All articles tagged with #sun
A powerful M5.7 solar flare from sunspot AR4436 on May 10 produced a CME that could skim Earth around May 13, potentially triggering minor geomagnetic storms and visible auroras at high latitudes; a radio blackout was reported over the Atlantic during the event, and forecasters warn more solar activity may follow as sunspots evolve.
A Sky at Night Magazine feature highlights how the Sun is more dynamic than it appears, currently in Solar Cycle 25 with rising solar activity. Portuguese astrophotographer Miguel Claro captures high‑resolution hydrogen‑alpha images and 4K timelapse videos from Portugal’s Alqueva Dark Sky Reserve, revealing phenomena from granulation to prominences, filaments and outer corona. The piece showcases several dramatic clips, including a long solar tornado, and notes AR3590 as the cycle’s largest sunspot with multiple X‑class flares. It also covers composite imaging of both chromosphere and corona during the 2024 US eclipse and discusses equipment safety for solar imaging.
Two X2.5 solar flares erupted from sunspot AR4419 on the Sun’s western limb within seven hours, triggering radio blackouts on Earth’s dayside. The flares were the strongest in about 78 days; while a direct CME impact is unlikely, forecasters warn a glancing blow could spark geomagnetic activity and auroras. A preceding “sympathetic” flare involved eruptions from two sunspot regions on opposite sides of the Sun.
Astronomers propose that magnetic fields formed early in a star’s life can survive its evolution, linking magnetic activity observed in red giants to the magnetism seen on white dwarfs via the fossil field theory. Using starquakes (asteroseismology) to probe stellar interiors, they suggest these fossil fields could explain magnetism across evolutionary stages and imply that our Sun’s distant future—swelling into a red giant and eventually becoming a white dwarf—might be influenced by magnetic fields extending into its core. This work could reshape understanding of stellar magnetism and lifespan across the cosmos.
On Saturday, April 18, 2026, Chiron aligns with the Sun in Aries, inviting a powerful healing and growth moment in love. The transit nudges each sign to reflect, set boundaries, and prioritize self-worth, potentially opening the door to healthier, more lasting relationships as Chiron's Aries transit nears its end.
New climate simulations suggest Earth is roughly halfway through its habitable lifetime, with about a billion years of livable conditions remaining before a runaway greenhouse vaporizes the oceans; after that, the Sun is expected to expand into a red giant around five billion years from now, likely ending Earth’s existence.
ESA's Proba-3 eclipse mission captured high-resolution views of the Sun's corona and measured slow solar wind speeds up to about 300 miles per second (roughly 480 km/s), four times faster than previously thought, suggesting the slow wind originates from nonuniform, gusty flows near the solar surface and offering new clues about how the solar wind is accelerated.
Live Science reports that comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS), a Kreutz sungrazer, did not survive its close pass with the Sun. Space-based observations show MAPS disintegrating into a cloud of debris and a ghostly tail after reaching perihelion about 100,000 miles from the solar surface, leaving no visible body behind.
If the Sun vanished, light would reach Earth for about eight more minutes, after which a rapid blackout would plunge the planet into darkness and an abrupt drop in temperature. Photosynthesis would cease, jeopardizing most surface life and food crops, while artificial light and underground refuges might sustain a fraction of humanity. The Moon would go dark, orbits could destabilize, and only hardy organisms like tardigrades and some chemosynthetic microbes might survive long term. Oceans could persist for years in the deepest regions, but the climate would continue to cool toward near‑absolute zero. In the far future the Sun itself will die and our oceans may vaporize as it expands, but the immediate catastrophe would be a swift descent into a dark, icy world.
A study using data from the SOHO and GONG networks confirms the Sun's magnetic dynamo is generated near the tachocline, roughly 200,000 km (about 124,000 miles) below the Sun's visible surface, with rotating plasma bands tracing a butterfly pattern that aligns with the 11-year sunspot cycle. This supports tachocline-based dynamo models and could improve space-weather predictions, with findings published in Scientific Reports.
NASA and NOAA will monitor solar activity around the clock as Artemis II travels beyond Earth’s protective magnetosphere, tracking solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and solar energetic particles with a network of spacecraft and ground teams to manage radiation exposure inside Orion and guide crew procedures.
Astronomers using Gaia data found Sun-like stars, including the Sun, clustered around 4–6 billion years old at similar distances from the Galactic center, implying the Sun migrated outward from the core; this migration helps time the Milky Way's corotation barrier and suggests moving away from the center aided life’s emergence on Earth.
A Gaia-based study of ~2 billion stars found 6,594 solar twins clustered in the 4–6 billion-year range near the Sun’s current orbit, suggesting a mass outward migration from the galactic core during the Milky Way’s bar formation. The temporary lowering of a corotation barrier likely allowed Sun-like stars to drift outward, placing our Sun in a calmer region conducive to life.
Researchers using Gaia data analyzed nearly two million stars and found 6,594 Sun-like stars around 4–6 billion years old, suggesting the Sun migrated from the Milky Way's inner regions to its current calmer orbit about 26,000–28,000 light-years from the center; the move likely occurred as the galaxy's central bar formed and accelerated stellar birth, moving many stars outward, which would have given Earth a more benign environment for life to emerge and evolve; studying solar twins helps reconstruct the solar system's early history.
Using Gaia data, scientists found that the Sun and thousands of Sun-like stars formed near the Milky Way's center about 4–6 billion years ago and migrated outward in a synchronized wave, likely aided by the galaxy's central bar, reshaping our understanding of the Sun’s origin and the Milky Way's history.