AURORA ALERT: Did you sleep through the Northern Lights? Next time get a wake-up call: Spaceweather PHONE. | | | ASTEROID FLYBY: NASA's Goldstone Radar in the Mojave Desert is trained on asteroid 1998 CS1. The 1.3 km-wide space rock is flying past Earth today only 2.5 million miles away. Radar images should reveal much about the asteroid including its shape, spin, and precise location. This information will help astronomers better forecast future encounters with the asteroid, which is considered potentially hazardous. [ephemeris] images: from Ivan Majchrovic and Roman Piffl of Marianka, Slovakia ICE IN THE AIR: An arctic cold front has descended on the United States causing record low temperatures across a wide swath of the country. It's so cold, the air itself is filled with ice--perfect for morning sundogs: Chris Hawes sends the photo from Faribault, Minnesota. "It was a very cold morning, -20 degrees F, with a fine mist of ice crystals floating in the air," he says. "The sundogs were magnificent, truly almost false suns. As I walked around the house, I noticed one of the sundogs projected in front of the house: photo." Readers, if there's a minus sign on your thermometer tomorrow morning, look east for sundogs. It's a nice way to begin the day. more images: from Lois Reinert of Tracy, Minnesota; from Mike Hollingshead of Blair, Nebraska; from Heather Renyck of Whitefield, New Hampshire; from Danny Ratcliffe of Deception Bay, Queensland, Australia; from Robert Wiles of Rochester, Minnesota; from Daniel DeCamp of Vicksburg, Michigan FROSTY FLORA: Not all the ice is in the air. On the same day Chris Hawes photographed sundogs in the skies of Minnesota, things took a different turn in Tennessee: "A morning fog and 21o temperatures caused some of the atmosphere to freeze out onto our garden," reports Mark D. Marquette of Boones Creek. He calls this photo Frosty Flora: "The Sun burned off the beautiful scene by 11 am--and I sure am grateful I can set my own work hours! I enjoyed capturing this rare sight in Dixie with my Nikon D100." more images: from Mark D. Marquette of Boones Creek, Tennessee; from Pete Glastonbury of Devizes, Wiltshire, UK; from Kiran Chakravarti of Bishop's Stortford, United Kingdom; Comet Lulin Photo Gallery [sky map] [Comet Hunter Telescope] |