SATELLITE
FLYBYS APP: Turn your iPhone or iPod into
a field-tested satellite tracker! Spaceweather.com presents
the Satellite Flybys
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HUBBLE SEES SUSPECTED
ASTEROID COLLISION: NASA's Hubble Space Telescope
has observed a mysterious X-shaped debris pattern and trailing
streamers of dust that suggest a head-on collision between
two asteroids: full
story.
NORTHERN LIGHTS FROM
SPACE: The solar wind is buffeting Earth's
magnetic field and igniting a ring of auroral light around
the North Pole. A great place to see the show is Earth orbit.
Last night, the US military's DMSP-18
weather satellite photographed the action over northern Europe:
"This night-time image shows a band of
aurora borealis north of Norway at 1817 GMT on Feb. 1st,"
says Paul McCrone,
who processed the image at the US Navy's Fleet Numerical Meteorology
and Oceanography Center (FNMOC) in Monterey, California.
To the low-light cameras of DMSP-18, the auroras
were as easy to see as the city lights of Scandinavia, France
and the UK. If that band of light had descended over a populated
area, onlookers would have enjoyed quite a display.
Another solar wind stream is en route to Earth
and it should be stronger than the one we're experiencing
now. High latitude sky watchers and weather satellites should
be alert for auroras
when the stream arrives on or about Feb. 10th.
HOW BRIGHT IS MARS?
It's so bright, you can see it from inside
your house. "I was on my way to bed around 10:30pm Sunday
night, and as I went to go upstairs I looked up through my
skylight," says Malcolm Park of Whitby, Ontario, Canada.
"There was Mars beaming in dead center!" He took
this picture using a Nikon
D3 attached to the banister with a monster grip:
To be precise, Mars is beaming in at visual magnitude -1.3.
That makes it 8 times brighter than a first-magnitude star
and able to pierce urban window glass with ease. The view
is even better outside where Mars outshines every star in
the sky (except, by a narrow margin, Sirius) and the rusty-orange
color of the "red" planet is apparent to the naked
eye: sky map.
But what if it's too cold to go outside? Fortunately,
the staircase works, too.
more images: from
Alan Friedman of Buffalo, New York; from
Efrain Morales Rivera of Aguadilla, Puerto Rico
January
Northern Lights Gallery
[previous Januarys: 2009,
2008, 2007,
2005, 2004,
2001]
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