Solar Orbiter spacecraft captures huge eruption on the sun (video)

The Solar Orbiter spacecraft made a milestone observation in space as it captured a huge solar prominence, or eruption. It’s the largest such event ever observed in a single image along with the full solar disk and will add to the joint NASA-European mission to better understand solar activity, mission officials said in a statement. … Read more

The Sun Has Erupted Non-Stop All Month, And There Are More Giant Flares Coming

The past few weeks or so have been a very busy time for the Sun. Our star has undergone a series of giant eruptions that have sent plasma hurtling through space. Perhaps the most dramatic was a powerful coronal mass ejection and solar flare that erupted from the far side of the Sun on February … Read more

What’s the maximum number of planets that could orbit the sun?

The solar system contains eight planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, all of which circle the sun due to its intense gravitational pull. But is this the maximum number of planets that can orbit the sun? Or is there room for more? Compared with other known planetary systems, the solar system … Read more

An 85-Mile-Wide Comet Is Officially The Largest Comet Ever Observed

The Bernardinelli-Bernstein comet, identified in 2021, is officially the biggest comet ever observed. The new record, reported on the preprint website arXiv and now accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics Letters, bumps the Hale-Bopp comet from the top spot. Hale-Bopp was discovered in 1995 and became visible to the naked eye in 1996; it … Read more

A New Planet Has Just Been Discovered Orbiting The Nearest Star to The Sun

What appears to be a teeny tiny alien world has just been found orbiting the Solar System’s closest stellar neighbor. The exoplanet candidate, named Proxima d, orbits a star named Proxima Centauri: a small, dim red dwarf star just 4.2 light-years from the Sun.   Amazingly, the exoplanet is just a quarter of the mass … Read more

Even Dying Stars Could Give Birth to Brand New Planets, Says Study

When young stars coalesce out of a cloud of molecular hydrogen, a disk of leftover material called a protoplanetary disk surrounds them. This disk is where planets form, and astronomers are getting better at peering into those veiled environments and watching embryonic worlds take shape. But young stars aren’t the only stars with disks of … Read more

Powerful solar flare from recent sun eruption should reach Earth Wednesday

A CME erupted on Jan. 30, 2022 and is set to arrive at Earth on Feb. 2, 2022.  (Image credit: SOHO) A powerful solar flare has been traveling through space and it will arrive at planet Earth Wednesday (Feb. 2).  In the early hours of Saturday morning (Jan. 30), a coronal mass ejection, a powerful … Read more

It’s Official! A New Trojan Asteroid Has Been Discovered Sharing Earth’s Orbit

Earth has officially been joined in its orbit around the Sun by a new trojan asteroid. Named 2020 XL5, this chunk of rock is only the second object of its type ever to have been conclusively identified. Its discovery suggests that perhaps Earth trojans may be more common than we knew, and offers new insights … Read more

Signs of an Unknown Solar ‘Tsunami’ Have Been Discovered Deep Inside Earth’s Ice

Deep beneath the ice in Greenland and Antarctica, researchers have found signs of an enormous solar ‘tsunami‘ that once crashed against Earth’s atmosphere more than 9,000 years ago.   This ancient superstorm was triggered by a wave of hot plasma and magnetism from the Sun, and it is significantly larger than anything we have recorded … Read more

Europe’s sun mission flew through the tail of Comet Leonard

As Comet Leonard bid farewell to Earth and flew past Venus, a sun-studying spacecraft flew through the comet’s long tail, giving humans a new perspective on the icy wanderer. Discovered last January and also known as Comet C/2021 A1, Comet Leonard was perhaps the most spectacular visitor for skywatchers in 2021. The object put on … Read more