Tag Archives: solar

Under a dark, star-streaked sky, scientists at the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico are deploying an unconventional tool for planetary defense: heliostats. “A heliostat is a very large — several meters on edge — motorized mirror that concentrates sunlight on a tower, like a giant magnifying glass,” Sandia scientist John Sandusky told Space.com. “As the sun moves across the …

During a solar eclipse, astronomers who study heliophysics are able to study the Sun’s corona – its outer atmosphere – in ways they are unable to do at any other time. The brightest part of the Sun is so bright that it blocks the faint light from the corona, so it is invisible to most of the instruments astronomers use. …

After more than three weeks without a powerful solar flare, the sun has suddenly ramped up its activity, firing off three M-class solar flares in less than 24 hours. While the sun has been popping off plenty of smaller C-class flares lately, Sunday’s M2.9 eruption at 10:01 a.m. EDT (1401 GMT) on Aug. 3 was the first M-class flare since …

GOP senators place holds on Treasury nominees over solar, wind credits  Politico Grassley places holds on 3 Trump Treasury nominees  The Hill E&E News: Senate Republican may delay nominees over energy credits  POLITICO Pro Grassley Holds Up Trump Treasury Nominees to Protect Renewables Development  Heatmap News Daily on Energy: GOP unrest over wind and solar credits, nominees in limbo, and OPEC+ hikes production  Washington Examiner …

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. The burgeoning space industry and the technologies society increasingly relies on – electric grids, aviation and telecommunications – are all vulnerable to the same threat: space weather. Space weather encompasses any variations in the space environment between the Sun and …

Solar energy is booming across the U.S. and, for the first time, Florida is catching up to industry powerhouses Texas and California. Despite removing climate change from its official state policy in 2024, Florida added more utility-scale solar than California last year, with over 3 gigawatts of new capacity coming online.  “This is not a fluke,” said Sylvia Leyva Martinez, …

Is there a massive undiscovered planet on the outer reaches of the Solar System? The idea has been around since before the discovery of Pluto in the 1930s. Labelled as planet X, prominent astronomers had put it forward as an explanation for Uranus‘s orbit, which drifts from the path of orbital motion that physics would expect it to follow. The …

Solar eclipses have always captured human imagination. From ancient omens to modern-day science, they remain one of the most closely watched celestial events. That fascination took a chaotic turn recently, when social media posts began circulating a false claim: that on 2 August 2025, the world would go completely dark during a total solar eclipse. Some even said this would …

A viral claim is circulating on social media platforms that the whole world will go dark for six minutes on the upcoming August 2, 2025. Some posts even claim that this event won’t happen again for 100 years. Denying all rumours, experts say the claim is not true and that there will be no blackout on August 2, 2025. Instead, …

IN A NUTSHELL 🌌 Researchers have developed a new method using soft X-rays to measure the reconnection rate of solar wind energy into Earth’s magnetosphere. 🔬 The team used Japan’s Fugaku supercomputer to simulate coronal mass ejections and analyzed V-shaped X-ray emissions from a Moon-distance perspective. 🌎 This approach bridges the gap between local observations and global reconnection rates, offering …