Space

If the skies are clear these next few nights, take a few moments to look up. You just might be lucky and catch a glimpse of a spectacularly bright meteor — a Taurid meteor streaking across the sky. While most meteor shower displays last about a week, the Taurids have perhaps the longest duration of overall visibility. Meteors from this particular stream begin appearing in mid-October and…

After briefly escaping from Earth’s view during a (very) close approach to the sun on Oct. 30, Comet 3I/ATLAS can finally be seen through amateur telescopes again, though it’s impossible to say how long the interstellar invader will remain detectable for. 3I/ATLAS was discovered earlier this year, on July 1, and was swiftly confirmed to be just the third interstellar object known to…

The sun has fired off not one but two colossal X-class solar flares in less than 12 hours, causing radio blackouts across the sunlit portion of Earth at the time of eruption and marking a dramatic uptick in solar activity. Each of the X-flares was accompanied by a coronal mass ejection. (Image credit: NOAA SWPC / LASCO) The first eruption, an X1.8-class flare, exploded from sunspot AR4274…