Visiting @sy-brt.bsky.social et al. at the Catania observatory where we discussed the activity of Sun-like stars and the links between ESA's Solar Orbiter and PLATO missions. After a few stormy days, I finally made it to the observatory for sunny views of Etna 🏔️ and a look at the solar telescope ☀️

Ever wondered what powers a solar flare? 💥 Solar Orbiter is finally giving us answers to this long-standing mystery. The mission caught a 'magnetic avalanche' on the surface of the Sun just before a flare was released. 🔭🧪1/3

Are you (or do you know of) an undergrad with an interest in solar physics? Check out the Leiden/ESA Astrophysics Program for Summer Students (LEAPS 2026). Myself, Andy To and Henrik Eklund invite you to come work with us at ESTEC on "Catching the Solar Wind in Action". leaps.strw.leidenuniv.nl#none

New paper day! 🔥 George Cherry et al. use the Most Significant Frequency decomposition to investigate shocks, jets, and swirls in the Sun's atmosphere. We find the contribution of 3.5 and 5 mHz signals to be up to 50% of the overall wave power. Published in A&A: www.aanda.org/articles/aa/...

Blue Origin: Engineer becomes first wheelchair user to go to space

🔭 Until now, observing the inner regions of the Sun’s enigmatic atmosphere – the corona – was close to impossible. 🛰️🛰️☀️ The satellite duo making up @esa.int’s Proba-3 mission fills this observation gap by creating artificial solar eclipses in orbit 👉 www.esa.int/Enabling_Sup...

2025 was a landmark year for Europe in space 🚀 From celebrating 50 years of ESA to new missions and scientific breakthroughs, the year reaffirmed Europe’s leadership in science, exploration, climate action and innovation. 🎥 Watch our highlights video: youtu.be/obJbRWZ8f1Y?...

📣 New outreach poster: ESA’s Vigil Mission ☀️💨🛰️💨🌍 The Space-weather “reporter” will monitor the Sun from the Lagrange point 5, reporting 24/7 solar activity days before it reaches Earth. www.esa.int/var/esa/stor...

🛰️🤩🎂 The #Proba-3 satellite duo, creators of #solareclipses, have just celebrated their first anniversary in space! The multitude of images already provided by #ASPIICS on board is a source of great joy for the Royal Observatory of Belgium, its principal investigator. www.astro.oma.be/en/...

Published in @aanda-journal.bsky.social 😍: www.aanda.org/articles/aa/...

☀️Flying through the strongest solar storm ever recorded No communication or navigation, faulty electronics, collision risks. ESA mission control teams faced a scenario unlike any before. Fortunately, this nightmare unfolded not in reality, but as part of the simulation! www.esa.int/Space_Safety...

Beautiful double erruption in 304A observed by GOES/SUVI and Solar Orbiter over the east-limb (slightly later) in the low-latency data.

Are you an early-career scientist or engineer? Then the ESA Research #Fellowships in Space Science might be just the right opportunity for you. Check out the programme details here 👉 www.cosmos.esa.int/web/space-sc... 🔭 🧪 ☄️

Side project day! NASA's Parker Solar Probe (PSP) has been exploring the near-Sun enviroment since the start of solar cycle 25. Now passing maximum activity, how has the shape and size of the Sun's Alfvén surface evolved since? arxiv.org/abs/2509.07088 (1/8)

New paper day! Metcalfe et al. review the evidence for weakened magnetic braking around the Sun's age by homogenizing the stellar parameters from previous studies that constrained the wind braking of stars with observed magnetic fields and x-ray fluxes (proxy for mass-loss): arxiv.org/pdf/2509.03717

ESA Solar Orbiter is zooming towards the Sun (perihelion at 0.29au on the 16th Sept.), currently at 0.44au the spacecraft has a nice view of the south pole (combined image from EUI/FSI). Coronal holes, filaments, active regions, lots of things to investigate!

Our #SolarOrbiter has split the flood of energetic electrons flung out into space from the Sun into two groups, tracing each back to a different kind of outburst from our star 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl... 1/3 🔭 🧪☀️

ESA's Solar Orbiter @esa.int @science.esa.int has begun to sned data home again after it passed superior conjunction on the far-side of the Sun to Earth. With Solar Orbiter slightly below the solar equator and Earth slightly above, we get a nice 360 degree view of the solar surface. ☀️🔍👀

New paper day! 🔥 George Cherry et al. develop the Most Significant Frequency/Wavenumber method for detecting wave activity in realistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the Sun's atmosphere. Published in A&A: www.aanda.org/articles/aa/... (1/4)

Are you an early-career scientist or engineer? Then the ESA Research #Fellowships in Space Science might be just the right opportunity for you. Check out the programme details here 👉 www.cosmos.esa.int/web/space-sc... 🔭 🧪 ☄️

Solar Orbiter Hackathon, 17–21 November 2025 at ESA/ESTEC (Noordwijk, NL). 20 ECRs (PhD and postdoc) will form 5 teams lead by mentors. This is a great chance to connect and collaborate on Solar Orbiter science! For more information: www.cosmos.esa.int/web/solar-or... Deadline to apply: 5th Sept.

What might we expect to see during @esa.int Solar Orbiter's upcoming remote-sensing windows; now with an inclined orbit. Here's the PFSS connectivity of Orbiter during the remote-sensing window of spring 2026 (17th Feb to 6th March), using the current coronal magnetic field and in-situ wind speeds.

It's paper time ! It was published on A&A a few days ago, we have been looking for possible super-close non-transiting exoplanets in the Kepler data 🪐⭐ www.aanda.org/articles/aa/...

New paper day! See et al. explores how the large-scale magnetic fields of low-mass stars (0.2-1.3 solar mass) vary as a function of stellar rotation and convective turnover time. Victor focuses on the latest Zeeman-Doppler imaging of slowly rotating M-dwarfs. arxiv.org/pdf/2507.16986 (1/4)

Today: 14.40 Nested Active Regions! UK SolPhys Open Session conference.astro.dur.ac.uk/event/7/sess... Tomorrow: 09.00 Activity and Rotation of Sun-like stars! Common Nature of Solar/Stellar Coronae conference.astro.dur.ac.uk/event/7/sess... @nam25-durham.bsky.social‬ #NAM2025 #NAM2025durham

🆕For the first time, astronomers using our Cheops mission have caught a planet triggering flares of radiation from the star it orbits 🪐💥 These tremendous explosions are blasting away the planet’s wispy atmosphere, causing it to shrink every year. Find out more 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl... 🔭 🧪

Breaking space news: We have made our own solar eclipse in space! 🌘 Today, we release the first images from our Proba-3 mission, which flies two spacecraft in precise formation to create artificial solar eclipses in orbit. Learn more ➡️ www.esa.int/Enabling_Sup...

Ready to see the Sun like we never have before? 😎 #SolarOrbiter has just released the first views ever of the Sun’s poles! Thanks to its newly tilted orbit, the mission will uncover details about the Sun’s magnetic field, the solar cycle & space weather 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl... 🔭 🧪 ☄️ ☀️ 1/

Hey! Lookie what PUNCH (@punch-mission.bsky.social) just saw! Two different solar storms crossing the entire inner solar system! NASA's site doesn't thumbnail well, so click the link for the movie and other images. ☀️🔭🛰️🧪 science.nasa.gov/blogs/punch/...

Similarly, the total surface magnetic flux (computed from Carrington maps of the Sun's photospheric magnetic field) is moving back down towards cycle 24. Even at the peak of cycle 25, we were far short of the unsigned magnetic flux from cycle 23! Monthly sunspot number dropped right off in May!

There's a fast CME heading into some fast solar wind and some pre-existing slower CMEs. We're currently putting arrival at noon-to-midnight tomorrow, but this forecast may change as more observations become available. Updates here: research.reading.ac.uk/met-spate/hu...

En 2022, une zone active est apparue sur le Soleil et a dominé l'activité solaire pendant plusieurs mois. La mission Solar Orbiter de l' @esa.int a permis une meilleure compréhension de la formation, de l'évolution et des caractéristiques de cette zones actives, essentielle pour la météo spatiale :

Solar Orbiter Nugget @science.esa.int about our recent active region nest study. We used Solar Orbiter as a far side observer from April to October 2022 to survey magnetic activity over the entire solar surface. This shed light on the nesting of active regions: www.cosmos.esa.int/web/solar-or...

Our latest paper investigating a solar active region nest (prolific flare factory) using near-continuous observations from NASA SDO, @noaa.gov GOES, and @esa.int Solar Orbiter is now published in A&A 🥳: doi.org/10.1051/0004...

Meet the 2025 Research Fellows in space science! They were selected to pursue their own independent research in space science at one of our establishments. Find out who they are and what kind of research they do here 👉 www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed... Congratulations to all! 🧪☄️

With @esa.int Solar Orbiter back to the Sun's far side, we are again tracking active region over ~ 4pi steradians (note: Orbiter's inclination). We have been able to track AR14055 since it left Earth view on the 15th April (now at the east-limb). AR14055 was producing M-class flares on the far side.

Shifting perspective on the Sun provided by @esa.int Solar Orbiter on its inclined orbit. Low-latency images from the EUI telescope from around perihelion last month to now. 😍

☀️Soak up the Sun with Solar Orbiter's widest high-resolution view yet! Zoom in and explore👉 www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed... 🔭🧪

New paper day! ☀️ Regions on the Sun with recurring flux emergence are called active nests. From Earth alone, we cannot monitor their evolution. With far-side data from @esa.int Solar Orbiter, we can evaluate the contribution of active nests to the Sun's global activity arxiv.org/abs/2504.06345 (1/4)

Gave a seminar today at the Observatory of Meudon, Paris. New title slide on my new favourite subject, plus an update on the Fast Wind SOOP 😉

Comme d'habitude, l'astrophotographe Thierry Legault nous régale avec cette incroyable photo en Hα de l'éclipse de Soleil de samedi dernier (29 mars 2025) depuis Paris :

🌪️ Watch particles whirl out from the Sun in giant, million-km twisters. 🥇 #SolarOrbiter is the first to capture this on camera! By comparison: cyclones on Earth can reach heights up to 15 km. More info 👉 www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed... 🔭 🧪 ☀️ #heliophysics

We have been very lucky to have such a large coronal hole for ESA Solar Orbiter and NASA Parker Solar Probe to investigate over the last few weeks! Solar Orbiter will continue probe this region with another block of high resultion/cadence remote-sensing in early April. Looking forward to the data!

There are 3 space-weather posts opening up at the UK Met Office Space Weather Operations Centre. Please circulate - it would be great to further strengthen the MOSWOC team. careers.metoffice.gov.uk/join-us/sear... careers.metoffice.gov.uk/join-us/sear... careers.metoffice.gov.uk/join-us/sear...

This week, @esa.int Solar Orbiter will investigate the fast solar wind by taking high resolution images of coronal holes (associated dark patches on the Sun) for comparison with in-situ measurements of the solar wind. ~ A third of the Earth's orbital distance and 18 degrees below the ecliptic. (1/2)

It's #Euclid data release day! @esa.int and the Euclid Consortium are making 63 deg² of Wide Survey data available to the world. Imaging and spectroscopy data, catalogues and masks for 20+ million galaxies, quasars, stars and substellar objects. #astronomy #science #space 1/4

ESA @esa.int Solar Orbiter is diving towards the Sun and should be crossing the heliospheric current sheet very soon; which is anchored by a nested active region! Later this month we will try to make observations of fast solar wind sources, with coronal hole 3 looking like a promising candidate!

ESA's Solar Orbiter spacecraft will make its largest latitudinal excursion, down to 17-degrees south, later this month. We make a regular forecast of the solar wind at Orbiter for the next 27 days: research.reading.ac.uk/met-spate/ws...

New #ReviewArticle by Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin Medal and Prize winner Louise Harra & Daniel Müller. Solar Orbiter: a short review of the mission and early science results. #AstrophysSpaceSci 370, 12 (2025). doi.org/10.1007/s105... #2024AstroPrizeCollection #OpenAccess @louise-solar.bsky.social