The November 2012 Total Eclipse of the Sun
People from around the world are converging on the coast of northeast Australia. The attraction isn’t the Great Barrier Reef, just offshore, or the surrounding rain…
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Incoming CME, Weak Impact Expected
New sunspot AR1532 is crackling with M-class solar flares, including a brief but intense M6-flare on July 28th. A coronal mass ejection (CME) produced by Saturday’s…
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A Solar Maximum Appetizer
Forecasters say Solar Max is due in the year 2013. When it arrives, the peak of 11-year sunspot cycle will bring more solar flares, more coronal…
Read the articleNASA’s High Resolution Coronal Imager Captures Sharpest Images of Sun’s Corona
A telescope launched July 11 aboard a NASA sounding rocket has captured the highest-resolution images ever taken of the sun’s million-degree atmosphere called the corona. The…
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Earth’s Magnetic Field Has Hidden Portals
A favorite theme of science fiction is “the portal”–an extraordinary opening in space or time that connects travelers to distant realms. A good portal is a…
Read the articleFermi Gamma-Ray Telescope Detects the Highest-Energy Light From a Solar Flare
During a powerful solar blast on March 7, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected the highest-energy light ever associated with an eruption on the sun. The…
Read the articleBig Sunspot Crackling With Flares and Radio Bursts
Huge sunspot AR1476 is crackling with M-class solar flares and appears to be on the verge of producing something even stronger. The sunspot’s ‘beta-gamma-delta’ magnetic field…
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Students Launch a Rubber Chicken Into Space
Last month, when the sun unleashed the most intense radiation storm since 2003, peppering satellites with charged particles and igniting strong auroras around both poles, a…
Read the articleAnother Spectacular Explosion on the Sun
On April 16th around 17:45 UT, magnetic fields curling over the sun’s northeastern limb rose up and erupted, producing one of the most visually-spectacular explosions in…
Read the articleYet Another Coronal Mass Ejection on Its Way
Sunspot AR1429 unleashed another strong flare (category M7.9) on March 13th. The explosion produced a significant coronal mass ejection (CME), which forecasters say should reach Earth…
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