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WEEKEND AURORAS? A solar wind stream is expected to brush against Earth's magnetic field on April 6-7, possibly causing geomagnetic disturbances around the poles. Arctic sky watchers should be alert for auroras beaming through the waxing twilight of northern spring. Aurora alerts: text, voice.
INCOMING ACTIVE REGION: An active region on the farside of the sun is about to rotate onto the Earthside of the sun. It announced itself on April 5th around 0700 UT with a C2-class solar flare that hurled material over the sun's eastern limb. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the extreme UV glow of the blast:
Quickly following that eruption came another even stronger one: An M2-class flare (image) at 1750 UT.
Clearly, this incoming region has the potential to stir up significant space weather. It may be a few days, however, before it becomes geoeffective. Stay tuned for updates as the blast site turns toward Earth. Solar flare alerts: text, voice.
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
OMG: On April 4th, in the western sky at sunset, Comet Pan-STARRS made a photogenic flyby of the Andromeda galaxy. Amateur astronomer Pavel Smilyk of Syktyvkar, Russia, photographed the pair at the hour of closest approach:
"This is a 27 x 2 minute guided exposure I made using a Canon 1100Da digital camera," says Smilyk. "We had very clear skies."
In this deep exposure, the comet's dusty tail appears to touch the galaxy's outermost spiral arms. In fact, no physical contact occured; the comet is still in the solar system while Andromeda is 2.5 million light years away.
The comet and galaxy are parting now, but slowly, so they will remain a close pair for cameras and wide-field telescopes for several nights to come. Browse the gallery for more close-up images of the ongoing conjunction.
More about Pan-STARRS: NASA video, 3D orbit, ephemeris, light curves.
Realtime Comet Photo Gallery
VENUS AND MARS CONVERGE: Venus and Mars are converging for a close encounter, but don't bother looking because the conjunction is happening in broad daylight. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) took this picture of the planets only a few degrees from the Sun on April 5th:
At closest approach on April 6th, Venus and Mars will be only 1o apart.
After that, Mars will move even closer to the sun, which could limit NASA's contact with Mars rovers and orbiters. According to a NASA press release, "The sun can easily disrupt radio transmissions during the near-alignment. To prevent an impaired command from reaching an orbiter or rover, mission controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are preparing to suspend sending any commands to spacecraft at Mars for weeks in April. Transmissions from Mars to Earth will also be reduced." Mars will be at its closest to the sun, a slim 0.4 degrees on April 17th.
The ongoing dance of the sun and planets is invisible to the human eye, but coronagraphs can see the show. Join SOHO for a ringside seat.
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
Realtime Noctilucent Cloud Photo Gallery
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