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THE ACTION IS...
on the edge of the sun. A large prominence is dancing along the
sun's western limb, changing shape so fast it is tricky to
photograph and even trickier to
sketch. Readers, if you have a solar telescope, take a look.
more images: from
Greg Piepol of Rockville, Maryland; from
Stephen Ames of Hodgenville, Kentucky; from
Steve Wainwright of South Wales, UK; from
Cai-Uso Wohler of Bispingen, Germany;
MERCURY & THE
MOON: When the sun goes down tonight, step
outside and look west. You'll find Mercury and the Moon beaming
side-by-side through the sunset. Seeing Mercury is rare enough;
seeing Mercury together with an exquisite crescent Moon is out of
this world! You won't even need a
sky map.
SUN HALO:
Look into the eyes of someone you love and behold ... a sun halo?
It happened yesterday in Spain, says photographer Enrique Luque
Cervigón. "There was a 22-degree
halo reflected in the glasses of my girlfriend."
"The sky over Madrid was criss-crossed by high clouds,"
he explains. Ice crystals in those clouds caught the rays of the
sun and bent
them into a magnificent halo. Displays like these are common
enough, but often missed because the glare of the sun makes
us divert our gaze. Now you know where to look.
more images: from
Wah! of Hong Kong; from
Jean Chiasson of Varadero, Cuba; from
Yasmin Angelique Walter near Frankfurt, Germany; from
Mustafa Erol of Antalya, Turkey; from
Jonas Förste of Jakobstad, Finland;
BOULDER & GALAXY:
Unbeknownst to billions of humans sleeping calmly on Earth below,
massive asteroid 7
Iris spent the night of May 5th buzzing the Sombrero Galaxy
(M104). Insomniac astronomer Dennis
Simmons photographed the encounter from Brisbane, Australia:
May
6th update!
"Oh, the agony and the ecstasy of asteroid hunting!"
he says. "I am accustomed to chasing down very faint and immensely
fast Near Earth Objects from the SpaceWeather list. Last night,
I found myself recording the more pedestrian gait of bright asteroid
7 Iris as it sailed by the Sombrero Galaxy: animation."
There was never any danger of a collision. The Sombrero
Galaxy is 30 million light years from Earth while asteroid Iris
is only 16 light minutes away--a difference of more than
1020 km. The quiet beauty of the scene was stimulant
enough to waken those who knew.
BONUS:
"Asteroid 7 Iris was not alone as it skirted the Sombrero Galaxy
in Virgo," points out Bill
Williams of the Chiefland Astronomy Village in Florida. "In
fact, Iris was secretly, it seems, accompanied by no fewer than
4 other main belt asteroids within 15 arcminutes on the night of
May 4-5, 2008 when everyone was looking! My 2
hour exposure revealed 2 of these faint companions and this
animation shows the locations of the others."
more images: from
Martin Wagner of Sonnenbuehl, Germany; from
Peter van Leuteren at the Cosmos Observatory in Lattrop, the
Netherlands; from
Eugene Miller of Brooklyn, New York; from
Steven Janowiecki of Kitt Peak, Arizona; from
Alberto Quijano Vodniza of Pasto, Nariño, Colombia; from
Roman Piffl, Tomas Maruska and Ivan Majchrovic of Marianka,
Slovakia
April
2008 Aurora Gallery
[Aurora Alerts] [Night-sky
Cameras]
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