Solar physicists have been having a field day of late. A variety of missions have been staring at the sun more intently ever before (please don't try it at home). From the Parker Solar Probe to the Solar Orbiter, we are constantly collecting more and more data about our stellar neighbor. But it's not just the big-name missions that can collect useful data—sometimes information from missions as simple as a sounding rocket make all the difference.

That was the case for a group of scientists focused on the sun's chromosphere, the part of the sun's atmosphere between the photosphere and the corona that is one of the least understood parts of the star. Now, with data collected from three different missions simultaneously, humanity has its first layered view of how the sun's magnetic field works in this underexplored zone.

One well-understood fact of the chromosphere is how much it screwed up magnetic field models of the photosphere and corona. Understanding the sun's magnetic fields is crucially important to understanding "space weather" more generally, and how it might affect conditions on Earth.

A new study that characterizes the climate of Mars over the planet's lifetime reveals that in its earliest history it was periodically warmed due to the input of greenhouse gases derived from volcanism and meteorites, yet remained relatively cold in the intervening periods, thus providing opportunities and challenges for any microbial life form that may have been emerging on the Red Planet. The study involved a national team of scientists that included Joel Hurowitz, Ph.D., of Stony Brook University. The findings are detailed in a paper published in Nature Geoscience.