March 12, 2025
MMS has unlocked essential insights into magnetic reconnection, the process that powers solar flares and geomagnetic storms.
Humans have been observing the Sun basically since the beginning but it was not until the early 1960s that spacecraft were used to observe the Sun. There have been many missions since that time that have furthered our understanding of the Sun as well as providing many new questions to answer.
December 24, 2024
Parker's unique ability to travel closer to the sun than any previous spacecraft has provided unprecedented data about the sun and its impact on the solar system.
July 12, 2022
Parker Solar Probe has touched the Sun. The James Webb Space Telescope will be looking at the earliest stars. In between, is the Universe we know.
February 8, 2021
February 9, 2021 marks the one year anniversary of the launch of the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter Mission. It was launched from Kennedy Space Center at 11:03 pm ET on February 9, 2020. This mission is a single spacecraft designed with […]
August 8, 2018
Why does the Parker Solar Probe have such a long and complex orbit to get close to the Sun? Why doesn’t it just fall right toward it? Turns out it’s a lot harder to approach the Sun than you might […]
August 1, 2018
Parker Solar Probe is a historic mission, flying into the Sun’s atmosphere (or corona) for the first time! It will have 24 orbits around the sun, traveling at a top speed of 430,000 mph—the fastest man-made object ever! It can also withstand temperatures outside the spacecraft that reach nearly 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,377 degrees Celsius)!
August 22, 2017
A movie of the Aug 21, 2017 lunar transit as viewed by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO.) Credit: NASA/SDO The Sun appears in visible light, and 171 ångstrom extreme ultraviolet light. The movie shows the Sun moving a bit because […]
April 21, 2017
The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has now captured nearly seven years worth of ultra-high resolution solar footage. This time-lapse shows that full run from two of SDO’s instruments. CREDIT: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO, Music: “Web of Intrigue” from Killer Tracks. The […]
April 21, 2016
This video shows the sun in the 171 angstrom wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light. It covers a time period of January 2, 2015 to January 28, 2016 at a cadence of one frame every hour, or 24 frames per day. CREDIT: NASA/Goddard […]
March 2, 2015
The Magnetospheric Multiscale, or MMS, mission was created to study how magnetic fields around Earth interact with activity from the sun.
February 11, 2015
Happy Birthday SDO! 5 years with much more to come! The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) celebrates its 5th anniversary since it launched on February 11, 2010. This time-lapse video captures one frame every 8 hours starting when data became available […]
April 21, 2014
Massive solar flares, graceful eruptions of solar material, and an enormous sunspot make up some of the imagery captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory during its fourth year in orbit. CREDIT: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO, Music: Stella Maris courtesy of Moby […]
May 10, 2013
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center heliophysicist C. Alex Young highlights many interesting aspects of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) images and points out several of the single-frame events that appear in it. This video shows those three years of the sun at a pace of two images per day.
February 28, 2013
Learn about this new result in a video by NASA Goddard Heliophysics Division. NASA presented these results at a press conference today. Tomorrow I will be on a Google Hangout with several of my colleagues at NASA Goddard. http://bit.ly/YzL5Mz Ask […]
April 21, 2012
April 21, 2012 marks the two-year anniversary of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) First Light press conference, where NASA revealed the first images taken by the spacecraft. This video highlights just some of the amazing events witnessed in SDO’s second […]
February 6, 2012
Ten years ago yesterday (5 February 2002) saw the launch of the Reuven Ramaty High-Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager, or RHESSI (pronounced reh-see). RHESSI was designed to study particle acceleration and energy transport during solar flares by observing the highest energy […]
October 26, 2011
A spectacular filament eruption from June 7, 2011 captured by the STEREO Ahead spacecraft with EUVI 304, Cor1 and Cor2. Happy Birthday STEREO!! October 26 ,2011 is the 5th anniversary of the launch of the STEREO mission and […]
April 21, 2011
April 21, 2011 marks the one-year anniversary of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) First Light press conference, where NASA revealed the first images taken by the spacecraft. In the last year, the sun has gone from its quietest period in […]
December 2, 2010
The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory or SOHO is by many accounts the granddaddy of modern solar astronomy. SOHO is not the first space based solar observatory but it has truly ushered in a golden age for solar physics. The mission […]
October 5, 2010
Thursday morning seemed to take longer to arrive. Expectations were certainly higher, based in no small part on the fact that most of us had flights booked to take us home later that day. Washington DC had just gotten its […]
October 1, 2010
Getting out of Washington DC was not going to be easy. The city was bracing itself for the biggest snowstorm in almost a century over the weekend. The launch of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO; the first mission from NASA’s […]