ATLANTIC COAST FIREBALL: Last night, March 29th around 9:45 pm EDT, people along the Atlantic coast of the USA from Maryland to North Carolina witnessed bright lights in the sky and heard thunderous booms. It was almost certainly a meteoritic bolide--a random asteroid hitting Earth's atmosphere and exploding in flight. Another possibility is being discussed: A spent Russian rocket body reentered the atmosphere on March 29th. According to data published by US Strategic Command, however, the rocket reentered near Taiwan (24° N, 125° E) more than two hours after the Atlantic Coast event. A natural meteor remains the most likely explanation. Stay tuned for updates and more eyewitness reports. VOLCANIC CLOUDS IN MOTION: Alaska's Mt. Redoubt volcano has erupted at least 19 times since March 22nd, and several of the larger blasts have hurled plumes of ash and gas into the lower stratosphere. The GOME-2 (Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment) sensor onboard Europe's MetOp-A satellite is tracking Mt. Redoubt's sulfur dioxide clouds, colored red in this 5-day animation: Click to view a full-sized animation with labels The sequence begins on March 25th and ends on the 29th. One cloud has just crossed North America en route to Europe; a second cloud is leaving Alaska on the same east-west track. The last time an Alaskan volcano blew its top (Kasatochi in 2008), clouds like these caused fantastic sunsets around the northern hemisphere. More could be in the offing. If you live along the SO2 ground track, keep an eye on the twilight sky for signs of Redoubt. UPDATE: Flying photographer Brian Whittaker has spotted one of these clouds from an airplane 39,000 ft above the Canadian Rockies. Click here for his account and a spectacular photo. SOLAR ACTIVITY: With no sunspots to break the monotony, the face of the sun has been blank and quiet for nearly a month. The edge of the sun is another matter. "There are plenty of prominences dancing around the solar limb," reports Pete Lawrence, who sends this picture from his backyard observatory in Selsey, UK: Prominences are clouds of hydrogen held aloft by solar magnetic fields. They are in constant motion, shape-shifting from one exposure to the next. "Yesterday, I photographed a prominence that looked like a giant tidal wave," says Alan Friedman of Buffalo, New York. "The sun was ablaze with [such dynamic forms]." Readers, if you have a solar telescope, point it at the limb; that's where the action is. more images: from Robert Arnold of Isle of Skye, Scotland; from Franck Charlier of Marines, Val d'Oise, France; from Mike Strieber of Las Vegas, Nevada;; from Monty Leventhal of Sydney Australia; from Sylvain Weiller of Saint Rémy lès Chevreuse, France; from Cai-Uso Wohler of Bispingen, Germany UPDATED: March 2009 Aurora Gallery [previous Marches: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002] Explore the Sunspot Cycle |