Light sources

Things have been heating up for the Sun, as the star approaches peak activity during its 11-year cycle, with giant eruptions bursting regularly from its surface. Luckily for us, this coincides with the Moon passing between the Earth and its host star, offering a captivating view of the solar corona during the upcoming solar eclipse. We might also witness some extraordinary activity on the Sun during those rare moments of totality.See How X-Men '97 Faithful Riffs on the Classic X-Men Cartoon OpeningIf you’ve been paying…

NASA’s SDO captured this rare moment of two solar flares erupting at the same time.Gif: NASA/Solar Dynamic ObservatoryNo, you’re not seeing double. The Sun just flung out two massive flares of radiation from opposite hemispheres at nearly the same exact moment, a sign that our host star is fast approaching a period of peak activity.Alex Winter on the Most Important Modern Horror Movie In a rare moment captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamic Observatory on Monday, two sunspots can be seen erupting simultaneously from the northern…

The bright star Betelgeuse, a prominent member of the Orion constellation, is set to be occulted by the asteroid Leona on December 11. This occurrence, expected to last no more than 10 seconds, will cause the star to temporarily vanish from sight, a phenomenon visible along a narrow path on Earth.Zillow Says You’ll Buy Your Next House With… AI? | AI UnlockedThe fascinating event is expected in the night sky on Tuesday, December 11 at approximately 8:17 p.m. ET (Wednesday, December 12 at 00:17 UT). This rare occultation…

Radio emissions detected about 24,855 miles (40,000 kilometers) above a dark region on the Sun have aurora-like qualities, according to a team of astronomers that studied the emissions.What Inspired Dominic Monaghan's Performance in Moriarty?The emissions were seen above a sunspot— a dark region on the Sun’s surface. Magnetic fields around sunspots are about 2,500 times stronger than Earth’s, according to the National Weather Service, which causes the temperature in sunspots to be cooler than the brighter parts of our…

Astronomers have discovered an ancient stellar remnant that keeps its light elements separate, in a strange first.Threads Needs These Five Missing Features to Be a Twitter KillerThe object is a white dwarf, an ancient core of a dead star. White dwarfs are small (hence their name, obviously), clocking in at about the size of Earth, but with a mass similar to that of the Sun. Under their intense gravity, heavier elements sink towards the center of the dwarf, while lighter elements float nearer to its surface.The recently…

A solar storm this week means the Northern Lights are taking a trip south. The celestial display, also known as the Aurora Borealis, is expected to be visible in more than a dozen U.S. states on Thursday night, according to the Aurora forecast from the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute.What Is Planet Nine and Why Can’t We Find It?The Kp-index, a global measure of geomagnetic activity, goes from zero to nine. On July 13, it is expected to hit six. Anything above a four is considered a storm, and a six…

The expiration date of Betelgeuse, a massive dying star about 642 light-years from Earth, is a hot topic in astronomy because of the star’s superlative size and its life cycle stage.Can the Government Change Social Media? | Gizmodo InterviewBetelgeuse is between 10 and 20 times the mass of our Sun, with a radius about 900 times greater. It’s burning quickly, and soon (in cosmic terms) will die. When stars die, they expel most of their material out into the cosmos in a remarkable explosion called a supernova. If the…

Although the Sun fuels life on our planet, Earth’s host star is not to be messed with. The inflamed ball of hot gas can often times get violent, flinging streams of plasma in our direction in the form of solar wind. By the time this solar wind reaches us, it has already traveled 93 million miles and interacted with Earth’s own magnetic field. What scientists really needed, however, was to get a closer look at what’s drivingsolar wind from the Sun’s burning surface.What Is Carbon Capture? With Gizmodo’s Molly Taft |…

The spiraling arms of the Pinwheel galaxy.Image: NASA, ESA, K. Kuntz (JHU), F. Bresolin (University of Hawaii), J. Trauger (Jet Propulsion Lab), J. Mould (NOAO), Y.-H. Chu (University of Illinois, Urbana) and STScI; CFHT Image: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope/J.-C. Cuillandre/Coelum; NOAO Image: G. Jacoby, B. Bohannan, M. Hanna/NOAO/AURA/NSFIn the ever-changing cosmic goo that is the universe, the biggest stars end their lives in enormous explosions called supernovae. These bursts are so bright that they are visibleacross…

Astronomers operating the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope think they’ve found three gas clouds that formed in the aftermath of the very first stars, when the Big Bang was still in the rear-view mirror.First Full-Color Images From Webb Space TelescopeIn the eye of the Very Large Telescope, a ground-based, visible light observatory in Chile, the clouds appear as they did when the universe was around 2 billion years old. (The universe is now nearly 14 billion years old.) The team’s research on the clouds…