Autumn is here, and it's a wonderful time for stargazing. Find out what's up from Spaceweather PHONE.
COMET SWAN: Where is Comet Swan? Look northwest after sunset, and the handle of the Big Dipper will guide you right to it: sky map. Although the comet is too dim to see with the unaided eye, it is an easy target for backyard telescopes. The comet's pretty emerald color shows that it is rich in cyanogen (CN), a poisonous gas, and diatomic carbon (C2). Both glow green when exposed to sunlight: photo.
SOLAR ACTIVITY: A giant prominence has just sprung up over the sun's southwestern limb, "and it's evolving fast," says Les Cowley, who made this sketch while looking through the eyepiece of his Solar Max60:
Prominences are clouds of hydrogen held up by solar magnetic force fields. They come in all shapes and sizes. The hole at the base of this arch is big enough for Earth to fit through. Croquet, anyone?
more images: from Pete Lawrence of Selsey, West Sussex, UK; from John Candy of Whitley Bay, UK.
MOON SHOTS: There's an alien world in your backyard, visible in spectacular detail through common binoculars and telescopes. It's the Moon. To illustrate the point, Mike Salway of Australia photographed a small region of Mare Nubium (Sea of Clouds) on Oct. 1st. His high-resolution mosaic is peppered with lunar curiosities such as the Davy Crater Chain:
The view through a 10" Dobsonian. Credit: Mike Salway.
The chain formed unknown millions of years ago when a fragmented comet or asteroid hit the Moon, one piece after another. What fragmented it? Tidal forces from the Earth-Moon system ripped the impactor into a "string of pearls" much like Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 that hit Jupiter in 1994.
Salway's mosaic also highlights the dramatic Straight Wall, a 70 mile-long fault best seen in the shadows and light of a quarter Moon. Good luck: Tonight's moon is a quarter Moon. Grab your telescope and take a look.