You may still be able to “sweeten” the holiday with a view of the ramped-up northern lights again tonight (May 12)! Plasma from a powerful solar eruption called a coronal mass ejection (CME) slammed into Earth on Friday (May 10), sparking an intense geomagnetic storm. One of the effects was a supercharged aurora, which provided skywatchers in much of the U.S. and other regions around the world with absolutely mesmerizing views of the northern lights. And the show could continue…
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Our solar system
The stormy sun erupts with its biggest solar flare yet from a massive sunspot — and it’s still crackling (video)
Just when we thought we’d seen the most powerful flares from a colossal sunspot, the sun unleashed its strongest eruption of the weekend yet, triggering a radio blackout even as the star continues to crackle with solar storms. According to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), the dynamic solar flare occurred late Saturday (May 10) from an active sunspot region called AR3664. It peaked at 9:23 p.m. EDT (0123 May 11 GMT), registering as a massive X5.8 class flare, SWPC officials said. As a result, parts of some of the…
Read MoreHouston, we have an encore: ISS virtual reality experience ‘The Infinite’ returns
What do you do for an encore after you have virtually transported thousands of Houstonians to the International Space Station? If you are Felix & Paul Studios, you invite them back to fly to the moon. “Space Explorers: THE INFINITE,” which three years ago made its U.S. premiere in Houston, is now back in Space City for a limited second run. The interactive and immersive experience is again inviting the public to explore a virtual, life-size replica of the International Space Station (ISS), letting them almost feel what it is…
Read MoreWatch monster flare-spewing sunspot grow to be 15 times wider than Earth (video)
If there were a Page Six for what’s going on in space, the sunspot region AR3664 would definitely be one of the biggest “stars” highlighted. Over the past few days, the region has grown to be roughly 124,300 miles (200,000 kilometers) wide — more than 15 times the diameter of Earth. You can see this dramatic evolution in a new time-lapse video, which consists of imagery gathered by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft. And AR3664 is active as well as enormous: It keeps firing off powerful solar flares and coronal mass…
Read MoreCracking! Some binary black holes may roll around each other in egg-shaped orbits
Black hole week reaches its conclusion today (May 10), and there’s no better way to mark the occasion than with some “eggs-traordinary” black hole science. Using gravitational wave measurements by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), based in the U.S., and the Virgo and KAGRA detectors, located in Italy and Japan, respectively, scientists have found that the orbits of some binary black holes could be egg-shaped and exhibit a curious wobble. This research is more than a mere curiosity (and an “eggs-cuse” to crack some bad egg-related puns). The discovery…
Read MoreNASA’s Roman Space Telescope will hunt for the universe’s 1st stars — or their shredded corpses, anyway
NASA’s forthcoming Nancy Grace Roman Telescope could use the grisly death of stars ripped apart by black holes to hunt the universe’s first population of stellar bodies. These early stars, referred to (somewhat confusingly) as Population III (Pop III) stars, were very different from the sun and other stars seen in the cosmos today. That’s because the universe wasn’t yet filled with “metals,” the term astronomers use to describe elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. Pop III stars arose just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang and…
Read More4 large incoming solar bursts could supercharge the auroras this weekend
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) has bumped up this weekend’s geomagnetic storm watch to a level G4, the second highest on the scale. The change comes as solar activity continues at high levels and at least four coronal mass ejections (CMEs) propel toward Earth. According to the NOAA’s SWPC, to have a watch at this level is rare, but it is indeed issued when there’s a high likelihood that several CMEs will reach Earth and create “highly elevated” geomagnetic activity. As we’ve reported lately,…
Read MoreSierra Space’s 1st Dream Chaser space plane aces key tests. Next stop: Florida launch site.
The private Dream Chaser space plane is closer to reaching the final frontier than ever before, with a completed checklist from its environmental testing phase and preparations underway to send it to Florida for final testing ahead of launch. Three months ago, Space.Com gave you up-close looks at Sierra Space’s inaugural Dream Chaser space plane at NASA’s Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Ohio. Since then, the robotic space plane, named “Tenacity,” and its Shooting Star cargo module have successfully completed a series of assessments to prepare them for space’s…
Read MoreNASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Telescope will hunt for tiny black holes left over from the Big Bang
Black hole week is in full swing, and to celebrate, NASA has explained how its next major astronomical instrument, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, will hunt for tiny black holes that date back to the Big Bang. When we think of black holes, we tend to picture vast cosmic monsters like stellar-mass black holes with masses tens to hundreds of times that of the sun. We may even picture supermassive black holes with masses millions (or even billions) of times that of the sun sitting at the hearts of…
Read MoreBoeing’s Starliner rolled off launch pad to replace ‘buzzing’ rocket valve (photo)
Boeing’s Starliner capsule has left the launch pad. Starliner and its rocket ride, a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V, rolled off the pad at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today (May 8), heading to an assembly building at the site so scientists can replace a misbehaving valve in the launcher’s upper stage. The duo could be back soon, however: They’re scheduled to launch no earlier than May 17, kicking off Starliner’s first-ever astronaut mission, a trial run to the International Space Station (ISS) called Crew Flight Test (CFT).…
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