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Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.
What Is a solar eclipse? Your questions answered.
Your guide to total, partial, and annular eclipses: what causes them, what you'll see, and when the next one will happen.
News brief: Voyager 2 has passed beyond the heliopause
Voyager 2 is now outside the reach of the solar wind, traveling in the interstellar medium. Unlike Voyager 1, Voyager 2 has a working plasma spectrometer so will be doing exciting new science. It is expected to last another 5 to 10 years, though not with all instruments operating.
Big news from the magnetosphere
At five years and counting, the Van Allen Probes mission continues to reshape our thinking about how Earth’s radiation belts flex and reconfigure under the influence of solar storms.
Go for GOLD, SES-14!
While we can measure properties of these upper layers using ground-based instruments, satellite-borne remote sensing instruments can give us a more frequent, global, and often higher spatial resolution perspective. And that is precisely what NASA’s Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission will deliver.
Chasing the total solar eclipse at 38,000 feet
Where did you venture to view the Great American Eclipse? About 100 people were lucky enough to make the trip of a lifetime for it: 38,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean, courtesy of Alaska Airlines.
NASA experiments will watch eclipse's effect on atmosphere
The upcoming solar eclipse isn’t just about watching the Moon block out the Sun. A suite of NASA-funded science experiments will to study the unseen effects of the eclipse on Earth's atmosphere.
Could the total solar eclipse reveal a comet?
Next week's solar eclipse will reveal the Sun's corona, nearby bright planets and stars, and, if we get extremely lucky, a comet!
A dispatch from the path of totality: the 2017 solar eclipse in Ravenna, Nebraska
Ravenna, population 1,400, sits on the plains of central Nebraska, and almost on the center line of the path of totality for the upcoming Great American Eclipse. Nebraska native Shane Pekny reports on how this small town is preparing for the big event.
Bill Nye's top eclipse tip: Protect your eyes
Bill Nye, CEO of The Planetary Society, has some suggestions for staying safe during a solar eclipse.
Book Review: Sun Moon Earth
With the North American Total Solar Eclipse coming on August 21, people across the continent are getting eclipse mania! Astronomer Tyler Nordgren has written a detailed book on eclipses with a special focus on the August 21st event.
Parker Solar Probe: NASA renames upcoming mission to touch the Sun
NASA's Parker Solar Probe spacecraft will repeatedly dive through the Sun's corona, giving scientists their first-ever up-close look at our star.
A week in the solar system
A roundup of pretty pictures and news from our robotic ambassadors around the solar system, from November 4 through 8.
A Day in the Solar System: 28 October 2015
On October 28th, the Cassini spacecraft flew through the geyser plume of Saturn's moon Enceladus. But Cassini was not the only spacecraft operating in the solar system that day.
In Pictures: A Partial Solar Eclipse from Space
Two sun-observing spacecraft in Earth orbit captured images of a partial solar eclipse Sunday morning.
Real-time sunset on Mars
Pause your life for six minutes and watch the Sun set....on Mars. Thank you, Glen Nagle, for this awe-inspiring simulation based on Curiosity's sol 956 sunset images.
A (Difficult) Day in the Solar System
After a bad day on the launch pad, some perspective.
Cool animations of Phobos transits from Curiosity
Shooting video of a lumpy moon crossing the Sun and turning it into a giant googly eye is not a new activity for Curiosity, but I get a fresh thrill each time I see one of these sequences downlinked from the rover.
A Martian analemma
A Mars year's worth of Sun images from Opportunity demonstrates Mars' orbital motions as reflected in the changing apparent position of the Sun: the analemma.
Days before its crash, LADEE saw zodiacal light above the lunar horizon
LADEE ended its mission as planned with a crash into the lunar surface on April 17. Just days prior, it turned its star tracker camera toward the lunar horizon and captured a striking series of images of the lunar sunrise and zodiacal light.
A Spin Through the Inner Solar System
Animated maps of the planets show the spheres in motion.



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