Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the solar system and is home to a potentially habitable planet.
Hubble/European Space Agency/WikimediaCommons
Astronomers just measured the largest flare ever from Proxima Centauri, humanity’s closest neighboring star. These flares could be bad news for life trying to develop on a planet orbiting the star.
April’s super full moon was known as the pink moon because it heralds the arrival of spring flowers.
Mark Rightmire/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images
Sea level is still rising, and when that lunar cycle starts upward again, it will mean double trouble for places like Miami.
A solar flare.
Shutterstock/Color4260
Satellites, space stations and astronauts, aviation, GPS, power grids and more can be affected.
The greenhouse effect and plate tectonics are essential for maintaining water on the Earth’s surface.
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Reto Stöckli
The presence of water on the Earth’s surface is the result of a subtle balance between different mechanisms in the atmosphere and below the surface.
Falling into a black hole is easily the worst way to die.
John M Lund Photography Inc/Getty Images
The scariest beast in the universe has an insatiable appetite and shreds its victims.
Arctic sea ice levels have been falling for several decades.
GraphicaArtis/Getty Images
The pattern of autumn sea ice growth has been completely disrupted. The director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center explains what’s happening.
Photo of a nearly full Moon shining brightly on the Earth’s atmosphere, taken from the International Space Station.
NASA
The Earth’s magnetic field was most likely weaker when life evolved on our planet than it is today.
A red hazy sunset over Indiana caused by wildfire smoke from the Western U.S.
SOPA Images/LightRocket va Getty Images
Last week, much of the Midwest and eastern US experienced hazy skies and red sunsets. The cause was smoke transported from the Western US by the jet stream and spread as far as Boston and even Europe.
NASA
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change. If you have a question you’d like an expert…
Artist’s interpretation of the inside of the Sun.
James Josephides, CAS Swinburne University of Technology
If you could go right into the middle of the Sun, everything would be incredibly bright - and perhaps a little bit pink.
An artist’s concept of a hypothetical planet with a distant sun.
(Shutterstock)
In the search for the hypothetical Planet Nine, scientists may have uncovered another explanation for the patterns in the orbits of Kuiper Belt objects.
Earth and Moon as seen by the Galileo spacecraft.
NASA
From the Moon’s size to the first calculator, the ancients made some jawdropping discoveries without modern technology.
As the Earth orbits the Sun, the Sun appears to move through the ancient constellations of the zodiac.
Tauʻolunga/Wikimedia Commons
Astronomy and astrology do not agree on the dates of the zodiac constellations.
The Sun by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly of NASA s Solar Dynamics Observatory.
NASA
Solar activity is sometimes blamed for climate change but the data suggests otherwise.
The Moon passes in front of the Sun during this eclipse at Lake Bolac, Victoria, April 29, 2014.
Phil Hart
On December 26 a solar eclipse will be visible from northern Australia, southern Asia and parts of the Middle East.
In 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft looked back toward the sun and captured this near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto’s horizon.
NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
Many people are still upset that Pluto was demoted from being a planet. But definitions of various celestial objects are fairly fluid. So whether it is an asteroid or moon or planet is up for debate.
We don’t know why the solar corona is so hot.
wikipedia
The Parker Solar Probe makes it closest-ever approach to the sun.
Installing solar panels on a roof.
Shutterstock/lalanta71
Solar cells make electricity directly from sunlight, but how do they do it?
This artist’s impression shows a view of the planet Proxima b orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the solar system.
ESO/M. Kornmesser
Beyond the outer edge of the Solar System, mysterious, unknown worlds await by the thousands. Astronomers can now finally find them and explore them - but will we find another Earth?
NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle
Kepler-452b is sometimes called ‘Earth 2.0’, but there’s a lot we still don’t know about it.