Solar System

NASA and NOAA have confirmed that the Sun has entered a new solar cycle, with activity beginning to ramp back up from its minimum in December 2019. This next cycle is forecast to be rather quiet, continuing a long-term trend of reduced activity.

Harvard scientists have suggested that the Sun had a long-lost twin. An ancient binary solar system helps explain the strange structure of the Oort cloud, and possibly the hypothetical Planet Nine. Best of all, the team outlines how we could check.

Could there be a tiny black hole hiding in our own backyard? It’s been suggested that the hypothetical Planet Nine is actually a black hole, and now astronomers have proposed how we might find it in the next few years, using an upcoming telescope.

Researchers at CNRS in France and UNESP in Brazil have traced back the odd orbits of objects called Centaurs and found that 19 of them must have originated around another star, before being captured by the Sun’s gravity.

2I/Borisov is a comet from another star system, and now Hubble has taken the valuable opportunity to study its chemical makeup. The study reveals Borisov is very different to any local comet, giving hints about what kind of system it was born in.

‘Oumuamua, the first interstellar interloper detected passing through our solar system, raised many questions. According to a new model, the object’s unusual shape and trajectory may be the result of a devastating close encounter with a star.

Well over 100 new minor planets have been discovered in our solar system, in the darkness out beyond the orbit of Neptune. The discoveries were made by sifting through several years’ worth of data gathered by the Dark Energy Survey (DES).

Researchers have discovered the oldest material on Earth – and it’s not from Earth. Tiny grains from a meteorite that fell in Australia were found to be between 5 and 7 billion years old, meaning they predate our planet, the Sun and the solar system.

2I/Borisov is the first interstellar comet seen, and Hubble has been watching its journey through our neighborhood. The telescope has snapped new images of the comet, which has now swung past the Sun and is on its way back out of the solar system.

NASA has released the first significant findings from the Parker Solar Probe's first two close encounters with the Sun that began in November 2018. Four new studies outline how the spacecraft has both confirmed theories and sprung a few surprises.

An instrument aboard NASA's New Horizons is sending back data that could help scientists predict when the unmanned deep-space probe will reach interstellar space. Using the SWAP instrument, scientists are learning more about the solar winds.

In 2006, Pluto was downgraded from planet to dwarf planet – and now, based on the same definition an object in the asteroid belt may need to be upgraded from asteroid to dwarf planet. New observations of asteroid Hygiea suggest it fits the criteria.