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A huge sunspot unleashed a blob of charged plasma Thursday that space weather watchers predict will blast past the Earth on Sunday.

But, he added, “We’re not looking at an extreme event here.”

“At first glance, it was, ‘Oh my God, it’s at the center of the [sun’s] disk, it ought to go right to the Earth,’ ” Kunches said. But upon further review and “head-scratching” Thursday, NOAA’s space weather team calculated that most of the plasma blob should pass harmlessly over the top of our planet.

stunning footage of Tuesday's (Feb. 21)

partial eclipse that was visible only from space

@NASA_SDO

Orbiting the Earth at a distance of 36,000 kilometers in geosynchronous orbit, the SDO usually has a spectacular, uninterrupted view of our nearest star

The sharp edge of the lunar limb helps researchers measure the in-orbit characteristics of the telescope

how light diffracts around the telescope's optics and filter support grids

AR1429 released an X-class flare on March 7 at 00:28 UT. (NASA/SDO)

European Space Agency's engineers will use burnt bone charcoal to protect its solar probe from the harsh glare of the Sun.

Burnt bone charcoal, also used in prehistoric cave paintings, will be used by scientists in the titanium heatshield of ESA's Solar Orbiter spacecraft.

will help in protecting the Orbiter from the strong glare of the Sun

FEBRUARY 13

Family Portrait Of The Planets

In 1990, the U.S. space probe Voyager I , while heading out to the edge of the Solar System, at 5:12pm PST began a four-hour series of photographs in a look backward which captured the Sun and six planets. An elongated large mozaic was later made by combining about 60 images. In this first “Family Portrait of the Planets”, the Sun appeared almost star-like and the planets were mere dots. Mercury was too close to the sun to photograph. Mars and Pluto, were too small to resolve. This first record of the Solar System from space may remain the only one for decades to follow. Voyager I had a unique lofty perspective, looking down on the plane in which the planets orbit. It had been steadily climbing since it passed Saturn in 1980, and reached an angle of 32 degrees high above the plane of the solar system

A repurposed Kepler Space telescope may soon start searching the sky again.

A new mission concept, dubbed K2, would continue Kepler's search for other worlds, and introduce new opportunities to observe star clusters, young and old stars, active galaxies and supernovae

In May, the Kepler spacecraft lost the second of four gyroscope-like reaction wheels, which are used to precisely point the spacecraft, ending new data collection for the original mission

On April 29th, an annular solar eclipse occurs over a small D-shaped 500 kilometre wide region of Antarctica

2014 has the minimum number of eclipses possible in one year, with four: two partial solars and two total lunars

This month’s solar eclipse is also a rarity in that it’s a non-central eclipse with one limit

Earliest Record Solar Eclipse

In 709 BC, the earliest record of a confirmed total solar eclipse was written in China. From: Ch'un-ch'iu, book I: "Duke Huan, 3rd year, 7th month, day jen-ch'en, the first day (of the month). The Sun was eclipsed and it was total." This is the earliest direct allusion to a complete obscuration of the Sun in any civilisation. The recorded date, when reduced to the Julian calendar, agrees exactly with that of a computed solar eclipse. Reference to the same eclipse appears in the Han-shu ('History of the Former Han Dynasty') (Chinese, 1st century AD): "...the eclipse threaded centrally through the Sun; above and below it was yellow." Earlier Chinese writings that refer to an eclipse do so without noting totality.

Astronomers have discovered a probable dwarf planet that orbits the Sun far beyond Pluto

Together with Sedna, a similar extreme object discovered a decade ago, the find is reshaping ideas about how the Solar System came to be

been searching for more objects like Sedna for more than 10 years now.

Original mission: International Sun/Earth Explorer 3 (ISEE-3)

to investigate solar-terrestrial relationships at the outermost boundaries of the Earth's magnetosphere

to examine in detail the structure of the solar wind near the Earth and the shock wave that forms the interface between the solar wind and Earth's magnetosphere

Sunspots

In 1611, a publication on the newly discovered phenomenon of sunspots was dedicated. Narratio de maculis in sole observatis et apparente earum cum sole conversione. (“Narration on Spots Observed on the Sun and their Apparent Rotation with the Sun”). This first publication on such observations, was the work of Johannes Fabricius, a Dutch astronomer who was perhaps the first ever to observe sunspots. On 9 Mar 1611, at dawn, Johannes had used his telescope to view the rising sun and had seen several dark spots on it. He called his father to investigate this new phenomenon with him. The brightness of the Sun's center was very painful, and the two quickly switched to a projection method by means of a camera obscura

Confirming decades of suspicion, a NASA spacecraft has spotted vast deposits of water ice on the planet closest to the sun

Temperatures on Mercury can reach 800 degrees Fahrenheit (427 degrees Celsius

around the north pole, in areas permanently shielded from the sun's heat

five-planet system around a star called Kepler-62, some 1,200 light-years away in the constellation Lyra

Astronomers found the planets by analyzing nearly three years’ worth of data

Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f are far more accommodating. They are 1.6 and 1.4 times the diameter of Earth

Kepler-62 is a red dwarf, only 20 percent as bright as the sun

located 1,200 light-years away from Earth

The Kepler-69 system contains one known planet in that star's habitable zone

A comet that shines as brightly as the stars of the Big Dipper could be heading our way in March

the Comet Pan-STARRS is expected to whiz by about 100 million miles from Earth, skimming the orbit of Mercury, early next month.

could fail to put on a dazzling show if it falls apart under the intense heat and gravitational pull of its plunge toward the sun

A metal-poor star located merely 190 light-years from the Sun is 14.46+-0.80 billion years old, which implies that the star is nearly as old as the Universe

results emerged from a new study

Such metal-poor stars are (super) important to astronomers because they set an independent lower limit for the age of the Universe