Uploaded October 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
The Sun is stirring from its latest slumber. As sunspots and flares bubble from the Sun’s surface, representatives from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA), and the Solar Cycle Prediction Panel have announced the Sun has reached its solar maximum period.
The solar cycle is the natural cycle of the Sun as it transitions between low and high activity. During the most active part of the cycle, known as solar maximum, the Sun can unleash immense explosions of light, energy, and solar radiation — all of which create conditions known as space weather. Space weather can affect satellites and astronauts in space, as well as communications systems — such as radio and GPS — and power grids on Earth.
Music Credit: “Society News Bed Instrumental” by Jean-Francois Berger [SACEM] via Universal Production Music
Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Producer: Beth Anthony (eMITS)
This video can be freely shared and downloaded at svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14685 While the video in its entirety can be shared without permission, the music and some individual imagery may have been obtained through permission and may not be excised or remixed in other products. Specific details on such imagery may be found here:
svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14685
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nasa.gov/nasa-brand-center/images-and-media/.
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The Sun is stirring from its latest slumber. As sunspots and flares bubble from the Sun’s surface, representatives from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA), and the Solar Cycle Prediction Panel have announced the Sun has reached its solar maximum period.
The solar cycle is the natural cycle of the Sun as it transitions between low and high activity. During the most active part of the cycle, known as solar maximum, the Sun can unleash immense explosions of light, energy, and solar radiation — all of which create conditions known as space weather. Space weather can affect satellites and astronauts in space, as well as communications systems — such as radio and GPS — and power grids on Earth.
Music Credit: “Society News Bed Instrumental” by Jean-Francois Berger [SACEM] via Universal Production Music
Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Producer: Beth Anthony (eMITS)
This video can be freely shared and downloaded at svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14685 While the video in its entirety can be shared without permission, the music and some individual imagery may have been obtained through permission and may not be excised or remixed in other products. Specific details on such imagery may be found here:
svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14685
For more information on NASA’s media guidelines, visit
nasa.gov/nasa-brand-center/images-and-media/.
If you liked this video, subscribe to the NASA Goddard YouTube channel: youtube.com/NASAGoddard
Follow NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
· Instagram: instagram.com/nasagoddard
· X: twitter.com/NASAGoddard
· Facebook: facebook.com/NASAGoddard
· Flickr: flickr.com/photos/gsfc
![The Closest Images Ever Taken of the Sun’s Atmosphere
On its record-breaking pass by the Sun in December 2024, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe captured stunning new images from within the Sun’s atmosphere. These newly released images — taken closer to the Sun than we’ve ever been before — are helping scientists better understand the Sun’s influence across the solar system, including events that can affect Earth.
Learn more: https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/heliophysics/nasas-parker-solar-probe-snaps-closest-ever-images-to-sun/
Video credit: NASA
Producer: Joy Ng (eMITS)
Scientist: Nour Rawafi (Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab)
Videographer: John Philyaw (eMITS), Lacey Young (eMITS)
Music credits: “Up There” by Alexandre Prodhomme [SACEM]; “Temporal Shift” by Alessandro Rizzo [PRS] and Elliot Greenway Ireland; “Micro Life” by Peter Larsen [PRS]; “Hope and Relief” by Eddy Pradelles [SACEM] via Universal Production Music
This video can be freely shared and downloaded at https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14865. While the video in its entirety can be shared without permission, the music and some individual imagery may have been obtained through permission and may not be excised or remixed in other products. Specific details on such imagery may be found here: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14865. For more information on NASA’s media guidelines, visit https://nasa.gov/multimedia/guidelines.
If you liked this video, subscribe to the NASA Goddard YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/NASAGoddard
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· Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc The Closest Images Ever Taken of the Sun’s Atmosphere](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/k1dTwEyuD44/mqdefault.jpg)
![NASAs Illuminate: Comet Soars by Erupting Sun
Well, look who decided to swing by — a bright and shiny visitor from the Oort Cloud!
For a few days in October 2024, our own Sun was upstaged by Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, an icy, rocky dustball (a.k.a. comet) plunging toward the Sun from the outer solar system. The comet was the second-brightest ever seen by ESA/NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft, and it happened to be passing by while the Sun was already putting on quite a show. Enjoy!
NASA’s Illuminate: Out-of-this-world images shining light on our Sun and solar system.
Music Credit: “Anomalies” by Lindsay Debra Wright [PRS] via Universal Production Music
Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Producer: Lacey Young (eMITS)
Narrator: Carolyn Ng (ADNET Systems)
This video can be freely shared and downloaded at https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14706 While the video in its entirety can be shared without permission, the music and some individual imagery may have been obtained through permission and may not be excised or remixed in other products. Specific details on such imagery may be found here: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14706
For more information on NASA’s media guidelines, visit
https://www.nasa.gov/nasa-brand-center/images-and-media/.
If you liked this video, subscribe to the NASA Goddard YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/NASAGoddard
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· Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc NASAs Illuminate: Comet Soars by Erupting Sun](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/k3gTRrY0Pkc/mqdefault.jpg)


![Lucy Spacecraft’s Second Slingshot of Earth
NASA’s Lucy mission is heading to the Jupiter Trojans, two swarms of asteroids trapped in Jupiter’s orbit…but to get there, Lucy needs a little help from Earth. On December 12, 2024, the spacecraft will make its second close flyby of Earth (following an earlier gravity assist in October 2022). As night falls on Hawaii, Lucy will streak over the darkened Pacific Ocean, coming to within about 220 miles of the planet at 11:15 pm ET. The encounter will boost Lucy’s velocity by four-and-a-half miles per second relative to the Sun, putting it on course for the L4 Trojans that travel ahead of Jupiter.
Read more on the Lucy blog: https://blogs.nasa.gov/lucy/2024/12/10/nasas-lucy-spacecraft-prepares-for-second-earth-gravity-assist/
Learn about gravity assists: https://youtube.com/shorts/5Bm9RDp07aQ?feature=share
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Dan Gallagher: Producer/Narrator
Kel Elkins: Data Visualizer
Walt Feimer: Animator
Adriana Manrique Gutierrez: Animator
Jonathan North: Animator
Dan Gallagher: Animator
Katherine Kretke: Public Affairs
Nancy Jones: Public Affairs
Kathryn Mersmann: Support
Aaron E. Lepsch: Technical Support
Universal Production Music: “Determined Arrival 4-5” by Joel Goodman [ASCAP]; “Floating” by Nicholas Smith [PRS]; “Subtle Confidence 3” by Joel Goodman [ASCAP]
This video can be freely shared and downloaded at https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14734. While the video in its entirety can be shared without permission, the music and some individual imagery may have been obtained through permission and may not be excised or remixed in other products. Specific details on such imagery may be found here: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14734. For more information on NASA’s media guidelines, visit https://nasa.gov/multimedia/guidelines.
If you liked this video, subscribe to the NASA Goddard YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/NASAGoddard
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· Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc Lucy Spacecraft’s Second Slingshot of Earth](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/lIhF82kVjzk/mqdefault.jpg)
![NASA’s Illuminate: Dark Secrets of the Black Aurora
Colors of the aurora: Red, green, purple… black?
Mysterious “black auroras” are real, and they’re not like the northern and southern lights you’ve seen before. Inside these dark spots, strange physics is at work — and a NASA rocket just launched from Alaska to reveal it.
On Feb. 9, 2026, NASA launched the Black and Diffuse Auroral Science Surveyor sounding rocket mission from the Poker Flat Research Range near Fairbanks, Alaska. Flying their rocket through the black aurora, the team, led by principal investigator Marilia Samara, placed scientific instruments inside a black aurora to help reveal how and why they form.
NASA’s Illuminate: Out-of-this-world images shining light on our Sun and solar system.
Music credit: Solo Trip” by Nicholas Smith [PRS] from Universal Production Music
Credit: NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center
Producer/Editor/Narrator: Lacey Young (eMITS)
Writer: Lacey Young (eMITS), Miles Hatfield (eMITS)
Sound Effects:
Pixabay
This video can be freely shared and downloaded at https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14954. While the video in its entirety can be shared without permission, the music and some individual imagery may have been obtained through permission and may not be excised or remixed in other products. Specific details on such imagery may be found here: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14954. For more information on NASA’s media guidelines, visit https://www.nasa.gov/nasa-brand-center/images-and-media/.
If you liked this video, subscribe to the NASA Goddard YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/NASAGoddard
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· Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc NASA’s Illuminate: Dark Secrets of the Black Aurora](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/lYYXk_yEOcY/mqdefault.jpg)


![Supercomputer Traces Neutron Stars’ Magnetic Tango
New simulations performed on NASA’s Pleiades supercomputer are providing scientists with the most comprehensive look yet into the interacting magnetic structures around city-sized neutron stars in the moments before they crash. The team identified potential signals emitted during the stars’ final moments that may be detectable by future observatories. Just before orbiting neutron stars merge, the magnetic fields and plasma around them, called magnetospheres, become entangled. The new simulations studied the last several orbits before the merger, when the magnetospheres undergo rapid and dramatic changes, and modeled potentially observable high-energy signals. Neutron star mergers produce a particular type of GRB (gamma-ray burst), the most powerful class of explosions in the cosmos. They create near-light-speed jets that emit gamma rays, powerful ripples in space-time called gravitational waves, and a so-called kilonova explosion that forges heavy elements like gold and platinum. So far, only one event, observed in 2017, has connected all three phenomena. Neutron stars pack more mass than our Sun into a ball about 15 miles (24 kilometers) across, roughly the length of Manhattan Island in New York City. Born out of supernova explosions, neutron stars can spin dozens of times a second and wield some of the strongest magnetic fields known, up to 10 trillion times stronger than a refrigerator magnet. That’s strong enough to directly transform gamma-rays into electrons and positrons and rapidly accelerate them to energies far beyond anything achievable in particle accelerators on Earth. In the simulations, which were performed on the Pleiades supercomputer at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, the linked magnetospheres behave like a magnetic circuit that continually rewires itself as the stars orbit. Field lines connect, break, and reconnect while currents surge through plasma moving at nearly the speed of light, and the rapidly varying fields can accelerate particles to high energies. The team ran hundreds of simulations of a system of two orbiting neutron stars, each with 1.4 solar masses. The goal was to explore how different magnetic field configurations affected the way electromagnetic energy light in all of its forms left the coalescing system. The research shows that the emitted light varies greatly in brightness and is not distributed evenly, so what a far-away observer might detect depends greatly on their perspective on the merger. In addition, the way the signals strengthen as the stars get closer and closer depends on the relative magnetic orientations of the neutron stars. If next-generation gravitational wave observatories can provide an early warning, future ground-based gamma-ray telescopes will be able to team up with space-based X-ray and gamma-ray telescopes to begin searching for the pre-merger emission seen in these simulations. Routine observation of events like these using two different “messengers” — light and gravitational waves — will provide a major leap forward in understanding this class of GRBs.
Music credit: “A Theory Develops,” Pip Heywood [PRS], Universal Production Music
Credit: NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center
Scott Wiessinger (eMITS): Producer/editor
Scott Wiessinger (eMITS): Narrator
Francis Reddy (University of Maryland College Park):Science Writer
This video can be freely shared and downloaded at https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14884 While the video in its entirety can be shared without permission, the music and some individual imagery may have been obtained through permission and may not be excised or remixed in other products. Specific details on such imagery may be found here: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14884. For more information on NASA’s media guidelines, visit https://www.nasa.gov/nasa-brand-center/images-and-media/.
If you liked this video, subscribe to the NASA Goddard YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/NASAGoddard
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· Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc Supercomputer Traces Neutron Stars’ Magnetic Tango](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/mt6vcy-hssA/mqdefault.jpg)

