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NEXT UP--VENUS: After gliding by Jupiter early this morning, the moon is now heading toward Venus. On Thursday morning, Jan. 26th, look southeast for the crescent moon and Venus shining together through the rosy glow of dawn. It's a beautiful sight, worth waking up for: sky map.
BIG SUNSPOT: Sprawling sunspot 848 stretches more than 120,000 km from end to end--about the size of the planet Saturn. Yesterday, photographer Gary Palmer caught it peaking through the limbs of a tree near his home in Los Angeles, California:
This sunspot has a tangled "delta-class" magnetic field that harbors energy for M- and X-class solar flares. So far, however, no explosions have been observed and solar activity remains low.
more images: from Ralf Vandebergh of the Netherlands; from Javier Temprano of Santander, Spain; from John Boyd of Santa Barbara, California;
WINTER HALO: The sun was setting and the air was choked with icy crystals on Jan. 3rd when Göte Flodqvist of Stockholm, Sweden, stepped into the parking lot of the Karolinska University Hospital. "I saw this extremely nice halo around the sun," he says.
Click to view a labeled version of this image
"Winter's diamond dust ice crystals floating around you make spectacular complex halo displays like this one," says atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley. "Diamond dust halos can appear very close, in front of trees and buildings."
"But could we touch them? Sadly, we cannot because halos do not actually exist in real space. They are the rays of light entering your eyes from millions of crystals glinting like diamonds because they are at just the right angles and orientations to the sun. The crystals might be miles away or only a few feet -- their halos are always the same shape and their beauty cannot be touched."