Peering into plasma mirrors

When light interacts with a mirror which is moving towards it at a speed close to the speed of light, its wavelength is shifted into the extreme ultraviolet region of the spectrum. This effect was first predicted by Albert ...

Image: The sun—two wavelengths, two different images

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory views our sun in 10 different wavelengths because each wavelength reveals different solar features. This Sept. 21, 2018, view of the sun uses two selected images taken at virtually the same ...

SDO spots two lunar transits in space

On Sept. 9, 2018, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, SDO, saw two lunar transits as the Moon passed in front of the Sun. A transit happens when a celestial body passes between a larger body and an observer. This first lunar ...

NASA's Hi-C launches to study sun's corona

NASA and its partners launched a rocket-borne camera to the edge of space at 2:54 p.m. EST May 29, 2018, on its third flight to study the sun. The clarity of images returned is unprecedented and their analysis will provide ...

Image: Our sputtering sun

An active region rotated into view and sputtered with numerous small flares and towering magnetic field lines that stretched out many times the diameter of Earth (May 23-25, 2018).

Giant solar tornadoes put researchers in a spin

Despite their appearance solar tornadoes are not rotating after all, according to a European team of scientists. A new analysis of these gigantic structures, each one several times the size of the Earth, indicates that they ...

Electrons give resist layer electrical charge

Leiden physicists found a surprising interaction between electrons and a resist layer. The resist appears to charge and discharge due to incoming electrons. Publication in Physical Review Letters.

Image: Solar Dynamics Observatory spies rare encircling filament

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory came across an oddity that the spacecraft has rarely observed before: a dark filament encircling an active region (Oct. 29-31, 2017). Solar filaments are clouds of charged particles that ...

Image: Solar surface from hot to hottest

This sequence of images shows the Sun from its surface to its upper atmosphere all taken at about the same time on Oct. 27, 2017. The first shows the surface of the Sun in filtered white light; the other seven images were ...

September 2017's intense solar activity viewed from space

September 2017 saw a spate of solar activity, with the Sun emitting 27 M-class and four X-class flares and releasing several powerful coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, between Sept. 6-10. Solar flares are powerful bursts of ...

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