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.
NEW SUNSPOT:
At first, John Nassr thought there was "a smudge on the eyepiece"
of his solar
telescope, but it turned out to be a newly-emerging sunspot.
"Sunspot 982 is growing rapidly," he reports. This
photo from his backyard observatory in the Phillipines reveals
two flamboyant magnetic filaments emerging from the spot's dark
core. So far the active region poses no threat for solar flares.
more images: from
Pete Lawrence of Selsey, West Sussex, UK; from
J. Fairfull and J. Stetson of South Portland, Maine;
ASTEROID FLYBY:
Asteroid 2007
TU24 flew past Earth yesterday only 344,000 miles away. In Utah,
Patrick Wiggins took
26 quick exposures through his 14-inch telescope and caught the
space rock streaking among the stars of Perseus:
As 2007 TU24 passed by, the giant Arecibo radar in Puerto Rico
illuminated it with powerful radio pulses and obtained a rough
image of the craggy 250m-wide rock. More radar observations
are planned for Feb. 1-4, so the view may improve. Stay tuned for
updates.
more images: from
Oscar Canales Moreno of Pinsoro, Zaragoza, Spain; from
Saied Bahrami Nezhad of Kerman, Iran; from
Paolo Berardi of L'Aquila, Italy; from
Thorsten Boeckel of Fuerstenfeldbruck, Bavaria; from
Adam Stuart, M.D. of Miami, Florida;
SPACESHIP SIGHTINGS:
North Americans, this is a good week to
see a spaceship with your own eyes. The International Space Station
is making many bright evening passes over towns and cities across
the continent: flyby alerts.
Joseph Westerberg sends this Jan. 28th photo from the Joshua Tree
National Park in California:
"The ISS was very bright, approximately magnitude -2.3,"
he says. That makes the station about as luminous as the planet
Jupiter. It was easy to photograph "using my Nikon
D80 for an exposure of 79 seconds."
The under-construction station has grown so big and bright in recent
months that it is now a fabulous sight through ordinary backyard
telescopes. Last month in Australia, Mike Salway captured these
images using a 12-inch Newtonian. "Tracking the ISS manually
and keeping the bright dot centered in the crosshairs was an adrenaline
rush!" says Salway. He created an animation of the flyby to
convey a sense of the thrilling
view.
more images: from
Gonçalo Lemos of Marinha Grande, Portugal; from
Ralf Vandebergh of the Netherlands; from
Wayne Wooten of Pensacola, Florida; from
Dale Gerhard of Cape May Point State Park, Cape May, New Jersey;
2008
Nacreous Cloud Gallery
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