Gravity Probe B Confirms the Existence of Gravitomagnetism
10.05.2011

Does gravity have a magnetic counterpart? Spin any electric charge and you get a magnetic field. Spin any mass and, according to Einstein, you should get a very slight effect that acts something like magnetism. This effect is expected to be so small that it is beyond practical experience and ground laboratory measurement.

A Backward Sunspot and the New Solar Cycle
30.08.2006

Why is sunspot 905 backwards? Perhaps it is a key marker for the beginning of a new magnetic cycle on our Sun. Every 11 years, our Sun goes through a magnetic cycle, at the end of which its overall magnetic orientation is reversed.

An Unexpected Flare from the Crab Nebula
23.05.2011

Why does the Crab Nebula flare? No one is sure. The unusual behavior, discovered over the past few years, seems only to occur in very high energy light -- gamma rays. As recently...

Sun Dance
11.08.1998

Hot gas dances across the surface of the Sun in this picture from the orbiting TRACE satellite. The temperature of the gas is color coded so that blue represents hundreds of thousands of Kelvin, while red represents extreme temperatures in the millions of Kelvin.

The Sun Erupts
16.09.1996

The Sun is a seething ball of extremely hot gas. Above, the Sun was captured by Skylab in 1973 throwing off one the largest eruptive prominences in recorded history. The Sun has survived for about 5 billion years, and will likely survive for another 5 billion.

The Sun Erupts
30.08.1998

The Sun is a seething ball of extremely hot gas. Above, the Sun was captured by Skylab in 1973 throwing off one the largest eruptive prominences in recorded history. The Sun has survived for about 5 billion years, and will likely survive for another 5 billion.

Dueling Auroras
3.12.2001

Will it be curtains for one of these auroras? A quick inspection indicates that it is curtains for both, as the designation "curtains" well categorizes the type of aurora pattern pictured. Another (informal) type is the corona. The above auroras resulted from outbursts of ionic particles from the Sun during the last week of September.

Dueling Auroras
7.08.2005

Will it be curtains for one of these auroras? A quick inspection indicates that it is curtains for both, as the designation "curtains" well categorizes the type of aurora pattern pictured. Another (informal) type is the corona.

Complex Jupiter
5.06.2018

How complex is Jupiter? NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter is finding the Jovian giant to be more complicated than expected. Jupiter's magnetic field has been discovered to be much different from our Earth's simple dipole field, showing several poles embedded in a complicated network more convoluted in the north than the south.

A Solar Corona Ejection
8.11.1996

The Sun would not be a nice place to spend the summer. One reason, besides the extreme heat, is that explosions are common there. In the above picture, magnetic fields buckle releasing previously constrained hot material from the upper atmosphere of the Sun.