It's always sunny in SOHO

well, I actually meant to write "on SOHO" as in the Sun-watching telescope I just wrote a new story about for ESA... of course it's always sunny there, being outside of the Earth's atmosphere! but since it's been unusually sunny here in Munich for quite some days, the title seemed more than appropriate :-)

and if you want to find out more about observations of the Sun in the past decade and a half... here are a few fun facts:

A change of pace for EIT, the ground-breaking Sun-watching camera

For almost 15 years, the EIT camera on board SOHO transmitted a picture of the solar corona every 12 minutes, providing ground-breaking observations of the Sun that changed our perception and understanding of our star. After a remarkable career, this instrument has now eased into semi-retirement. Although no longer as active as during its heyday, EIT will still provide snapshots of the Sun - at a more leisurely pace. More...

Image credits: ESA/NASA - SOHO/EIT

Planck & clusters: SO cool

Here is a new story I just wrote for ESA about my favourite satellite, Planck, and its newest observations of big, huge, beautiful galaxy clusters... enjoy :-)

Planck's first glimpse at galaxy clusters and a new supercluster

Surveying the microwave sky, Planck has obtained its very first images of galaxy clusters, amongst the largest objects in the Universe, by means of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect, a characteristic signature they imprint on the Cosmic Microwave Background. Joining forces in a fruitful collaboration between ESA missions, XMM-Newton followed up Planck's detections and revealed that one of them is a previously unknown supercluster of galaxies. More...

Image Credits: ESA/ LFI & HFI Consortia

Eau de étoile

here's a new story about water being unexpectedly found in an old star dominated by carbon... and a possible explanation for that:

Herschel detection explains the origin of water in a carbon star

ESA's Herschel Space Observatory has detected water vapour in a location previously thought to be impossible - in the atmosphere of an ageing, red giant carbon star. The rich and detailed data provided by Herschel can be explained within a new framework in which ultraviolet photons play a key role. More...

Image credits: ESA/PACS/SPIRE/MESS Consortia