Tag: The Sun

On Nov. 6, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe passed within 234 miles (376 kilometers) of Venus’ surface. The purpose of this close flyby was to accomplish a gravity-assist maneuver, in which the probe would steal some of Venus‘ momentum to change the spacecraft’s orbit and bring itself even closer to the sun. The Parker Solar Probe had already made several close passes of the sun, but the recent flyby was its closest, coming within about 3.8 million miles (6 million km) of the solar surface. That’s less than nine times the…

The sun erupted with an X2.3-class solar flare this morning, triggering radio blackouts  The X-class solar flare was released from a sunspot region AR 3883 at 8:40 a.m. ET (1340 UTC) on Wednesday morning (Nov. 6). Sunspots are darker, cooler locations on the sun that measure the size of planets and denote where the sun’s strong magnetic field roils up to its surface. It was the sunspot region’s strongest flare yet. According to Spaceweather.com, the wait is on for scientists to receive data from the coronagraph on the joint NASA/European Space…

The first images from a new space-based telescope launched into Earth’s orbit to monitor the sun captured a striking solar storm outburst.  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shared the first images taken by its Compact Coronagraph (CCOR-1), the world’s first operational space-based coronagraph. CCOR-1 is mounted on NOAA’s newest geostationary satellite, GOES-19, which launched into orbit above Earth on June 25.  CCOR-1 began its mission to observe the sun’s corona — the faint outermost layer of the solar atmosphere — on Sept. 19. The powerful solar telescope uses…

You could get more opportunities to see supercharged auroras over the next few months, thanks to our very active sun. Solar activity waxes and wanes on an 11-year cycle. The current cycle, known as Solar Cycle 25, began in December 2019 and is still in its maximum phase, experts say. “Currently, we’re about two years into the maximum period, so we’re anticipating another year or so of maximum phase before we really enter the declining phase, which will lead us back to solar minimum,” Lisa Upton, co-chair of the Solar…

Get ready, aurora chasers: There’s a good chance you’ll be able to catch a nice light show by the end of the week! Forecasters with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) are highlighting the potential for a severe geomagnetic storm on Thursday (Oct. 10) and Friday (Oct. 11). That storm is likely to be in the G4 class — the second-highest level on the SWPC’s geomagnetic storm scale, which takes into account both severity and potential impacts.   Indeed, the SWPC has issued a…

We have some incredibly powerful telescopes that have given us spectacular views of the cosmos and allowed us to look back to the early days of the universe. These observatories, such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), are amazing feats of engineering that have required billions of dollars and decades of work.  But what if we could access an even better telescope that already exists? This wouldn’t be a typical telescope. It wouldn’t even come with a lens. But it would be by far the most powerful telescope we’d…