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MILD
LEONIDS: The Leonid meteor shower
peaks on Nov. 17/18 as Earth passes through a stream
of debris from Comet Tempel-Tuttle. Reports so far
are consistent with a weak shower--no more than
about 10 per hour. In the past, Leonids have been
known to produce fantastic storms of thousands of
shooting stars. This year, however, Earth is passing
through the outskirts of the comet's debris stream,
so the shower is relatively mild. [meteor
gallery] [meteor
radar]
FAST-GROWING
SUNSPOT: Barely visible when the
weekend began, sunspot AR1619 has blossomed into
a large active region more than three times as wide
as Earth. Click
to play a 24 hour movie recorded by NASA's Solar
and Heliospheric Observatory:
So far the growing sunspot has not
produced any significant flares, but the quiet is
unlikely to continue if its expansion continues
apace. Fast-changing magnetic fields on the sun
have a tendency to reconnect
and erupt. NOAA forecasters estimate a 20% chance
of M-class solar flares during the next 24 hours.Solar
flare alerts: text,
voice.
Realtime
Space Weather Photo Gallery
INSIDE
THE SHADOW OF THE MOON: On Nov.
13/14, the Moon passed directly i front of the sun.
This arrangement, which produced a
total eclipse, cast the shadow of the Moon directly
down on northeast Australia. Using a wide-field
camera, eclipse-chaser Alan Dyer photographed the
shadow as it raced across the sky over Lakeland
Downs, Queensland. Scan the images, then read Dyer's
account of the shadow-transit below:
"This collage of wide-angle shots
shows the motion of the Moon's conical shadow,"
he explains. "At top, you can see the bottom
edge of the shadow just touching the Sun. This was
second contact and the diamond ring effect that
begins totality. The middle frame was taken near
mid-eclipse and shows the bright horizon beyond
the Moons shadow. However, the Sun is not centered
on the shadow because we were located well north
of the eclipse's center-line, where we had gone
to escape nearby clouds. The bottom frame was taken
at the end of totality as the first bit of sunlight
bursts out from behind the Moon. Notice the sun
sitting at the well-defined left edge of the Moon's
shadow. The shadow moved off to the right."
People who have experienced total
eclipses first-hand say the Moon's shadow is one
of the most amazing aspects of the experience. Its
arrival causes many birds to stop singing; a hush
descends on the landscape as the sky darkens and
the air temperature suddenly drops. The Moon's shadow
lances more than a quarter million miles across
the silent vacuum of space, and when it lands on
Earth, it seems to bring a bit of otherworldly cold
with it.
For more otherworldly images of the
eclipse, browse the gallery:
Realtime
Eclipse Photo Gallery
Realtime
Noctilucent Cloud Photo Gallery
[previous years: 2003,
2004,
2005,
2006,
2007,
2008,
2009,
2011]
