Sun Erupts: Epic Blast Seen by NASA Solar Observatory. The twin, golf cart-size spacecraft of NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) mission filmed, in ultraviolet light, the largest solar "prominence" in 15 years, according to the space agency. (See the video above, which compresses about 19 hours of solar activity on April 12 and 13). Stretching nearly halfway across the sun , the looping eruption of ionized helium "is definitely one of the largest" solar prominences ever witnessed, said Madhulika Guhathakurta , a STEREO program scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.
(See more pictures of solar eruptions .) The looping, gaseous eruptions are linked to changes in the strength of the sun's magnetic field, though the details of how solar prominences form remain an active area of research, Guhathakurta said. Coronal mass ejections can send bursts of charged particles, called solar wind, streaming toward Earth, where they can overload our planet's magnetic shield, knocking out satellite communications and power grids. Most Massive Star Discovered—Shatters Record. A newfound star has shattered the record as the most massive stellar monster ever seen, astronomers announced today.
Weighing in at a whopping 265 times the mass of our sun, the behemoth may have actually slimmed down since birth, when it likely tipped the scales at 320 times the sun's mass. The discovery could rewrite the laws of stellar physics, since it's long been thought that stars beyond a certain mass would be too unstable to survive. "We are really taken aback, because up until now the astronomical community at large has assumed that the upper size limit for stars would be around 150" times the mass of the sun, said study co-author Richard Parker, an astronomer at the University of Sheffield in the U.K.
"This giant could really revolutionize the way we think about how stars form and die in clusters and galaxies. " (Related: "Most Massive Stellar Black Hole Found in Binary System. ") Most Massive Star to Blow Itself Apart? "We are fortunate to have caught sight of it when we did. " Un véritable trou dans l’espace ! Sun, Sun Information. Compared with the billions of other stars in the universe, the sun is unremarkable. But for Earth and the other planets that revolve around it, the sun is a powerful center of attention. It holds the solar system together; pours life-giving light, heat, and energy on Earth; and generates space weather.
The sun is a big star. At about 864,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers) wide, it could hold 109 planet Earths across its surface. If the sun were a hollow ball, more than a million Earths could stuff inside it. Deep in the sun's core, nuclear fusion reactions convert hydrogen to helium, which generates energy. The sun's surface, or atmosphere, is divided into three regions: the photosphere, the chromosphere, and the solar corona. Solar Wind and Flares In addition to light, the sun radiates heat and a steady stream of charged particles known as the solar wind.
Like many energy sources, the sun is not forever.