The study of our Sun
A new solar observing telescope on the exterior of the International Space Station is open for business. NASA recently released images from the newly commissioned Coronal Diagnostic Experiment (CODEX) mounted on the station.
Since 2025, Solar Orbiter is the first Sun-watching spacecraft to ever get a clear look at the Sun's poles. It discovered that at the south pole, the Sun’s magnetic field is currently a mess.  This image shows a magnetic field map from Solar Orbiter's Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) instrument, centred on the Sun's south pole. Blue indicates positive magnetic field, pointing towards the spacecraft, and red indicates negative magnetic field.  There are clear blue and red patches vi...
Solar eclipses are beautiful, but they're a valuable chance to study the Sun's atmosphere as its surface is blocked by the Moon. Now, ESA can generate artificial solar eclipses from space with the Proba-3 mission. The two satellites fly in formation 150 meters apart. One spacecraft occults the Sun, while the other observes the faint solar corona. They can produce a new 6-hour eclipse every 19.6-hour orbit around the Earth. Solar eclipses on demand.
During its commissioning phase, NASA's [*Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere*](https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/punch/) (PUNCH) mission captured high-resolution images of a [Coronal Mass Ejection](https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/phenomena/coronal-mass-ejections) (CME) in greater detail than was previously possible.
The ecliptic is the apparent path that the Sun follows during a year. It's an imaginary line that the planets follow, with some small deviations, around the Sun. Spacecraft find it easier to follow the ecliptic because it's generally more energy efficient. However, the Solar Orbiter isn't on the ecliptic and it's giving us our first up-close looks at the Sun's poles.
When the Sun rages and storms in Earth's direction, it changes our planet's atmosphere. The atmosphere puffs up, meaning satellites in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) meet more resistance. This resistance creates orbital decay, dragging satellites to lower altitudes. One researcher says we can change the design of satellites to decrease their susceptibility.
The Sun's surface has unveiled a new secret: ultra fine magnetic "curtains" that create striking patterns of bright and dark stripes across the solar photosphere. Thanks to groundbreaking observations from the NSF Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii, scientists have captured the sharpest ever images of these previously unseen structures, revealing magnetic field variations at scales as small as 20 kilometres.
Solar storms have the potential to cause catastrophic damage. One that occurred around the end of October 2003 (now called the 2003 Halloween Storm) caused an estimated $27B in damages. That number will only increase as humanity has become more reliant on space-based and electrical infrastructure. However, if we could predict when storms would hit with some accuracy and adjust our use of the technologies that could be affected, we could avoid the worst damage. But, as of now, we don't have such a system that could help predict the types of events that could cause that damage accurately enough. That is where a new Sun activity monitoring system, described in a recent paper by Leonidas Askianakis of the Technical University of Munich, would help.
Studies of the Solar System's dynamics generally treat it in isolation and do not consider the influence a passing star could have on the orbits of the planets over time. According to a recent study by a team of astronomers, stars passing close to the Solar System could result in the loss of planets over the next 5 billion years.
Modern ground-based telescopes rely on adaptive optics (AO) to deliver clear images. By correcting for atmospheric distortion, they give us exceptional pictures of planets, stars, and other celestial objects. Now, a team at the National Solar Observatory is using AO to examine the Sun's corona in unprecedented detail.
Some 13,000 years ago, the Sun emitted a huge belch of radiation that bombarded Earth and left its imprint in ancient tree rings. That solar storm was the most powerful one ever recorded. The next strongest was the 1839 Carrington Event. It was spurred by a huge solar flare that triggered a powerful geomagnetic storm at Earth. The resulting "space weather" disrupted telegraph communications around the world. Today, as we move through this year's "solar maximum", a period of solar activity that occurs every 11 years, scientists want to prepare governments for the effects of severe solar storms.
One year ago, our star erupted with almost apocalyptic force—unleashing the most violent solar assault in two decades. Dubbed the Gannon storm, it wasn't just another solar flare. Multiple coronal mass ejections collided and merged into a single devastating megastorm that slammed into Earth's protective shield. As our magnetosphere buckled the night skies exploded with spectacular auroral displays. The event even reached Mars with images from Curiosity sprinkled with streaks from charged particles.
New Horizons' primary mission is complete. It's already completed its pass through the Pluto system and even stopped by 486958 Arrokoth, a Kuiper belt object on its way out of the solar system. But that doesn't mean it's done providing new scientific insights. A new paper looks at data collected by its ultraviolet spectrograph, which looked at one particular wavelength and helped provide context to a few different questions about the solar system.
The solar gravitation lens (SGL) has much potential as a telescope. This point in space, located about 650 AU away from the Sun, uses fundamental properties of physics to amplify the light from extremely far-away objects, allowing us to see them at a level of detail unachievable anywhere else. However, any SGL mission would face plenty of technical and physical challenges. A new paper by independent researcher Viktor Toth is the latest in a series that discusses those challenges when imaging a far-away exoplanet, and in particular, looks at the difficulties in dealing with potential moving cloud cover. He concludes that using the SGL might not be the most effective way of capturing high-resolution images of an exoplanet, after all.
Space-based solar power (SBSP) has long been the dream of many space enthusiasts and energy economists. However, the reality of economic constraints has long left any practice projects on the ground. There has been plenty of discussion about how to lower the cost of entry to build the kind of space-based solar power satellite described by John Mankins in his books and articles. However, even with the advent of lower costs to orbit thanks to reusable rockets, the economic case for SBSP is still not great simply due to the sheer amount of mass required to get into orbit. Unless we get that mass from somewhere else, with a smaller gravity well. Astrostrom, which means something like "Star current" in German, is an organization based in Switzerland that hopes to make space-based solar power a reality.
The Orion Nebula is a fabulous example of a vast cloud of electrically charged gas which is emitting bright radiation. If the atoms in the gas are cool enough though, they can form giant molecular clouds that obscure light, these are known as dark nebula. A team of astronomers have now found an enormous cloud of molecular hydrogen in our own cosmic backyard just 300 light years away. The cloud contains 3,400 times the mass of the Sun and if we could see it, it would stretch nearly 40 times the width of the Moon across the sky.
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There's no better word for this image of the Sun than Spectacular, which means something impressive, dramatic, or remarkable that creates a spectacle or visual impact. It comes from the Latin word spectaculum, which means a show, spectacle, or public exhibition. Ancient Romans would agree with the word choice if you could somehow show it to them.
If you happen to be enjoying a sunny day, thank the bright surface of the Sun, known as the photosphere. At a piping hot temperature of about 5,800 K, the photosphere provides nearly all the sunlight Earth receives. But for all its glorious radiance, the photosphere isn't the hottest part of the Sun. That award goes to the diffuse outer atmosphere of the Sun known as the corona, which has a temperature of more than a million Kelvin. Parts of the corona can be as hot as 20 million Kelvin, which is hotter than the Sun's core. Of course, the big mystery is why the corona is so hot.
Let's turn the sun into a telescope. In fact, we don't have to do any work – we just have to be in the right spot.
Where did the water we believe is on the Moon come from? Most scientists think they know the answer - from the solar wind. They believed the hydrogen atoms that make up the solar wind bombarded the lunar surface, which is made up primarily of silica. When that hydrogen hits the oxygen atoms in that silica, the oxygen is sometimes released and freed to bond with the incoming hydrogen, which in some cases creates water. But no one has ever attempted to replicate that process to prove its feasibility. A new paper by Li Hsia Yeo and their colleagues at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center describes the first experimental evidence of that reaction.
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