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. SOLAR WIND DRIES VENUS: Europe's Venus Express spacecraft has made an important discovery: the solar wind dries out Venus. Unlike Earth, Venus has no global magnetic field to deflect particles from the sun; when solar wind hits Venus it erodes the upper atmosphere. Hydrogen and oxygen atoms fly into space, removing from Venus the chemical building blocks of water. The process makes an already hellish planet even worse. Get the full story from the ESA. COMET 17P/HOLMES: The bright Moon is leaving the evening sky and Comet Holmes is emerging from the glare. "It was nice to see the comet again," says Peter von Bagh who spotted it last night from his home in Porvoo, Finland: "You can easily find it with binoculars even in a light-polluted urban sky," he says. Comet Holmes is not as bright as it was when it exploded in late October. Most people now have trouble finding it with the naked eye. A quick sweep through Perseus with a pair of binoculars, however, will pinpoint the comet while the smallest of telescopes reveals it to be a truly impressive object. Consider this photo taken through a 2-inch refractor by Paolo Berardi of L'Aquila, Italy, on Nov. 27th. Comet Holmes may have dimmed, but it is still worth watching! Comet 17P/Holmes Photo Gallery [Interactive World Map of Comet Photos] [sky map] [ephemeris] [3D orbit] [Night Sky Cameras] LOWITZ ARCS! On Nov. 23rd, Lori C. of King City, Canada, went outside at sunrise--"the temperature was minus 9 degrees with snowy crystals in the air," she says--and photographed what at first appeared to be a garden-variety ice halo: photo. Closer inspection, however, reveals something rare and extraordinary: "Lori captured the fabled Lowitz arc," says atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley. "The 'garden variety' arcs in Lori's photo are a sun pillar flanked by two sundogs. Look carefully at the sundogs and you will see the extremely rare Lowitz arcs curving upwards and outwards away from the sun," he points out. "Tobias Lowitz first sketched them in St Petersburg over 200 years ago and controversy has raged over their very existence ever since. They were first photographed in the 1990s but they are still a hot topic of debate. Lori’s arcs are ungerade-Lowitz arcs, ungerade because sunlight had an odd number of reflections inside the Lowitz ice crystals. Next time you see bright sundogs look carefully, Lowitz arcs could be lurking there too!" |