Sources: NBC
ISRO successfully launches the PSLV-XL rocket carrying the European Space Agency's PROBA-3 satellites from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, India, in a solar observatory mission to gather data about the Sun's atmosphere. 2024-12-5
India launches Aditya-L1, its first solar observation mission, to observe the solar corona, photosphere and chromosphere, and to study solar winds and solar flares and their effect on Earth and near-space weather. 2023-09-2
As Mars lines up with Earth and the Sun, it is expected to shine at its biggest and brightest during the night. 2020-10-13
The United Launch Alliance successfully launches the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter (SolO) satellite from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The probe will study the Sun, and in particular its inner heliosphere. 2020-02-9
In a rare celestial event, Mercury passes directly between Earth and the Sun for five and a half hours. Mercury's next transit will be in 2032. 2019-11-11
NASA's "Parker Solar Probe" spacecraft becomes the closest ever sent to the sun, by passing 42.7 million km (26.6 million miles) from the sun's surface. The previous record was set in 1976 by the "Helios 2" spacecraft. Parker's elliptical orbit will eventually take it to within 6.1 million km (3.8 million miles) of the sun. 2018-10-30
Astronomers announce that 2014 UZ224 is the third most distant Solar System object known from our Sun, currently over 90 times the Earth's distance from the Sun (90.8 AU or 8.44 billion miles), after Eris (96.2 AU) and V774104 (~103 AU). 2016-10-11
Scientists at Northumbria University in northeast England develop a computerized statistical model of the Sun's solar cycle (a measurement of the number of sunspots and solar flares, in this case between 1976 and 2008, and their intensity and activity). While preliminary, and not yet peer-reviewed, the data predicts irregularities in the cycle: the Northern Hemisphere could experience a slight lowering in temperatures in the 2030s. 2015-07-14
At least part of Comet C-2012 S1 (also known as Comet Ison) emerged from behind the Sun's corona. 2013-11-29
New data from the NASA space probe MESSENGER indicate that Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, almost surely has water ice buried beneath the surface at its north pole. 2012-11-29