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SUNSET
PLANETS: The Solar System's innermost planets
are about to put on a beautiful show. This week, Mercury is
emerging from the glare of the sun and making a beeline for
Venus. By week's end the two planets will be just 3o
apart, a bright and eye-catching pair. Keep an eye on the
sunset! Sky maps: April
1, 2,
3, 4,
5.
AURORA
WATCH: On March 27th, Dave Sundberg was flying
a C-130 Hercules across northern Canada (between Yellowknife
NWT and Baker Lake, Nunavut) when he looked out the window
and saw this:
"The auroras were so bright, they were visible even
with the cockpit storm lights on," he reports. "I
darkened the cockpit, pulled out my Nikon D80 and snapped
a
few pictures."
Next week, dimming the lights might not be necessary. An
even stronger display is expected on April 5th or 6th. That's
when a solar wind stream flowing from a hole in the sun's
atmosphere (a "coronal hole") is expected to hit
Earth. High-latitude sky watchers--especially Canadian pilots--should
be alert for auroras.
March
Northern Lights Gallery
[previous Marches: 2009,
2008, 2007,
2006, 2005,
2004, 2003]
LENTICULAR
LIGHTS: Yesterday, a storm in the Sierra
Nevada mountains of central California decorated the sky with
wind-sculpted lenticular clouds. When photographer Andrew
Kirk stepped outside to observe, he got more than he bargained
for:
"With a high wind warning posted for the
area, lenticular clouds were no surprise," says Kirk.
"But the beautiful iridescence late in the afternoon
was a special gift." He positioned a local church between
his camera and the sun to reduce the glare and highlight the
phenomenon.
Iridescence is caused by sunlight diffracting
through water droplets. Lenticular clouds are a
good place for this to happen because the clouds are filled
with tiny droplets of nearly uniform size--a combination that
produces vivid pastel colors.
See?
Wind
isn't
so bad, after
all.
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