If movies about space have taught us anything, it’s that no one can hear you scream. If you get lost in space, nobody’s going to find you. Unless you’re a spacecraft with a direct link to NASA. Then there is hope for you yet.
After more than a week offline, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory—the sun-watching spacecraft responsible for these close-up images of solar flares, fire, and loops—is back. But just what caused it to glitch in the first place?
Reminding us of our own fragile mortality, a large, bright comet just streaked across the sky and straight into our nearest neighboring star. You will absolutely believe what happened next because it has happened to you in a nightmare, admit it.
If a solar flare really took place that close to Earth, it would mean the end of days on our little planet. But seeing that flare erupt right next to us sure does show us just how powerful these things really are.
Turns out, all those movies about spaceships going just a liiiiittle bit off course and crashing into the sun were filthy, filthy lies. The good people over at Minute Physics explain why most of us couldn’t crash into the sun if we tried.
No, the space-based Solar Dynamics Observatory isn’t on the fritz—it was actually instructed to make this flip while snapping pics of the Sun. It might sound like NASA took this thing out for a joy ride, but there’s a very good reason for the evasive maneuver.
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory just released a stunning video showing a pair of magnetic fields as they duel for supremacy on the surface of the sun.
So you missed Mercury transiting the Sun last month and thought you were going to have to wait another three whole years to see the rare astronomical event? Not at all. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Laboratory was busy shooting the entire thing in 4K, and it just released three glorious highlight reels. Even if you did tune…
It always makes for a beautiful video whenever the suns lashes out with a solar flare. Here’s one from earlier this month, you can see how electric its movement are, it just whips up and explodes. The footage was captured in different wavelengths and then color coded so we can see what’s happening in better detail. In…
At first, things could actually be rather beautiful: worldwide auroras! A brighter sun! But then things would rapidly get ugly, with the breakdown of communications, rolling power outages, and a burning away of the ozone.
A team of scientists has created a new, high-resolution model of the complex magnetic activity on the surface of the Sun. The result is as spellbinding as it is terrifying. Gaze into the roiling ball of plasma that supports everything you hold dear, and feel your sanity slip away.
Sometimes there are just no words. Sometimes there is just a tree and a setting Sun and a sky that turns from a bright yellow to a deep orange. The Film Artist made this video, Be Sunset Tree, and it’s just majestic. How the Sun crosses the tree, how the tree seemingly cradles the light, and how the sky looks like…
Tomorrow is the vernal equinox! You might think that it’s simply the mid-point between each solstice, but that’s not exactly correct. Joe Hanson, host of It’s Okay to be Smart, explains.
From our perch here on Earth, the sun seems pretty uniform from day to day. But a closer look in this new magnetic map reveals that it’s teeming with activity—and with some intriguing bright spots.
There’s a solar eclipse today—should you watch it? Yes, but safely! Here’s how, when, and where to watch the solar eclipse. Plus, we’ve got a link to a livefeed that you can watch if you’re not in the eclipse zone.
This is what the sun looks like over the course of a year. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the Sun and all of its fiery grace from January 1, 2015 to January 28, 2016. That beautiful burning orb looks unbelievable in this amount of detail.
It’s taken half a century, but we’re finally getting a handle on our Sun’s complex magnetic field. A new model from NASA captures the strange surface interactions that create dramatic swirls of plasma and coronal mass ejections .If we can better understand the Sun’s magnetic field, we might one day be able to predict…
While we’re wrapping up winter, Antarctica is getting fully into the swing of summer—and there that can mean an entire day of sunlight. Here’s what that looks like.
By studying a nearby sun-like star, astronomers have concluded that the Sun is capable of releasing solar flares a thousand times greater than anything previously recorded. Scientists say the chances of this are quite slim, but warn that such an event would threaten life on Earth.
A rather massive coronal hole was recently spotted on the Sun by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. The region—the size of 50 Earths—is spewing material into space at tremendous speeds. It may look terrifying, but astronomers say it’s nothing to worry about.
