Autumn is here, and it's a wonderful time for stargazing. Find out what's up from Spaceweather PHONE.
SOLAR WIND: Sky watchers in Scandinavia and Alaska should be alert for auroras tonight. A minor solar wind stream is buffeting Earth's magnetic field, and this could cause isolated geomagnetic storms.
FALL COLORS: Orange moons and orange trees: When the two get together, the view is wonderful, as shown in this Oct. 7th photo from Larry Landolfi of Wolfeboro, New Hampshire:
The colors look alike, but they appear for different reasons. The Moon's orange is imprinted by the atmosphere: airborne dust and other particles scatter blue from moonlight, leaving only red and orange hues. The trees' orange comes from carotene and anthocyanin, pigments left over when green chlorophyll production declines in autumn. Two different processes--one great photo-op.
ISS AND TYCHO: Two nights ago, Ed Morana was watching the full moon over Tracy, California, when the International Space Station flew by--almost eclipsing the crater Tycho. Using a video camera and a backyard telescope, he took this picture:
ISS and Tycho: the view through a 10" Meade LX200-GPS.
Backlit by the Moon, the station resembles a letter T. The top of the T is formed by a new pair of solar arrays, delivered and installed by the crew of the space shuttle Atlantis last month. Spanning 240 feet from tip to tip and containing 130,000 individual solar cells, these wings supply up to 50 kW of power to the station--and they make a nice silhouette, too.