A sharp gust of solar wind hit Earth's magnetic field at approximately 20:30 UTC on June 4, 2011. High-latitude sky watchers in both hemispheres should be alert for auroras. Solar windspeed: 495.9 km/secdensity: 2.6 protons/cm3 Planetary K-indexNow: Kp= 5…
A solar wind stream is buffeting Earth’s magnetic field, sparking Southern Lights around the Antarctic Circle. Ian Stewart sends this picture to SpaceWeather.com from a jetty near Hobart, Tasmania:”Not long after sunset a friend rang to ask whether a faint arc of
The quiet sun is waking up. New sunspot 1226 emerging over the sun’s southeastern limb is crackling with strong C-class solar flares. So far none of the blasts has been geoeffective, but this could change in the days ahead as the active region turns toward
A comet dove into the sun on May 11th and seemed to trigger a massive eruption. Watch the movie, then scroll down for further discussion.
A comet goes in; a CME comes out. Coincidence? Probably, yes, the sequence was coincidental. The comet disintegrated
A comet just discovered by amateur astronomer Sergey Shurpakov is diving past the sun today, and it will probably not survive. Click here to view a movie of the death plunge recorded by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory–and check back for updates in the hours
A sunspot located just behind the sun’s eastern limb erupted during the waning hours of May 9th, hurling a spectacular coronal mass ejection into space: movie. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory photographed hot magnetic loops towering over the edge of the sun in the
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory is monitoring a hole in the sun’s atmosphere – a “coronal hole.” It is the dark region circled in this extreme ultraviolet image taken during the early hours of April 28th: Coronal holes are places where the sun’s magnetic field
New sunspot 1199 is growing rapidly in the sun’s northern hemisphere, ballooning in area by more than a factor of five during the last 24 hours. If the expansion continues apace, this active region could soon pose a threat for flares. Stay tuned. (SpaceWeather)
This detailed image of sunspot 1195 looks like it was taken by one of NASA’s most advanced space telescopes. In fact, it comes from someone’s backyard in the Netherlands. Scroll down for the full story, and carefully examine the starscape as you
B-class eruptions are weak and generally not considered spectacular, but the one recorded by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) on April 23rd was quite different:The blast hurled hundreds of thousands of tons of plasma above the stellar surface with a powe
