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science19 days ago

Sun Shadow in Focus: A Plane Silhouette Crosses the Sun for a Rare APOD Moment

APOD's 2026-09-22 image, shot in Prasek, Czech Republic, captures a precisely timed airplane passing in front of the Sun, creating a rare triply aligned moment that could be mistaken for sunspots or the ISS. The photographer, Petr Horalek, notes the odds of such a coincidence are about 30 million to 1, and the shot was planned with sub-second timing. The piece also mentions APOD's site move from apod.nasa.gov to science.nasa.gov/apod.

via NASA (.gov)|
#airplane#apod#astronomy
Earth’s Quiet End: A Brighter Sun Could Turn Our Planet Venus-like in About a Billion Years
science20 days ago

Earth’s Quiet End: A Brighter Sun Could Turn Our Planet Venus-like in About a Billion Years

As the Sun brightens over roughly the next billion years, Earth’s climate will gradually lose atmospheric CO2, undermining C3 plants and triggering a moist greenhouse that erodes oceans by allowing hydrogen to escape to space. This slow process could render Earth uninhabitable long before the Sun becomes a red giant, gradually stripping away breathable air and water and pushing the planet toward a Venus-like state. The one‑billion-year timeline is uncertain and climate feedbacks like the carbonate-silicate thermostat can delay outcomes, but the overall arc points to a hostile, sterilized Earth long before the Sun’s ultimate evolution.

via 19FortyFive|
#co2#earth#moist-greenhouse
Sun’s Hidden Meal: Could a Buried Planet Explain Its Lithium Mystery
space23 days ago

Sun’s Hidden Meal: Could a Buried Planet Explain Its Lithium Mystery

New research proposes the Sun’s lithium-poor surface and discrepancies in the interior’s sound speed could be explained if the young Sun swallowed a rocky super-Earth about 5–6 times Earth’s mass, stirring its insides. The model reproduces known solar features like convection-zone depth and composition, and while not proven, it suggests a detectable fingerprint of such engulfment may exist for future observations.

via Universe Today|
#helioseismology#lithium-depletion#planetary-ingestion
Could the Sun Have Devoured a Super-Earth? New Study Suggests a Planetary Feast
space27 days ago

Could the Sun Have Devoured a Super-Earth? New Study Suggests a Planetary Feast

A Turkish astronomer’s simulations propose that the young Sun may have ingested a rocky super‑Earth (five to ten times Earth’s mass), delivering lithium-poor and heavy-element-rich material that better matches the Sun’s current structure and lithium depletion; the result aligns solar models with observations, though it stops short of proving such an ingestion occurred; future work aims to detect similar fingerprints in other stars.

via Mashable|
#lithium-depletion#planet-engulfment#solar-models
Two clocks in the Sun: neutrinos escape in seconds while photons diffuse for 170,000 years
science1 month ago

Two clocks in the Sun: neutrinos escape in seconds while photons diffuse for 170,000 years

Fusion in the Sun produces neutrinos and photons that travel on very different timescales: neutrinos, interacting only weakly with matter, exit the core in about 2 seconds and reach Earth with only the minutes-long light travel delay, while photons undergo a long, random-walk diffusion through the dense radiative zone—being absorbed and re-emitted countless times—taking roughly 170,000 years before the energy reaches the photosphere. The photons reaching us are not the same particles from the core; energy is redistributed and carried outward, with convection taking over in the outer layers. This dual-timeline view underpins solar physics and helped resolve the solar neutrino problem via neutrino oscillations.

via Space Daily|
#fusion#neutrinos#photons
Backyard timelapse reveals edge-on solar plasma loop arcade
space1 month ago

Backyard timelapse reveals edge-on solar plasma loop arcade

Astrophotographer Mark Johnston captured a two-hour timelapse from his Scottsdale, Arizona backyard showing a rare coronal loop arcade—arches of hot plasma shaped by the Sun's magnetic field—extending above the solar limb, including visible coronal rain as material cools and falls along magnetic lines. The sequence, recorded on Aug. 21, 2026, was captured with a TEC160FL refractor and hydrogen-alpha solar imaging gear, delivering an edge-on view of the Sun from home.

via Space|
#astrophotography#coronal-loops#plasma
Eight Minutes of Light, Thirteen Years of Imagined Sound: A Sun-Vanish Thought Experiment
space1 month ago

Eight Minutes of Light, Thirteen Years of Imagined Sound: A Sun-Vanish Thought Experiment

If the Sun vanished instantly, Earth would still receive sunlight for about 8 minutes 19 seconds because those photons were already en route. A hypothetical sound wave moving through 20°C air would take about 13.82 years to cross the 1 AU gap, illustrating the enormous speed gap between light and sound and that space cannot carry ordinary sound. In reality, sound cannot travel through interplanetary space, gravity changes would propagate at the speed of light, and the term “roar” is a metaphor for the comparison, not a literal measurement; the piece clarifies the thought experiment’s physics and its limits.

via Space Daily|
#astronomy#physics#science
Sunlight’s long interior voyage: ~170,000 years to diffuse through the Sun, then eight minutes to Earth
space1 month ago

Sunlight’s long interior voyage: ~170,000 years to diffuse through the Sun, then eight minutes to Earth

Light from the Sun reaches Earth in about eight minutes, but the energy that becomes sunlight spends roughly 170,000 years diffusing through the Sun’s dense interior via countless absorptions and re-emissions. The 500,000-year figure is not supported by peer‑reviewed sources. After escaping the photosphere, photons traverse space to Earth in about eight minutes.

via Earth.com|
#astrophysics#photon-diffusion#radiation
Sun's Magnetic Field Wobbles in Midlife, Puzzles Scientists
science1 month ago

Sun's Magnetic Field Wobbles in Midlife, Puzzles Scientists

New observations and simulations suggest that sun‑like stars, including our Sun, undergo a magnetic‑crisis in mid‑life: their global magnetic field weakens as dynamos slow and may shift from complex to simpler configurations before possibly reviving later. This impacts how stars spin, the space weather they produce, and the habitability of surrounding planets; researchers debate whether the field is truly collapsing or entering a temporary minimum, with implications for interpreting exoplanet biosignatures as NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory searches for life‑bearing worlds.

via Yahoo|
#dynamo#gyrochronology#science
Sun reveals 20-kilometer plasma whirlpools linked to corona heating mystery
space1 month ago

Sun reveals 20-kilometer plasma whirlpools linked to corona heating mystery

New high-resolution images from the NSF’s Inouye Solar Telescope show 20-km-wide plasma vortices at the edges of magnetic flux on the Sun’s surface, caused by Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. These swirling motions could braid magnetic fields and help channel energy from the surface into the corona, offering a potential piece of the coronal-heating puzzle, but the authors caution they have not quantified the energy contribution and call for independent confirmation with even more powerful instruments.

via Space Daily|
#corona#kelvin-helmholtz-instability#photosphere