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AURORA WATCH:
Polar sky watchers should be
alert for Northern Lights tonight. That's when a solar
coronal mass ejection (CME) hurled toward Earth by an Oct.
17th explosion on the sun is expected to arrive. The incoming
CME is not a big one, and its impact might have little or
no visible effect. NOAA forecasters estimate a 5% chance of
geomagnetic activity.
ORIONID METEOR SHOWER:
The Orionid meteor shower is underway.
Earth is passing through a stream of dusty debris from Halley's
Comet, and this is causing meteors to shoot out of the constellation
Orion. Earlier today, amateur astronomer Jefferson Teng photographed
an Orionid fireball over Shanghai, China:
Photo details: Canon
350D, ISO400, 6 second exposure
"I woke up early in the morning to observe the shower
through my bedroom window," says Teng. "This one
was quite bright considering the light pollution in Shanghai."
Forecasters expect the shower to peak on Wednesday,
Oct. 21st, with dozens of meteors per hour. The best
time to look is during the dark hours before sunrise. For
best results, get away from city lights, but as Teng discovered,
country darkness is not absolutely necessary.
UPDATED: 2009
Orionid Photo Gallery
[full
story] [sky
map] [previous years: 2006,
2008]
ROCKET FUEL DUMP:
A Centaur rocket caused a minor sensation
on Sunday night, Oct. 18th, when it flew over Europe and dumped
a load of excess propellant. "We saw it at 9:15 pm local
time (1915 UT)," report Federico and Chiara Bellini of
Bodio Lomnago, Italy. "It looked like a comet with a
fan-shaped tail." They took this 30-second exposure using
a Nikon
D70s:
"About 20 seconds later, a
second object appeared." That was a US military weather
satellite (DMSP F-18), which the Centaur booster had helped
launch earlier in the evening from Vandenberg, Air Force
Base in California. "And then," the Bellinis continue,
"a big circular halo followed the two across the sky."
The halo, shown here
in a movie recorded by Jonas Förste of Jakobstad, Finland,
was probably an expanding puff of gas emitted during an earlier
firing of the Centaur.
This remarkable show surprised observers in almost every
country of Europe. Browse the links below for more sightings.
more images:from
Lloyd Betsworth of Podpec Nr Ljubljana, Slovenia; from
Paul Beskeen of Bourn, Cambridge, UK; from
Oliver Schneider of Leopoldshöhe, Germany; from
Marko Posavec of Koprivnica, Croatia; from
Davide Trezzi of Varenna, Italy; from
Vince Tuboly of Hegyhátsál, Hungary; from
Quentin D. of le Havre, Normandy, France; from
Feys Filip of the Sasteria public observatory, Crete;
Sept.
2009 Aurora Gallery
[previous Septembers: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2002, 2001]
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