Where's Saturn? Is that a UFO--or the ISS? What's the name of that
star? Get the answers from mySKY--a
fun new astronomy helper from Meade.
REPAIR SHOPS FOR BROKEN
DNA: When high-energy particles from solar
flares penetrate the cells of astronauts, what happens to the broken
DNA? NASA scientists have discovered microscopic repair shops for
mending the damage: full
story.
115 YEARS AND COUNTING:
On the evening of Nov. 6, 1892, amateur astronomer
Edwin Holmes was scanning the night sky above his backyard in England
when he spotted something no one had ever seen before: an exploding
comet. One hundred and fifteen years later, Comet 17P/Holmes is
exploding again. "This sequence of images shows the dramatic
expansion in just nine days," say photographers Imelda
Joson and Edwin Aguirre of Woburn, Massachusetts.
What would cause a comet to explode and then do it again 115 years
later? That is the great mystery of Comet Holmes. "It's amazing
to think that the light we see now comes from the same object that
was also bursting more than a century ago," say Joson and Aguirre.
"We recorded these images using an 8-inch
Meade telescope and a Canon
EOS 20D digital camera. The comet now nearly fills the camera's
field of view, but its surface brightness has decreased since the
explosion began on Oct. 23, 2007. In fact, we had to boost the camera’s
ISO setting from 400 to 1600 in order to record the same level of
brightness during the 30-second exposure as we did in late October."
The expanding comet is increasingly dilute, but it is still visible
to the unaided eye and a fine target for binoculars and backyard
telescopes. After sunset, look north for a 3rd-magnitude fuzzball
in the constellation Perseus: sky
map.
Comet
17P/Holmes Photo Gallery
[Interactive
World Map of Comet Photos]
[sky map]
[ephemeris]
[3D orbit]
[Night
Sky Cameras]
ICE HALOS:
Yesterday in the sky above Tijeras, New Mexico, a delicate network
of luminous arcs and comet-like jets formed around the sun. "Using
a handheld mirror, I made this self portrait of the phenomenon,"
says photographer Becky Ramotowski:
The arcs and jets are actually halos
and sundogs
created by sunlight passing through ice crystals in the high atmosphere.
Not shown in this small mirror is "a complete parhelic
circle (one of the most beautiful of all ice haloes) ringing
the entire sky," she says.
Becky witnessed this breathtaking display for the simple reason
that she paused to look around the sun. Try it. Haloes are more
common than you think.
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