sun

Late sunrises, dark mornings, and the sun's polarity.

The Best of Our Knowledge explores topics on learning, education, and research.The sun is the center of our solar system and our source of almost all energy.The space probe Solar Orbiter has been able to identify the Sun’s dual engines for fast electrons, explosive flares and coronal mass ejections.Being able to collect this data researchers have uncovered the key mysteries about these sun particles.

On Christmas Eve, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will make the closest approach to the sun ever. We’ll learn about the science behind the mission.And the Fish and Wildlife Service wants to place the monarch butterfly on the Endangered Species List.

The high sun’s weather effects still linger. Winter's typical sheets of stratus clouds and overcast lie months in our future, while puffy. Convective cumulus clouds caused by rising pockets of warm air, are still the norm. And we still experience the fact that air's capacity to hold moisture is 10 times greater now than it is in early spring and fall. So, unlike the dry air we typically get in mid-September, late August can still bring muggy conditions.

It’s often hard to separate coincidence from correspondence, like the 11-year sunspot cycle. Powerful solar storms must affect us, but there are thousands of potential rhythms from political events to earthquakes we could try to match up with it. It's challenging to know which are related and which are merely the mischief caused by the law of averages.

On this edition of Vox Pop, we welcome renowned astronomer Bob Berman to the studio to field all of your Astronomy-related questions.One of the best-known…