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ASTEROID NEAR MISS:
On Nov. 6th at 2132 UT, asteroid 2009
VA barely missed Earth when it flew just 14,000 km above
the planet's surface. That's well inside the "Clarke
Belt" of geosynchronous satellites. If it had hit,
the ~6-meter wide space rock would have disintegrated in the
atmosphere as a spectacular fireball, causing no significant
damage to the ground. 2009 VA was discovered just 15 hours
before closest approach by astronomers working at the Catalina
Sky Survey.
TAURID METEOR SHOWER:
Earth is passing through a stream of debris
from periodic Comet 2P/Encke, and this is causing the annual
Taurid meteor
shower. "On Nov. 5th, a Taurid meteor came streaking
down over the famous Ship Rock near Sedona, Arizona,"
reports Marsha Adams, who took this picture using a Nikon
D700:
"It was visible in spite of the bright moonlight,"
she says.
The shower has a broad maximum lasting from Nov. 5th through
12th. At most, only about 5 Taurids per hour streak across
the sky, but what they lack in number they make up for in
dazzle. Taurid meteors tend to be fireballs, slow and very
bright. Look for them falling out of the constellation Taurus
during the hours around midnight. [sky
map]
more photos: from
John Chumack of Dayton, Ohio; from
Brian Emfinger of Ozark, Arkansas; from
Joe Westerberg of Joshua Tree National Park, California
FARSIDE EXPLOSION:
On Nov. 5th, something exploded on the far
side of the sun. The blast hurled a coronal mass ejection
(CME) over the sun's limb, recorded by coronagraphs on the
Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). Click on the image
to launch a 14-hour time lapse movie:
The source of the eruption is probably sunspot 1029, which
is transiting the far side of the sun. Last week, when sunspot
1029 was visible from Earth, it quickly grew into the biggest
and most active sunspot of the year, unleashing ten C-class
solar flares in just a few days. Apparently, the action hasn't
stopped. The sun's rotation will turn the sunspot back toward
Earth about a week from now. If the sunspot holds together
that long, we could experience some solar activity. Stay
tuned.
October
Northern Lights Gallery
[previous Octobers: 2008,
2007, 2006,
2004, 2003,
2002, 2001]
Explore
the Sunspot Cycle |
