MOTHER'S DAY: Give your mom a truly heavenly gift on May 11th--a subscription to Space Weather PHONE! | | | 4D IONOSPHERE: Today, NASA-funded researchers released to the general public a new "4D" live model of Earth's ionosphere. Without leaving home, anyone can fly through the layer of ionized gas that encircles Earth at the edge of space itself. All you need is a connection to the Internet: full story. QUIET SUN: Experts say the sun is quiet. Indeed, the 11-year solar cycle is at low ebb. But just how quiet can a 1027 ton nuclear explosion (i.e., a star) ever be? Consider the following photo taken yesterday by Pete Lawrence of Selsey, UK: Everywhere you look, something is happening. Along the horizon, flame-like prominences taller than Earth itself wave hypnotically. The stellar surface looks like a shag carpet; each strand is a Texas-sized jet of gas shooting up from the inferno below. At the right edge of the image floats a sinuous cloud of solar hydrogen held aloft by dynamic magnetic forces. At center stage is a bright patch of magnetism that just a few days ago became unstable and exploded, sending a "solar tsunami" shock wave through the sun's atmosphere. That's what we mean by "quiet sun." more images: from Cai-Uso Wohler of Bispingen, Germany; from P. Presby and J. Stetson of South Portland, Maine; from Stephen Ames of Hodgenville, KY; from Pete Lawrence of Selsey, West Sussex, UK; from P-M Hedén of Vallentuna, Sweden; from Patricia Cannaerts of Belgium; STORMS ON SATURN: Amateur astronomers photographing Saturn this week have found something unexpected. "I was taking routine images of Saturn this evening, hoping to see some interesting features," says Ian Sharp of Ham, UK. "I was thrilled to see I had captured two storms" denoted by arrows in the picture below: They're little more than smudges in this view through a backyard telescope, but each one is a continent-sized tempest with wind speeds as high as 1000 mph. Saturn's storms are white because their cloudtops are filled with ammonia ice crystals--think of the ice halos!--and they sometimes crackle with powerful lightning that radio receivers onboard the Cassini spacecraft have recorded on many occasions: listen. Cassini has been monitoring the larger storm for months and now the smaller storm seems to be growing to rival it. The two are easy targets for backyard telescopes equipped with CCD cameras: sky map. more images: from Günther Strauch of Borken, NRW, Germany; from Roman Breisch of Erdweg, Bavaria, Germany; |