Sun

Silent Sun: The phenomenon of our quiet star Astrophysics

Silent Sun: The phenomenon of our quiet star

The Sun is rather quiet. That’s the premise of my novel “Silent Sun.” But now researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Göttingen, Germany have also proved it with a systematic comparison published in Science. In such analyses, of course, it is important to make sure you are not comparing apples with oranges. Red dwarfs, for example, are considered much more active. But even among the class of yellow dwarfs like the Sun, there can be big differences. Therefore, the researchers selected candidate stars that were similar to the Sun in terms of important…
Spectacular details on the Sun’s surface Space

Spectacular details on the Sun’s surface

The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) plays an important role in my novel “Silent Sun.” When I wrote the book, the solar telescope was still under construction. It’s still not completely finished, but it’s already taken its first snapshots of its only object of observation, our Sun. The images are absolutely stunning, showing the Sun’s surface at a level of detail never seen before. (more…)
What will happen after the Sun dies? Space

What will happen after the Sun dies?

In approximately ten billion years, our Sun will cease to exist, that much is clear. But astronomers, of course, are thinking even farther out – they wonder what will become of our mother star. Nine out of ten stars will leave behind a planetary nebula, a massive, illuminated cloud of interstellar gas and dust, when they transition from red giants to white dwarves. A nebula can contain almost half the mass of its former star; the nebula is visible for approximately 10,000 years, as long as the core is still hot enough to light up the cloud from inside.…