All Stories

On September 18, 1941, the Brooklyn Dodgers were in Pittsburgh to play a game against the Pirates. In the fourth inning, with the score tied 0-0, announcer Red Barber’s radio broadcast was disrupted, and listeners suffered 15 minutes of silence. When the broadcast resumed, the Pirates had scored four runs.

When you look up you can see the stars, the Moon, and sometimes even other planets! We know what these otherworldly objects are because of centuries of research carried out by curious stargazers before us.  

Spacecraft face a dramatic range of conditions, from airless worlds bombarded by tiny meteorites to environmental extremes, when exploring our Universe. 

In 1859 the Sun threw a temper tantrum directed at Earth.  It spewed magnetized plasma into space, which made its way here and triggered effects that *literally* shocked telegraph operators (not to mention knocking down telegraph lines and causing aurora to be seen near the equator). If a geomagnetic storm of this size happened today, it could cause a widespread electrical and communications blackout. Events of that magnitude are rare but the Sun’s activity affects us all the time – from static on the radio to a diverted commercial flight or a wonky GPS app. The good news is scientists are monitoring the Sun to predict when and where effects will be felt. On today’s episode, we speak to experts from NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center to learn how and why they stare at the Sun (for science!).

Remembering Dale Snodgrass, see the sun through a new lens, become a space scientist, and more!

The Sun has been an inspiration in our creation of paintings, poems, music, stories, and sculptures, to name a few. Explore how artists express and depict the Sun in works throughout the Smithsonian’s collections.

The next few months will also bring some exciting developments in space science. There are new missions about to launch and spacecraft that will reach their destinations after long journeys. Here are six out-of-this-world things to look for in the news over the next few months.

Today is the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. Here are three things you might not know about the longest day of the year.

Parker Solar Probe's mission to figure out three strange things that the Sun does.

If you looked up at the sky on January 1, you might have witnessed something spectacular--the Moon kicked off the year with the biggest full moon of 2018, a supermoon. But what about the Sun; did you know that it can be super, too?