The sun’s outer atmosphere resembles a pufferfish.

How big it is: 865,000 miles (1.392 million kilometers) across How far away it is: 93 million miles (150 million km) What type of star it is: A yellow dwarf star The sun is the star at the center of ...

The boundary of a solar system is not defined by planets, but by gravity. Beyond Pluto and the Kuiper Belt lies the Oort ...

NASA's mission to "touch" the sun has confirmed that it survived its record-breaking closest approach to the sun's surface on Dec. 24. Breaking its previous record by flying just 3.8 million miles ...

Fans of the sun-centered solar system will want to down a few Zywiecs in honor of Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, who was born on Feb. 19, 1473. That would make him 536 years old – an age ...

A NASA mission to study the heliosphere—the sun's magnetic bubble that shields our solar system—and develop a better understanding of space weather was launched from the agency's Kennedy Space Center ...

NASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission launched March 12, sending up a constellation of four Earth-orbiting satellites with the goal of studying how the Sun’s activity ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Our solar system has been around for 4.6 billion years. While that sounds like a long time, it's ...

If you've ever wondered why we are here, then you can thank Jupiter for part of the answer. A new study from Rice University suggests that if it weren't for the gas giant, the Earth would have ...

Considered our solar system's largest explosive events, solar flares can sometimes be as strong as a billion hydrogen bombs. Those with enough energy output to rank as an X-class have the potential to ...

Solar expert Dr. Ryan French explains how to safely photograph the sun and all of its stellar features with the use of cameras, lenses, telescopes and filters. When you purchase through links on our ...