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BEAUTIFUL
EXPLOSION: A magnetic filament in
the sun's northern hemisphere erupted today, Jan.
5th, at approximately 1300 UT. The beautiful
explosion hurled a CME in the general direction
of Earth, but the cloud might sail north of our
planet with little to no impact. Stay tuned for
updates.
DOOMED
MARS PROBE PHOTOGRAPHED: Russia's
Mars probe, Phobos-Grunt,
has been stranded in Earth orbit since a main engine
failure in early November. The spacecraft is now
sinking back into Earth's atmosphere, with re-entry
expected in mid-January. "On New Year's Day,
I traveled to the French Riviera (850km from home)
to record Phobos-Grunt's last passage over France,"
says astrophotographer Thierry Legault. This is
the picture he took through a 14-inch telescope:
"It appears that the satellite
is moving backwards with its solar panels deployed
but not receiving the sunlight," notes Legault.
"This may explain why Phobos-Grunt had no energy
to communicate with Earth." An 80-second
video shows the probe soaring almost directly
above Legault's observing site on the Plateau de
Calern. "At the scale of the video the satellite
would cross your screen in about 1/30s," he
says.
While a telescope is required to see
the outlines of the spacecraft, the human eye alone
is sufficient to see Phobos-Grunt as a speck of
light in the night sky. On high passes, it glows
almost as brightly as a first magnitude star. Check
SpaceWeather's online Satellite
Tracker or your
smartphone for flyby times.
QUADRANTID
METEOR UPDATE: Yesterday, Jan. 4th,
Earth passed through a stream of debris from shattered
comet 2003 EH1. The encounter produced a strong
display of Quadrantid
meteors over the Atlantic side of our planet, as
many as 80
per hour according to the International Meteor
Organization. Meteor rates peaked hours later and
remained high hours longer than forecasters expected,
which shows that we still have a lot to learn about
the debris stream of 2003 EH1.
Zack Clothier of Thurman, New York,
photographed this Quadrantid streaking over a lake
in the Adirondacks:
"Temperatures were below zero
here in the Adirondacks, but the sky put on such
a show I stayed and watched it for four hours,"
says Clothier. "I counted nearly 60 meteors
during that time, including this one shooting through
the Milky Way. It was a wonderful night to be out
under the stars, and one I definitely won't forget
anytime soon!"
NASA's All-Sky Fireball Network recorded
20
fireballs during the shower's peak. Data from
multiple cameras allowed the orbits of the meteoroids
to be calculated, and they are shown here in a diagram
of the inner solar system:
The green orbits are a good match
for the orbit of the parent comet fragment 2003
EH1. Colors in the diagram correspond to velocity.
The Quadrantids hit Earth's atmosphere traveling
between 38 and 42 km/s (85,000 and 94,000 mph).
more images: from
Pete Lawrence of Selsey, West Sussex, UK; from
Luis Argerich of Buenos Aires, Argentina; from
John Cordiale of Queensbury, New York; from
Chris Peterson of Guffey, Colorado; from
Chris Allington of Crofton, Nebraska; from
John Stetson of Falmouth, Maine; from
Brian Emfinger of Ozark, Arkansas; from
John Chumack of Dayton, Ohio; from
Fredrik Broms of Kvaløya, Norway; from
Wally Pacholka of Joshua Tree National Park
in California; from
Mohammad Mehdi Asgari of Zanjan, Iran; from
Ronald Zincone of Richmond, Rhode Island; from
Didier Schreiner of Wormhout, France; from
Renata Arpasova of Avebury, Wiltshire, UK; from
Glenn Wester of Smithtown, New York; from
Yu Jun of Beijing, China; from
Sylvain Weiller of Saint Rémy lès Chevreuse,
France;
