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(Phys.org) —A team of researchers led by astronomer Ivan Ramirez of The University of Texas at Austin has identified the first "sibling" of the sun—a star almost certainly born from the same cloud of gas and dust as our star. Ramirez's methods will help astronomers find other solar siblings, which could lead to an understanding of how and where our sun formed, and how our solar system became hospitable for life. The work appears in the June 1 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. "We want to know where we were born," Ramirez said. "If we can figure out in what...

Explanation: Our Sun has become quite a busy place. Taken only two weeks ago, the Sun was captured sporting numerous tumultuous regions including active sunspot regions AR 2036 near the image top and AR 2036 near the center. Only four years ago the Sun was emerging from an unusually quiet Solar Minimum that had lasted for years. The above image was recorded in a single color of light called Hydrogen Alpha, inverted, and false colored. Spicules cover much of the Sun's face like a carpet. The gradual brightening towards the Sun's edges is caused by increased absorption of relatively cool...

SALEM, Ore., April 3, 2014 – Another new solar sunspot record peak of 73.2 was set for Cycle 24 last month. It smashed the old 68.9 record peak set the previous month. In a big surprise, the number is now over six spots higher than the first sunspot peak set in early 2012 and will probably go higher. A secondary peak above the first this much is almost unheard of. The new sunspot peak is unusual for two conflicting reasons: The secondary peak is higher than the first Current physics suggests the solar cycle should be weakening Conflicting signals coming...

Fierce solar blasts that could have badly damaged electrical grids and disabled satellites in space narrowly missed Earth in 2012, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday. The bursts would have wreaked havoc on the Earth's magnetic field, matching the severity of the 1859 Carrington event, the largest solar magnetic storm ever reported on the planet. That blast knocked out the telegraph system across the United States, according to University of California, Berkeley research physicist Janet Luhmann. "Had it hit Earth, it probably would have been like the big one in 1859, but the effect today, with our modern technologies, would have...

A new paper (Moffa-Sánchez et al) reports that they looked at layers of dead plankton in ocean mud (otherwise known as foraminifera in marine sediments) and have reconstructed the temperature and salinity of a couple of spots in the North Atlantic between 818AD – 1780 with data on δ18O and the Mg/Ca ratios. One immediate thought, an aside, is that if this technique works, there is no shortage of ocean mud, surely, and perhaps we could drill and analyze more mud for solar correlations in other places. (I hear foraminifera live in the Southern Hemisphere too). Perhaps no one is looking...

Explanation: Dramatic prominences can sometimes be seen looming just beyond the edge of the sun. Such was the case last week as a large prominence, visible above, highlighted a highly active recent Sun. A waving sea of hot gas is visible in the foreground chromosphere in great detail as it was imaged in one specific color of light emitted by hydrogen. A solar prominence is a cloud of solar gas held just above the surface by the Sun's magnetic field. The Earth, illustrated in the inset, is smaller than the prominence. Although very hot, prominences typically appear dark when viewed...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 (UPI) -- Twenty-six percent of U.S. respondents do not realize Earth revolves around the sun, a survey by the National Science Foundation indicated. The NSF conducts the poll on some basic science facts every two years, The Atlantic reported. The foundation said there has been little change in the percentages of correct answers since 1992.

A European spacecraft set to launch toward the sun in 2017 will be protected by a paint once used in prehistoric cave art. The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter probe will be coated in a substance derived from burnt bone charcoal — a type of pigment once used by early humans to create art on the insides of caves in France. The robust substance traditionally made from burned bones should help protect the Solar Orbiter when it flies as closer to the sun than any spacecraft before it. The probe will fly about 26 million miles (42 million kilometers) from...

Having been briefed by top security advisers about North Korea's success in landing an astronaut on the Sun, President Obama today announced His decisive response. On January 21st, a satirical post "appeared at the Waterford Whisper News...." Mimicking typical North Korean propaganda, it proclaimed, THE STATE News Agency of North Korea has confirmed today that the country has become the first in the world to ever land a man on the sun. It reported that astronaut Hung Il Gong left for the sun on a specially designed rocket ship at approximately 3 am this morning. Hung, who traveled alone, reached his destination some four hours...

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — A violent attack in what’s considers one of the city’s safest neighborhoods. Now police have made an arrest in the brutal robbery in Canton that left one man severely injured. Investigators say they were able to identify the suspect after he was caught on surveillance camera using the victim’s credit card. Mustafa Eraibi, 19, could spend the rest of his life behind bars, accused in a violent attack in Canton. “Now today, for the Canton area, you can sleep well. This guy is in custody,” said Commissioner Anthony Batts, Baltimore City Police Department. Baltimore Sun Editor John...

Massive sunspot AR 1944 is getting feisty, and doing some damage. Several Earth-lengths across, it is one of the largest sunspots seen in a decade. It is also complex, with dozens of dark cores. "Sometimes you see a nice, big simple brown sunspot, and even though it's big, it's boring," said Alex Young of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "But as soon as they start getting twisted and breaking apart and merging with each other, you know something exciting is going to happen." And something exciting has happened. Tuesday afternoon, AR 1944 was the source of a powerful X-class solar...

STORM WARNING: NOAA forecasters estimate a 90% chance of geomagnetic storms on Jan. 9th when a CME is expected to hit Earth's magnetic field. The speed of the solar wind around Earth could spike to 700 km/s (1.6 million mph) shortly after the impact, sharply compressing Earth's magnetosphere. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras. http://spaceweather.com/ HUGE SUNSPOT, CHANCE OF FLARES: The source of the incoming CME is AR1944, one of the largest sunspots of the current solar cycle. The active region sprawls across more than 200,000 km of solar terrain and contains dozens of dark cores. The largest...

Comet Ison was severely battered in its encounter with the Sun, and largely destroyed. Telescopes saw the giant ball of ice and dust disappear behind the star, but only a dull streamer emerge. Astronomers continued to search for the object, but it eventually became clear that the much vaunted "Comet of the Century" had gone out with a whimper. Despite its great size, Ison was probably torn apart in the immense heat and tidal forces so close to the Sun.

NASA will hold a live Google+ hangout on Thursday (Nov. 28) to webcast the solar passage of Comet ISON as it whips around the sun. The webcast will begin at 1 p.m. EST (1800 GMT) and last until 3:30 p.m. EST (2030 GMT). You will be able to watch the webcast live in the window below at the start time. LATEST STORY: Comet ISON Makes Thanksgiving Day Sun Flyby Today: Watch It Live Online

To complicate the riddle, the sun also is undergoing one of its oddest magnetic reversals on record. Normally, the sun's magnetic north and south poles change polarity every 11 years or so. During a magnetic-field reversal, the sun's polar magnetic fields weaken, drop to zero, and then emerge again with the opposite polarity. As far as scientists know, the magnetic shift is notable only because it signals the peak of the solar maximum, said Douglas Biesecker at NASA's Space Environment Center. But in this cycle, the sun's magnetic poles are out of sync, solar scientists said. The sun's north magnetic...

Over the past several days the Sun has unleashed more than half a dozen major flares including four X-class events. The resulting aurora in some parts of the world have been beautiful. Here’s a collection of recent images taken by Jason Arhns in Alaska. It seems the aurora is just blanketing not only the sky, but the landscape as well! See more below, as well as a video showing 23 of the 26 M- and X-class flares on the sun between Oct. 23 and Oct. 28, 2013, as captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. It also shows the coronal mass...

Stardate 20021005.2128 (On Screen): As I think many of my readers know, I used to work for Qualcomm designing cell phones. Qualcomm is the company which invented CDMA, and made it practical, and made it into a market success, and it now dominates the American market, where Verizon and Sprint both use it. There are two other nationwide cellular systems: AT&T currently uses IS-136 TDMA, which is obsolete and has no upgrade path. Cingular uses GSM, a more sophisticated form of TDMA from Europe. And right now I'm basking in the evil glow of a major case of schadenfreude. The...

NEW DELHI: A special event is about to occur in our sun, and it could impact our lives. The magnetic poles of the sun — which are like the ends of a giant bar magnet — are about to flip, that is, the polar north will become the polar south and vice versa. According to scientists at the Wilcox Solar Observatory at Stanford University , the sun could be barely two to three months away from this magnetic field reversal. The change is periodic, taking place once every 11 years or so. The flip also corresponds with peak activity during...

The sun fired off an intense solar storm at Earth Wednesday (Aug. 21) — the second in two days — hurtling billions of tons of charged particles at our planet, but should not pose a threat to people on the ground, NASA says. The solar eruption, called a coronal mass ejection, occurred yesterday at 1:24 a.m. EDT (0524 GMT) and sent charged particles streaking outward at 380 miles per second. That's just over 1.3 million mph (2.2 million km/h). The solar fallout from the sun storm is expected to reach Earth within the next three days.

A small comet dove headlong toward the sun this week in a cosmic death-dive captured on camera by a spacecraft — an opening act of sorts for the highly anticipated close solar approach of another comet, Comet ISON, in a few months' time. The minuscule and apparently nameless comet was captured barreling toward our star Monday (Aug. 19) by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft operated by NASA and the European Space Agency. Scientists created of video of the comet's dive toward the sun using the SOHO images. The little comet failed to emerge on the other side of...