Press Releases & Feature Stories Archive - Solar Physics Laboratory

Rocket Flight to Sharpen NASA's Study of the Sun

09.07.2021

SDO’s EVE instrument uses sounding rockets for calibration. During roughly 15-minute flights, these suborbital rockets carry an EVE duplicate about 180 miles above Earth, where it records measurements to keep its twin instrument aboard SDO in tune. The next EVE calibration flight is scheduled to launch Sept. 9.

NASA Model Describes Nearby Star which Resembles Ours in its Youth

08.03.2021

New research led by NASA provides a closer look at a nearby star thought to resemble our young Sun.

Rosetta Stone Eruption on the Sun Could Help Explain Solar Explosions

06.07.2021

In a dramatic, multi-staged eruption, the Sun has revealed new clues that could help scientists solve the long-standing mystery of what causes the Sun’s powerful and unpredictable eruptions. Uncovering this fundamental physics could help scientists better predict the eruptions that cause dangerous space weather conditions at Earth.

NASA Rocket Chasing the Source of the Sun's Hot Atmosphere

05.17.2021

After glimpsing faint but widespread super-heated material in the Sun's outer atmosphere, a NASA sounding rocket is going back for more. This time, they're carrying a new instrument optimized to see it across a wider region of the Sun. The Extreme Ultraviolet Normal Incidence Spectrograph, or EUNIS for short, will launch no earlier than May 18.

A New Space Instrument Captures Its First Solar Eruption

05.17.2021

During a close solar pass in February, the Solar Orbiter Heliospheric Imager ??? the only instrument on Solar Orbiter led by a US principal investigator ??? captured its first solar eruption.

NASA's Parker Solar Probe Sees Venus Orbital Dust Ring in 1st Complete View

04.16.2021

NASA's Parker Solar Probe mission has given scientists the first complete look at Venus' orbital dust ring, a collection of microscopic dust particles that circulates around the Sun along Venus' orbit.

Machine Learning Study Identifies the Internal Structure of Interplanetary Coronal Mass Ejections

01.29.2021

In a machine learning study supported by the NASA Center for Climate Simulation, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and university heliophysics researchers have gained insights into the internal structure of interplanetary coronal mass ejections—gigantic clouds of magnetized gas that erupt from the Sun and travel through the solar system.

Exploring the Solar Wind With A New View of Small Sun Structures

01.19.2021

Scientists have combined NASA data and cutting-edge image processing to gain new insight into the solar structures that create the Sun's flow of high-speed solar wind, detailed in new research published today in The Astrophysical Journal.

Heliophysics Hackweek 2020 Coronal Holes Team Publishes Results at NeurIPS 2020

01.14.2021

Helio Hackweek 2020 “Coronal Holes” team members and other hackweek participants continued their collaboration and published a paper and poster of their results at the 34th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems. “SEARCH: SEgmentation of polAR Coronal Holes,” was published at the Machine Learning and the Physical Sciences Workshop.

NASA Discoveries, R&D, Moon to Mars Exploration Plans Persevere in 2020

12.21.2020

"NASA has impressed the nation with our resilience and persistence during the pandemic," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.

NASA Goddard’s AI Center of Excellence Connects Scientists and Engineers to the Latest Advances in Artificial Intelligence

12.18.2020

The mission of the AI Center of Excellence is to enable new AI techniques for scientific discovery, providing scientists within NASA Goddard and their partners beyond NASA with resources for increased collaboration, innovation, and co-learning.

Eclipse 2017 Shines Light on the Sun-Earth Connection

12.10.2020

Aug. 21, 2017, marked a unique opportunity for scientists in the contiguous U.S. — for the first time in nearly a century, a total solar eclipse would sweep coast to coast, providing scientists under the path of totality with a rare chance to study the Sun and Earth in uncommon ways.

ESA/NASA's Sun-Observing SOHO Mission Celebrates a Quarter-Century in Space

12.02.2020

A joint mission between the European Space Agency and NASA, SOHO is celebrating a quarter century in orbit. What this powerhouse mission has witnessed in its 25 years has changed the way humanity sees the Sun.

Curious Universe: Seasons of the Sun

11.10.2020

As Earth makes its annual trip around the Sun, we feel the impacts of its journey in the form of seasons. Our planet’s tilt in relation to the Sun determines what season we experience here on Earth. But, did you know that the Sun goes through seasons too? Delores Knipp, Dean Pesnell and Sabrina Savage explain.

Hackweek 2020 Teams Use Machine Learning and GPUs to Analyze Heliophysics Data

10.13.2020

The virtual Heliophysics Hackweek 2020 took place August 20–28, 2020, hosted by the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and co-sponsored by NVIDIA, with strong support from the University of Washington eScience Institute.

A New Look at Sunspots is Helping NASA Scientists Understand Major Flares and Life Around Other Stars

10.08.2020

Scientists looked at sunspots at low resolution, as if they were trillions of miles away, to simulate a view of distant stars. The results help us understand stellar activity and the conditions for life on planets orbiting other stars.

How Scientists Around the World Track the Solar Cycle

09.15.2020

NASA scientists study the solar cycle so we can better predict solar activity. Solar Cycle 25 is underway, and scientists are eager for another chance to put their understanding of solar cycle signs to the test.

Gravity Assist: Our Sun, Our Life, with Vladimir Airapetian

08.21.2020

Vladimir Airapetian, scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, explains what researchers hope to find as they gaze beyond our solar system.

NASA Sounding Rocket Finds Helium Structures in Sun’s Atmosphere

08.07.2020

Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe after hydrogen. But scientists aren’t sure just how much there actually is in the Sun’s atmosphere. NASA's HERSCHEL sounding rocket has taken the first global measurements of helium in the extended solar atmosphere – a key piece of information for understanding our space environment.

NASA Sun Data Helps New Model Predict Big Solar Flares

07.31.2020

Using data from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, scientists have developed a new model that successfully predicted seven of the Sun’s biggest flares from the last solar cycle, out of a set of nine. With more development, the model could be used to one day inform forecasts of these intense bursts of solar radiation.

Watch a 10-Year Time Lapse of Sun From NASA’s SDO

06.24.2020

As of June 2020, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory – SDO – has now been watching the Sun non-stop for over a full decade. From its orbit in space around Earth, SDO has gathered 425 million high-resolution images of the Sun, amassing 20 million gigabytes of data over the past 10 years and enabling countless new discoveries about our closest star.