Artist’s concept shows NASA’s Parker Solar Probe touching the sun. Parker Solar Probe was closest to the sun at 11:53:48 UTC (5:53:48 a.m. CST) December 24, 2024. It came within 3.86 million miles (6.2 million km) of our star. That was an exciting day for humanity! Image via NASA.The 2025 EarthSky Lunar Calendar is now available! A unique and beautiful poster-sized calendar. Makes a great New Year’s gift. Get yours today!| EarthSky
Armando is known primarily as an astronomy educator, after 30+ years of extensive public outreach and 10 years teaching in colleges. As one of only a handful of science communicators in Puerto Rico during Comet Halley's last visit, he assumed a pioneering role starting in 1985 when science was just beginning to enter the collective mindset. Over the years, his work as a teacher, speaker and writer, inspired people to pursue interests in science and brought enduring change to Puerto Rican cult...| earthsky.org
NSO's GONG Network is a worldwide network of six identical telescopes, designed to have 24/7 observations of the Sun.| NSO - National Solar Observatory
What are the different types, or classes, of flares?| solar-center.stanford.edu
C. Alex Young is a solar astrophysicist studying the Sun and space weather. Alex is passionate about sharing science with diverse audiences. This led him to start The Sun Today with his designer wife, Linda. First through Facebook and Twitter then adding an extensive website thesuntoday.org, the two work together to engage the public about the Sun and its role in our solar system. Alex led national engagement efforts for the 2017 total solar eclipse. He is the Associate Director for Science i...| earthsky.org
The sun has passed from one of its 11-year activity cycles into another. Scientists predict the new cycle will be about as calm as the previous one.| EarthSky | Updates on your cosmos and world
Artist’s concept of activity on the sun traveling across space, to interact with Earth’s magnetic field. Not to scale. The sun’s activity can cause a geomagnetic storm, which aren’t harmful to humans, but which can harm earthly technologies. Image via Wikimedia Commons.What happens during a geomagnetic storm?| EarthSky
Coronal mass ejection on February 27, 2000. A disk blocks out the light of the sun. The white circle indicates the sun’s surface. Learn more about coronal mass ejections here. Image via SOHO.What are coronal mass ejections?| EarthSky
View full size. | World map of time zones. UTC (0) is the green vertical stripe just to the left of center. Image via TimeZonesBoy/ CIA/ Wikimedia.Time zones| EarthSky
Our Editor-in-Chief Deborah Byrd works to keep all the astronomy balls in the air between EarthSky's website, YouTube page and social media platforms. She's the primary editor of our popular daily newsletter and a frequent host of EarthSky livestreams. Deborah created the EarthSky radio series in 1991 and founded EarthSky.org in 1994. Prior to that, she had worked for the University of Texas McDonald Observatory since 1976, and created and produced their Star Date radio series. She has won a ...| earthsky.org
On New Year’s Eve 2023, the sun blasted a huge X flare, the biggest of solar cycle 25 so far. It came from sunspot region AR3536 and measured X5 on the solar flare intensity scale. The eruption produced a wave that rippled across the sun’s face in all directions. It produced a coronal mass ejection, or CME, a great clump of superheated matter that left the sun and traveled outward into our solar system. | EarthSky
Coronal holes appear as dark areas in the solar corona in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and soft x-ray solar images. They appear dark because they are cooler, less dense regions than the surrounding plasma and are regions of open, unipolar magnetic fields. This open, magnetic field line structure allows the solar wind to escape more readily into space, resulting in streams of relatively fast solar wind and is often referred to as a high speed stream in the context of analysis of structures in int...| www.swpc.noaa.gov
The solar wind continuously flows outward from the Sun and consists mainly of protons and electrons in a state known as a plasma. Solar magnetic field is embedded in the plasma and flows outward with the solar wind. | www.swpc.noaa.gov
Solar flares are large eruptions of electromagnetic radiation from the Sun lasting from minutes to hours. The sudden outburst of electromagnetic energy travels at the speed of light, therefore any effect upon the sunlit side of Earth’s exposed outer atmosphere occurs at the same time the event is observed. The increased level of X-ray and extreme ultraviolet (EUV) radiation results in ionization in the lower layers of the ionosphere on the sunlit side of Earth. Under normal conditions, high...| www.swpc.noaa.gov
The NOAA Space Weather Scales were introduced as a way to communicate to the general public the current and future space weather conditions and their possible effects on people and systems. Many of the SWPC products describe the space environment, but few have described the effects that can be experienced as the result of environmental disturbances. These scales are useful to users of our products and those who are interested in space weather effects. The scales describe the environmental dis...| www.swpc.noaa.gov
View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Jonathan Charles Fox captured this image in New York on the December solstice in 2024. Jonathan wrote: “This is my back yard #lovewhereyoulive.” Thank you, Jonathan! It’s certainly a great backyard.The December solstice marks the sun’s southernmost point in the sky, for all of Earth, for this year. It comes at 15:03 UTC (9:03 a.m. CST) on December 21. Though no world body has decreed it, we in the Northern Hemisphere will celebrate the first day of...| EarthSky
