Tag Archives: solar

New data regarding the United States electrical grid reveals that the country’s wind and solar energy output overtook coal last year. Though data for December is still pending, US wind and solar farms sustained an unprecedented level of energy generation between January and November; December is expected to boast similar …

As far as adorably tiny trucks and vans go, Japan has the rest of the world beat. The country is known for using “kei cars,” relatively affordable, ultra-compact vehicles, to conduct personal and commercial transportation on narrow streets. Though kei cars have historically been gas-powered, electric versions are beginning to …

NASA’s Perseverance rover has captured a spectacular video of an April solar eclipse on Mars. The video clearly depicts Phobos as it eclipses the sun, as seen from the Martian surface. “You can see details in the shape of Phobos’ shadow, like ridges and bumps on the moon’s landscape,” said …

Good news for those who love the Northern Lights: Earth is directly in the line of fire of the sun’s latest coronal mass ejection (CME, or solar flare). But this is no ordinary solar storm. When this CME broke loose, the monumental forces tore open a twelve-thousand-mile-deep scar in the …

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is built for extremes. It’s the fastest spacecraft they’ve ever built, and it orbits closer to the sun than any other artificial object. As it spirals inward for ever-closer views of our local star, it also encounters specs of space dust. Traveling at such incredible speeds …

Around 4.567 billion years ago, our Solar System harbored a gap within the protoplanetary disk, near the location where the main asteroid belt resides today, and likely shaped the composition of the planets, according to a study led by MIT scientists. This is an artist impression of the protoplanetary disk …

If the 21st century has taught us any astronomical lessons, it’s that counting planets is hard. In 2000, there were nine planets, and now there are eight, but that might not last. Astronomers have been on the hunt for a theorized ninth planet in the extreme outer solar system, and …

Solar Orbiter, a collaborative mission between ESA and NASA to study the Sun, has captured a series of images showing three solar system planets: Venus, Earth, and Mars. This image was captured on November 18, 2020, by the SoloHI camera on board Solar Orbiter. Venus (left), Earth (middle), and Mars …

  Today, Dec. 14, observers along a narrow path in northern Patagonia, crossing Chile and Argentina, will witness one of nature’s most spectacular phenomena: a total eclipse of the Sun. Such an event usually draws travelers from around the world. But because of COVID-19 and its attendant restrictions, few Americans …

For most of their existence, stars are fuelled by the fusion of hydrogen into helium. Fusion proceeds via two processes that are well understood theoretically: the proton-proton (p-p) chain and the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen (CNO) cycle. Neutrinos that are emitted along such processes in the solar core are the only direct probe …