NO NORTH KOREAN SATELLITE: U.S. Northern Command officials have acknowledged that North Korea launched a Taepo Dong 2 missile at 10:30 p.m. EDT Saturday, which passed over the Sea of Japan/East Sea and the nation of Japan. Stage one of the missile fell into the Sea of Japan/East Sea. The remaining stages along with the payload itself landed in the Pacific Ocean. No object entered orbit and no debris fell on Japan. REDOUBT ERUPTS AGAIN: Mt. Redoubt erupted again on April 4th (13:58 UTC), spewing a plume of ash, water vapor and sulfurous gases at least 50,000 feet high. While the gaseous emissions are entering the stratosphere and blowing away, much of the ash is falling back to Earth. "This photo," reports Thomas Kerns, "is from our home near Beluga Lake in Homer, Alaska," where falling ash has turned the ground moondust-gray: "Later," he says, "the wind picked up and began blowing the dust around." His photo of the ash storm shows why dust masks are selling briskly in Alaska these days. Meanwhile in Earth orbit, the GOME-2 (Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment) sensor onboard Europe's MetOp-A satellite is tracking a sulfur dioxide cloud emitted by the April 4th eruption: image. The cloud will probably move across North America in the days ahead. Sky watchers should keep an eye out for volcanic sunsets. SOLAR ACTIVITY: No sunspots? No problem. Even without those planet-sized islands of explosive magnetism, the sun is putting on a nice show: "We are seeing some extraordinary prominences today," reports Matthias Juergens, who took the picture from his backyard observatory in Gnevsdorf, Germany. Prominences are clouds of hydrogen held aloft by solar magnetic fields. Because they are not rooted in sunspots, prominences can be numerous even when sunspots are not. Readers, if you have a solar telescope, take a look at this one form of solar activity that has not gone away. more images: from James Kevin Ty of Manila, the Philippines; from N. Ferrin, J. Harmon and John Stetson of South Portland, Maine; from Eric Roel of Orion Observatory, Rancho La Compañía, México; from Greg Piepol of Rockville, Maryland; from Steve Rismiller of Milford, Ohio; from Stefano Sello of Pisa -Italy; March 2009 Aurora Gallery [previous Marches: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002] Explore the Sunspot Cycle |