Browse Archive

  • Active Region 1678 has grown quickly over a 2 day period, Feb. 19-20, 2013.

    SDO Observes Fast-Growing Sunspot

    02.20.13 - Over the course of Feb. 19-20, 2013, scientist watched a giant sunspot form in under 48 hours.

  • On July 19, 2012, an eruption occurred on the sun that produced 3 results; 1) a moderately powerful solar flare, 2) a CME and 3) coronal rain.

    SDO Shows A Little Rain On the Sun

    02.20.13 - On July 19, 2012, the sun treated viewers to one of its dazzling magnetic displays -- a phenomenon known as coronal rain.

  • Earth is surrounded by a giant magnetic bubble, called the magnetosphere.

    Six Years of THEMIS: Understanding the Magnetosphere

    02.19.13 - In THEMIS's sixth year in space, it is helping to show how even small variations in the magnetosphere can sometimes cause extreme space weather responses, helping scientist map and predict events in this complex system.

  • Scientist Shri Kanekal holds one of the solid-state detectors that will be used in the CREPT.

    Tiny CREPT Instrument to Study the Radiation Belts

    02.14.13 - A smaller version of an instrument now flying on NASA's Van Allen Probes has won a coveted spot aboard an upcoming NASA-sponsored Cubesat mission -- the perfect platform for this pint-size, solid-state telescope.

  • White lines represent magnetic field lines looping up out of the sun's surface in this image from SDO's HMI.

    Year Three: NASA SDO Mission Highlights

    02.11.13 - In its third year in space, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has also offered several new, unexpected doors to scientific inquiry.

  • On Feb. 6, 2013, the VISIONS sounding rocket successfully launched.

    VISIONS: A Successful Launch

    02.07.13 - The principal investigator for VISIONS (VISualizing Ion Outflow via Neutral atom imaging during a Substorm), Goddard's Doug Rowland provided images and updates of the team preparations and the launch.

  • The ribbon observed by the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) Mission is a narrow bright feature that spans much of the nighttime sky linking together the summer constellation of Cygnus, the swan, Aquila, the eagle, the center of the Milky Way galaxy, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.

    Explaining the Ribbon in Space Discovered by IBEX

    02.05.13 - Using NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), scientists have devised the best model yet for the appearance of a vast ribbon of neutral atoms that curls through the boundaries of Earth's solar system.

  • One of 20 balloons launched as part of NASA's BARREL mission.

    Twenty NASA Balloons Studying the Radiation Belts

    02.04.13 - Just 96 days since launch, the Van Allen Probes have already provided new insights into the structure and behavior of the radiation belts that surround Earth.

  • Swirls of green and red appear in an aurora over Whitehorse, Yukon on the night of September 3, 2012.

    VISIONS: Seeing the Aurora in a New Light

    02.07.13 - A sounding rocket to study the aurora and how oxygen and hydrogen escape Earth's atmosphere may launch as early as Feb. 2, 2013, but the team has a two-week window in order to find the perfect launch conditions.

  • Captured by SDO on July 18, 2012, this image has been processed to highlight the edges of each loop and make the structure more clear.

    SDO Provides First Sightings of How a CME Forms

    01.31.13 - On July 18, 20012, scientists used NASA's SDO to see for the first time the formation of something they had long known was at the heart of many eruptive events on the sun: a flux rope.

  • MMS observatories in a clean room

    Working on Four Spacecraft Simultaneously

    01.24.13 - NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission clean room is buzzing with activity as engineers work on all four observatories at the same time.

  • The Hi C recovering team poses for a photo with the payload.

    'Hi-C' Mission Sees Energy in the Sun's Corona

    01.23.13 - NASA optics engineering expertise is allowing solar scientists to see into the sun's corona in unprecedented detail.

  • The fully integrated spacecraft and science instrument for IRIS mission is seen in a clean room.

    IRIS Spacecraft Is Fully Integrated

    01.18.13 - NASA's next Small Explorer mission, the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS), which will study the little-understood lower levels of the sun's atmosphere has been fully integrated and final testing is underway.

  • Ultra high-definition TVs – sold for the first time in late 2012 and early 2013 –have four times the pixels of a current high-definition TV, but still have fewer pixels than the images from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).

    NASA's SDO Has Plenty of Content for Ultra HD TVs

    01.14.13 - A new kind of television made headlines at the 2013 annual Consumer Electronics Show in early January: Ultra High Definition TV. The TV needs content and NASA's SDO has four months worth of sun movies for them.