Astronomers say viewing conditions are promising for the Perseid meteor shower this year. A new moon will prevent moonlight from spoiling the show. NASA says about 50 to 100 meteors per hour may be visible under ideal conditions during Wednesday night's peak. The Perseids will coincide with a total solar eclipse across Spain, Iceland and Greenland and a six-planet parade. The best time to view the fireballs will come after totality. Meteor showers happen when Earth plows through trails of debris left by comets or asteroids. The Perseids come from comet Swift-Tuttle. The next major meteor shower peaks in October.

Scientists have captured images of the sun’s surface in the finest detail yet. Researchers were able to peek with the help of a telescope on the island of Maui in Hawaii. They saw strange feathery patterns rippling across the surface, evidence of a well-known phenomenon that until now hadn't been observed at this level on the solar surface. It can help scientists understand how magnetic fields work on the sun, which is at the root of intense solar storms that can scramble GPS communications and trigger colorful auroras on Earth. The new research was published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

With parts of the globe aflame in wildfires, deadly heat waves parking over cities, record hot oceans and a strengthening super El Nino, it seems like we’re baking through the hottest year on record. But we’re not quite there — yet. It's only No. 3 in the record books. But it could be No. 1 soon. With the El Nino kicking in and accelerated warming, scientists say there’s increasing likelihood that the second half of 2026 will be near record territory. Scientists say this summer's warming is from human-caused climate change, not El Nino.

For the first time in more than a century, a total solar eclipse is coming to mainland Spain with an even longer encore next summer. Daytime darkness will descend Aug. 12 across the Iberian Peninsula, plus slivers of Greenland and Iceland. Totality will last up to two minutes and 18 seconds. A partial eclipse will delight as far away as Alaska and Siberia, enveloping Canada, the northern U.S., and much of Europe and West Africa. This year's solar spectacle is a warmup to 2027 when a 6½-minute extravaganza will sweep from Spain to North Africa and the Middle East.

Astronomers have discovered a faint new world orbiting a young star after more than a decade of cosmic hide-and-seek. In an unusual twist, two teams working independently discovered the planet a few days apart late last year using different telescopes. Both studies appear Wednesday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. It's the third planet found around the star Beta Pictoris, which is 63 light-years away. This one is a cold gas giant like its companions, but less massive and much fainter. It was hidden in archival data, overshadowed by its partners for more than a decade.