Where's Saturn? Is that a UFO--or the ISS? What's the name of that star? Get the answers from mySKY--a fun new astronomy helper from Meade. NOON TRIANGLE: Don't look (because it would really hurt your eyes), but Mercury and Jupiter have gathered around the Sun to form a compact triangle in the noon sky. A coronagraph onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) is monitoring the formation, which will persist for the rest of the week. Join SOHO for a ringside seat. CLOSE ENCOUNTER: Tonight, Dec. 18th, Mars makes its closest approach to Earth until the year 2016. At a distance of only 55 million miles, Mars outshines every star in the night sky (it is slightly brighter than Sirius) and draws attention to itself with its distinctive red color. Plus, it looks great through a backyard telescope; this morning in Nicholasville, Kentucky, amateur astronomer Rick Schrantz took this picture through his 10-inch reflector: The azure markings in Schrantz's photo are martian ice clouds, filled with tiny crystals of water and carbon dioxide that scatter blue wavelengths of sunlight. The contrast, blue vs. red, is one of the most striking aspects of Mars in the eyepiece. Ready to look? Train your optics on the bright red "star" rising in the east after sunset: sky map. more images: from John Nassr of Baguio, Philippines; from Geoff Chester of Washington, DC; from Sylvain Weiller of Saint Rémy lès Chevreuse, France; from Dan Petersen of Racine, Wisconsin; from Sean Walker of Chester, New Hampshire; from Sadegh Ghomizadeh of Tehran, Iran. ANTICIPATION: Will it turn into a sunspot--or not? That's the question solar physicists around the world are asking themselves this week as a bright knot of reversed-polarity magnetism crosses the face of the sun. On the answer hinges the beginning of a new solar cycle. This morning in Rockville, Maryland, Greg Piepol used his Coronado SolarMax90 to photograph the region of interest: As explained in a recent story from Science@NASA, new sunspot cycles always begin with a high-latitude, reversed polarity sunspot. This little active region is both high-latitude and reversed polarity. All it has to do to trumpet the start of a new solar cycle is coelesce into a genuine sunspot. "Hopefully this active region is the harbinger of good news for the new year!" says Piepol, who craves more solar activity than the low ebb we've been experiencing in 2007. Will a new-cycle spot emerge this week? Stay tuned. 2007 Geminid Meteor Gallery [World Map of Geminid Sightings] [IMO recap] [meteor alerts] [Night Sky Cameras] |