On Jan. 31, 1958, Explorer 1 became the first satellite launched by the United States. Its primary science instrument, a ...

The cycle of day and night governs life on Earth, but in some regions, a remarkable phenomenon occurs where the sun never sets for weeks or even months at a time. Known as the midnight sun, this ...

It sounds strange at first because it’s actually the hottest time of the year. One would think it’s actually the opposite. This little marvel is due to the fact that the Earth’s orbit around the sun ...

Every year in early January, Earth reaches the closest point in its orbit to the Sun, a moment astronomers call perihelion. We are slightly nearer to our star and receiving more solar energy than we ...

Albedo is the reflection of sunlight back into space, mainly from bright surfaces such as clouds, snow, ice and atmospheric particles, providing an essential planetary cooling shield. However, a 2021 ...

Earth’s orbit around the Sun isn’t a perfect circle—it’s slightly elliptical. Each year, around July 2 or 3, Earth reaches its farthest point from the Sun, known as aphelion. Around January 2 or 3, ...

A solar storm is a catchall term that describes any disturbance in the sun that involves the violent ejection of solar material into space. This can come in the form of coronal mass ejections, where ...

Close-up measurements from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe are giving scientists an unprecedented look at how the solar wind gains ...