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Categories: Mathematics: Statistics, Space: The Solar System

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Eruptive events on the sun can be wildly different. Some come just with a solar flare, some with an additional ejection of solar material called a coronal mass ejection, and some with complex moving structures in association with changes in magnetic field lines that loop up into the sun's atmosphere, the corona. On July 19, 2012, an eruption occurred on the sun that produced all three.

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NASA's Kepler mission scientists have discovered a new planetary system that is home to the smallest planet yet found around a star similar to our sun. The planets are located in a system called Kepler-37, about 210 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. The smallest planet, Kepler-37b, is slightly larger than our moon, measuring about one-third the size of Earth. It is smaller than Mercury, which made its detection a challenge.

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Planetary scientists have found new evidence suggesting auroras – similar to Earth’s Aurora Borealis - occur on bodies outside our solar system.

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On Jan. 13, 2013, at 2:24 a.m. EST, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME. Not to be confused with a solar flare, a CME is a solar phenomenon that can send solar particles into space and reach Earth one to three days later.

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Newly released Hubble Space Telescope images of a vast debris disk encircling the nearby star Fomalhaut and a mysterious planet circling it may provide forensic evidence of a titanic planetary disruption in the system.

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Astronomers have discovered what appears to be a large asteroid belt around the star Vega, the second brightest star in northern night skies. The discovery of an asteroid belt-like band of debris around Vega makes the star similar to another observed star called Fomalhaut. The data are consistent with both stars having inner, warm belts and outer, cool belts separated by a gap. This architecture is similar to the asteroid and Kuiper belts in our own solar system.

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On June 6, 2012, Venus passed directly between Earth and the sun, in a so-called transit where the planet appears as a silhouette against the solar disk, something that will not happen again until Dec. 5, 2117. A team of Italian astronomers used the opportunity to perform an unusual and challenging experiment, looking at the sunlight reflected off the moon ('moonlight') to see how it changed during the transit. This technique could help scientists to find planets in orbit around other stars.

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Fifty years ago on a mid-December day, NASA's Mariner 2 spacecraft sailed close to the shrouded planet Venus, marking the first time any spacecraft had ever successfully made a close-up study of another planet. The flyby, 36 million miles (58 million kilometers) away from Earth, gave America its first bona fide space "first" after five years in which the Soviet Union led with several space exploration milestones. Designed and built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., the successful Mariner 2 spacecraft ushered in a new era of solar system exploration.

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Two researchers have recently proposed the first ever model explaining how the great majority of regular satellites in our solar system were formed out of planet rings. The model, the only one of its kind, was first tested in 2010 on Saturn's moons. It seems to account for the present distribution of “giant” planets and also explains how the satellites of the “terrestrial” planets such as Earth or Pluto  came into being. These results are a major step forward in understanding and explaining the formation of planet systems across the universe.

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Six years of observations by the European Space Agency's Venus Express have shown large changes in the sulfur dioxide content of the planet's atmosphere, and one intriguing possible explanation is volcanic eruptions. The thick atmosphere of Venus contains over a million times as much sulfur dioxide as Earth's, where almost all of the pungent, toxic gas is generated by volcanic activity. Most of the sulfur dioxide on Venus is hidden below the planet's dense upper cloud deck, because the gas is readily destroyed by sunlight. That means any sulfur dioxide detected in Venus' upper atmosphere above the cloud deck must have been recently supplied from below.

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New research hints that planets orbiting white and brown dwarfs, even in the habitable zone, face a "difficult path to habitability."

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Hoping to expand our understanding of auroras and other fleeting atmospheric events, a team of space-weather researchers designed and built a new camera with unprecedented capabilities that can simultaneously image multiple spectral bands, in essence different wavelengths or colors, of light. The camera produced the first-ever hyperspectral images of auroras -- commonly referred to as "the Northern (or Southern) Lights"-- and may already have revealed a previously unknown atmospheric phenomenon.

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Astronomers have discovered vast comet belts surrounding two nearby planetary systems known to host only Earth-to-Neptune-mass worlds. The comet reservoirs could have delivered life-giving oceans to the innermost planets.

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Dwarf planet Makemake is about two thirds of the size of Pluto, and travels around the Sun in a distant path that lies beyond that of Pluto but closer to the Sun than Eris, the most massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System. Previous observations of chilly Makemake have shown it to be similar to its fellow dwarf planets, leading some astronomers to expect its atmosphere, if present, to be similar to that of Pluto. However, the new study now shows that, like Eris, Makemake is not surrounded by a significant atmosphere.

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Have you taken an interesting astronomical photo this year? From planets and moons to the Sun, stars and galaxies, we’d like you to send us your images to feature as our Space Science Image of the Week on 31 December.

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On Nov. 13, 2012, the sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, peaking at 9:04 pm EST. This flare is classified as an M6 flare. M-class flares are the weakest flares that can still cause some space weather effects near Earth. They can cause brief radio blackouts at the poles. This M-class flare caused a radio blackout categorized according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association's Space Weather Scales as R2 -- or "moderate" -- on a scale of R1 to R5. It has since subsided.

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Every six seconds, for many millions of years, comets have been colliding near a star visible to the naked eye, astronomers report.

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The sun emitted a significant solar flare on Oct. 22, 2012, peaking at 11:17 pm EDT. The flare came from an active region on the left side of the sun that has been numbered AR 1598, which has already been the source of a number of weaker flares. This flare was classified as an X1.8-class flare.

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Among the oddities of the outer solar system are the middle-sized moons of Saturn, a half-dozen icy bodies dwarfed by Saturn's massive moon Titan. According to a new model for the origin of the Saturn system, these middle-sized moons were spawned during giant impacts in which several major satellites merged to form Titan.

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In 1986, when Voyager swept past Uranus, the probe’s portraits of the planet were “notoriously bland,” disappointing scientists, yielding few new details of the planet and its atmosphere, and giving it a reputation as a bore of the solar system.