The sun may be smaller than we thought

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a solar flare — as seen in the bright flash on the top right — on Oct. 2, 2022. The image shows a subset of extreme ultraviolet light that highlights the extremely hot material in flares and which is colorized in orange. .

The sun may be a little smaller than we thought it was.

Researchers who measure the sun often use total solar eclipses to block out most of its light and get a glimpse of its corona, or outer atmosphere. This method pegged the sun's radius at about 432,468 miles (695,990 kilometers), a measurement accepted as standard since the 1970s.