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Explanation: Like most other sungrazing comets, Comet Lovejoy (C/2011 W3) was not expected to survive its close encounter with the Sun. But it did. This image from a coronograph onboard the sun-staring SOHO spacecraft identifies the still inbound remnants of the tail, with the brilliant head or coma emerging from the solar glare on December 16. The Sun's position, behind an occulting disk to block the overwhelming glare, is indicated by the white circle. Separated from its tail, Comet Lovejoy's coma is so bright it saturates the camera's pixels creating the horizontal streaks. Based on their orbits, sungrazer comets are...

<p>London, England (CNN) -- Metropolitan police in London, England, appealed Monday for further information about last month's death of a man who worked for a British intelligence agency and whose naked body was found in a padlocked duffel bag in his bathroom.</p>

At first glance it looks like aliens are using the sun for target practice. A string of bullet-shaped streaks of light appear to be shooting straight toward the sun. These are the proverbial snowballs in Hell, plunging 300 miles per second toward a fiery end in the sun's atmosphere... The wayward comets are called sungrazers. They are a class of comet that likes to live dangerously. Sungrazers can skirt within a few thousand miles of the sun's roiling photosphere. Many are torn apart or evaporate as they streak along at a blazing 1 million miles per hour. As their orbits...

Enlarge Image Turmoil. Magnetism produces much of the sun's surface phenomena, such as these sunspots, seen in ultraviolet light. Credit: NASA/TRACE Researchers have discovered that one of the mysterious forces that sweep the sun's surface shows an unexpectedly strong connection with the number of sunspots, magnetic disturbances that can affect Earth's weather and telecommunications. The findings should improve predictions of the sun's dynamics and might even help scientists develop better climate models. Along with heat and light, the sun emits x-rays and magnetically charged particles that can endanger astronauts, fry circuits aboard satellites orbiting Earth, and overload electric power...

SPECTACULAR ERUPTION: "A spectacular eruption is underway on the sun. SOHO is tracking a bright CME [coronal mass ejection] billowing upward from the vicinity of the sun's north pole: movie. Imagery from NASA's STEREO spacecraft show that this is a farside eruption, tilted away from Earth. Stay tuned for updates."

Over the period of several hours SOHO observed a large bubble-like coronal mass ejection (CME) blast from the far side of the Sun and out into space to the right (Dec. 8-9, 2008). The particle cloud will have no effect on Earth. Even within the rather narrow field of view of this C2 coronagraph, the bubble expands to the size of the sun. CMEs often appear bulbous in shape, but this might be likened to an expanding smoke ring. The sun is still near its lowest levels of activity in the solar cycle, but starting to break out of its...

Mighty eruptions on the sun trigger bursts of sound waves that ripple across the fiery ball of gas. The finding, which will be published in the May 1 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters, comes from data collected with the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a joint venture between NASA and ESA. Astronomers have known that sound waves constantly trek toward the sun's interior, producing a background "ringing" of sorts. As they move through the sun's plasma, the sound waves take on a pulsing pattern of five minutes, and hence are called five-minute oscillations. They are also called starquakes. "It's...

Cisco Systems Inc. is warning users that nearly 80 of its routers are vulnerable to a hack tactic that got play last week. Dubbed "drive-by pharming" by Symantec Corp. and university researchers who first publicized the danger in a paper, the attack involves luring users to malicious sites where a device's default password is used to redirect them to bogus sites. Once they are at those sites, their identities could be stolen or malware could be force-fed to their computers. In an advisory posted Thursday, Cisco listed 77 vulnerable routers in the lines sold to small offices, home offices, branch...

Comet McNaught has just made its appearance in the SOHO (SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory) "LASCO-3" field (at about the 11:00 position) -- and it is very bright!! The real-time image is viewable at http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current_c3small.mpg. In the next couple of days, the 48-hr MPEGs of the SOHO LASCO-3 field at http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current_c3small.mpg should be well worth watching. ~~~~~~ (The above URL is for the small (256 X 256) MPEG. The larger (512 X 512) MPEG at http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current_c3.mpg appears to have a problem at present.)

"If you live in the Northern hemisphere, this evening is your best remaining opportunity to catch Comet McNaught in its full glory. The comet is sinking rapidly from one evening to the next, but it's also getting brighter.."

A racially tinged comment, uttered by an apparently inebriated Imette St. Guillen, may have sent bouncer Darryl Littlejohn into a murderous rage, detectives now believe, according to police sources. Just before Littlejohn was ordered to escort St. Guillen out of The Falls, a SoHo bar, on the night she was raped and killed, she told him: "That's why all you black people are in jail," witnesses told police. The remark came after a brief, contentious discussion with Littlejohn, police sources said..

Battered and somewhat broken, a sentinel stands between the Earth and the Sun, continually watching for impending solar storms and other activities. For a decade, the spacecraft - the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO - has not only peeled back many mysteries of the Sun but also revolutionized studies of the space weather that bathes every corner of the solar system. Scientists and engineers around the world are celebrating SOHO's 10th anniversary and heralding it as one of the most productive spacecraft ever flown. Built by the European Space Agency and operated by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in...

"Before SOHO was launched, 16 sungrazing comets had been discovered by space observatories. Based on that experience, who could have predicted that SOHO would discover more than sixty times that number, and in only nine years? This is truly a remarkable achievement!" said Dr. Chris St. Cyr, Senior Project Scientist for NASA's Living With a Star program at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Forecasters at the NOAA Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colo., observed a geomagnetic storm on Sunday, May 15, which they classified as an extreme event, measuring G-5—the highest level—on the NOAA Space Weather Scales. (Click image for larger view of the sun from the SOHO spacecraft of the intense solar activity taken May 15, 2005, at 7:50 a.m. EDT. Click here to view high resolution version, which is a large file. Click here to view latest images. Please credit “SOHO.”)

How the new SoHo Synagogue hopes to bring Orthodox Judaism to the velvet-rope set.Last Tuesday evening, bearded men in black robes were davening in the corner of a Tribeca penthouse while young Jews in Prada swarmed the kosher buffet. It was a fund-raiser and launch party for the SoHo Synagogue, which will open in a loft this fall and offer Orthodox services, “Torah cocktails,” and organized trips to the Hamptons for Shabbat. “We call it a boutique synagogue. You might have to RSVP. There might be a roped line. It will totally be a scene. But it’s all kosher,” explained...

A huge sunspot kicked up a powerful flare Monday that could spark colorful sky lights above Earth Tuesday night or early Wednesday. The flare was classified as X-3. All X-class flares are considered major, with the number indicated a degree of severity. Its radiation traveled at light-speed, arriving at Earth within minutes and, along the way, swamping a detector on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft, which monitors the Sun and its storms. Along with the flare came a billowing cloud of charge particles known as a coronal mass ejection (CME). Traveling at millions of miles per hour, CMEs...

SoHo and TriBeCa are now the most expensive areas in the entire country to rent a pad. And nothing commands a loftier price than a loft, according to a new survey by the real-estate brokerage CitiHabitats. A loft that has about the same amount of space as a three-bedroom apartment now rents for more than $6,000 a month in the trendy area.

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2004 September 25 The Iron Sun Credit: SOHO - EIT Consortium, ESA, NASA Explanation: The ultraviolet light emitted by eleven times ionized iron at temperatures over 2 million degrees Fahrenheit was used to record the above picture of the Sun on September 22, 2001, the date of that year's autumnal equinox. The image was made by the EIT camera onboard the SOHO spacecraft, a space observatory which can...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2004 June 20 Solstice Celebration Credit: SOHO - EIT Consortium, ESA, NASA Explanation: Season's greetings! Today or tomorrow, depending on your time zone, the Sun reaches its northernmost point in planet Earth's sky marking a season change and the first solstice of the year 2004. In celebration, consider this delightfully detailed, brightly colored image of the active Sun. From the EIT instrument onboard the space-based SOHO observatory, the...

Comet Bradfield is plunging toward the sun; at closest approach on April 17th it will be well inside the orbit of Mercury. Sun-approaching comets sometimes break-apart. Will Comet Bradfield survive? No one knows.