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SOLAR
WIND:
A solar wind stream is buffeting Earth's magnetic field.
This could spark auroras
tonight over Alaska, Canada and Scandinavia.
LUNAR
ECLIPSE:
On March 14th the full Worm
Moon dipped into Earth's shadow producing a penumbral
lunar eclipse visible from Europe, Africa and eastern
parts of North America. "The moon rose at mid-eclipse
here in Indiana," says Robert
B Slobins who had his camera ready and snapped this
picture:
March
14 Lunar Eclipse Gallery
The
red color of the moon is not the eclipse. Moons turn red
when they are viewed through low dusty layers of Earth's
atmosphere. The eclipse is the gray shading of the moon's
right quarter. "A very subtle display, hard to notice
if you were not told, but charming nonetheless,"
says Koen van Gorp
of Boechout, Belgium, another photographer whose work
appears in our lunar
eclipse gallery.
JUPITER
MOVIE:
Astronomers call Jupiter "the giant planet"
for a reason: It's so big, 11 times wider than Earth,
that you can see fantastic details through an ordinary
backyard telescope.
On March 12th, Mike
Salway of Australia made this 90-minute movie using
a 10-inch telescope and a CCD video camera:
Click on the image to see the rest of Jupiter.
Dominating
the scene is the Great Red Spot, the biggest storm in
the solar system; two planet Earths could fit inside with
room to spare. Can you also see Jupiter's newest red spot,
Red
Jr? It pops over the planet's limb near the end of
the movie.
To see Jupiter for yourself, wake up before dawn and look
south. Jupiter is the brightest "star" in
that part of the sky. You can't miss it.
more
images: from
Chotechai Piyavongsiri of Bangkok, Thailand (note
the shadow of Europa on Jupiter's cloudtops).
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