Would you like a call when SuitSat orbits over your home town? Sign up for SpaceWeather PHONE.
ASTRONOMY CLUBS: Do you publish an astronomy club newsletter? Or would you like to? If the answer is "yes," you can receive free articles about current events in astronomy written by Dr. Tony Phillips. Sample: Snowstorm on Pluto. Contact Nancy Leon of JPL's Space Place for details.
SUN DRAGON: Amateur astronomers are monitoring two dark filaments on the sun today. One of them looks remarkably like a dragon, "no doubt in honor of the Chinese New Year," says photographer Mike Taormina of Palatine, Illinois:
Filaments are sinuous clouds of hot gas held aloft by solar magnetic force fields. The ones in Taormina's picture, above, are nearly 200,000 miles long. These giant structures change shape every day. A few days ago, solar photographer Larry Alvarez of Flower Mound, Texas, was sure he saw not a dragon, but a horse. What's next in the menagerie? Stay tuned.
MUST-SEE VIDEO: On Jan. 15th when the Stardust capsule ripped through Earth's atmosphere en route to a parachute landing in Utah, no one had a better view than scientists onboard NASA's DC-8 Airborne Laboratory, and they recorded a spectacular video. Click on the image to see it:
Stardust Reentry Video (6 MB)
Credit: Mike Taylor, Utah State University
The glowing head of this man-made meteor reached temperatures exceeding 4000 degrees F. Inside the capsule, delicate samples of dust collected from distant Comet Wild 2 were safe, protected from blistering heat by the capsule's external heat shield. The cargo is now being studied by scientists at the Johnson Space Center who believe it may reveal secrets of comets and the origin of the solar system.
BONUS: In addition to the man-made meteor, there are two natural meteors in the Stardust video. Can you find them? Hint: one is near the 4-second mark; the other near 59-seconds.