What's
the name of that star? Where's Saturn? Get the answers
from mySKY--a
fun new astronomy helper from Meade.
AURORA
WATCH:
Sky watchers from Scandinavia to Alaska should be
alert for auroras
tonight. Earth is entering a solar wind stream, and this
could cause a geomagnetic storm.
3D
SUN:
On Monday, April 23rd, NASA will release, for the first
time, 3-dimensional photos of the sun taken by the STEREO
spacecraft. Magnetic loops and prominences will practically
leap out of your computer screen. These images will be
displayed on big screens at museums and science centers
around the USA (list)
and posted on the internet. Get ready this weekend by
buying
or building
some 3D glasses--and stay tuned for Monday!
NOT
A LYRID:
The Lyrid meteor
shower is underway, and peaking this weekend, but
this bright fireball photographed Friday night by Chris
Peterson of Guffey, Colorado, is not a Lyrid:
Click
for video!
"It's
just a coincidence that the fireball happened during the
Lyrid shower," says Peterson. Lyrids are meteors
caused by dust in the tail of Comet Thatcher; they always
appear to come from the constellation Lyra. "But
the path of this fireball did not intersect Lyra."
"Hundreds
of people saw it," he adds. "It was much brighter
than the 20% full Moon (magnitude -8.3)." The Moon
is the bright spot in the image at azimuth 300 degrees.
Astronomers
call this kind of fireball a "sporadic." It
was caused by a random fragment of comet or asteroid just
happening by on April 20th. The inner solar system is
littered with such fragments, and they
hit Earth often. Sporadic fireballs as bright as this
one appear somewhere on Earth about once
a day.
KITE
SURFER'S SUN PILLAR:
Can you guess, what is the dark crescent in this sunset
photo taken yesterday by Mila
Zinkova of San Francisco?
"It's
a parachute,"
answers Zinkova. "Surfers use them to ride the waves--a
sport called kite surfing. Sometimes the surfers even
fly in the air a short distance. I could not show the
surfers in the picture, however, because I would have
overexposed the sun
pillar in the background."
The
air, it seems, was filled not only with floating surfers,
but also floating ice crystals. Flat plate-shaped
crystals fluttering down from high clouds caught the
rays of the setting sun and redirected them into a vertical
column of light. Sun pillars may be seen whenever icy
clouds drift across the sunset. Look
for them!
SPACE WEATHER
SPACE WEATHER
