AURORA ALERTS: Did you miss the Northern Lights? Next time get a wake-up call from Space Weather PHONE | | |
ROCKET LAUNCHED: A Minotaur IV rocket blasted off from Vandenberg AFB on Saturday, Sept. 25th, at 9:41 pm PDT, carrying a military space surveillance satellite into Earth orbit. The rocket's flight was visible for hundreds of miles around the southern California launch site. Images: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7.
TRIPLE RAINBOW: Double rainbows are commonplace. Sunlight reflected once inside raindrops produces the primary arc; sunlight reflected twice produces the secondary. Most people who have seen a single rainbow, have also seen a double.
But have you ever seen a triple? Daryl Pederson of Anchorage, Alaska, spotted one on Sept. 20th:
"Here's something you don't see every day--three rainbows at once!" says Pederson. "The bonus third rainbow was caused by an image of the sun reflected from Potter's Marsh into the falling rain above."
Three rainbows is not the record, however. Atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley has documented cases of four, five and even six bows in the same scene. Read all about them here.
more images: from Calvin Hall of Beluga Point near Anchorage Alaska; from John Maynard of Mt. Rushmore, South Dakota; from Jeff Berkes of Kilo, Hawaii; from Marko Korosec of Dolenja vas, Senozece, Slovenia, Europe; from Alan Dyer of Cluny, Alberta, Canada; from Slanec Erich of Vienna, Austria
EGYPTIAN SUNSET: On Sept. 24th in Giza, Egypt, Aymen Ibrahem positioned himself in front of the Pyramid of King Khephren to photograph the sunset. "Every year, just after the autumnal equinox, the sun sets directly behind the east-west aligned Sphinx," he explains. "I knew it would be a great photo-op." His pictures, however, revealed more than he expected. Scroll past the Sphinx to find out what he saw.
"When I took a close look at the images, I found two sunspots," he says. Indeed, sunspots 1108 and 1109 are large enough to see without the amplification of a solar telescope. "Drifting clouds and the dusty air lowered the brightness of the sun enough for me to capture them using nothing more than my camera (a Sony DSC H5)."
more images: from Frans Zietsman of Fourways, Johannesburg, South Africa; from Steliyan Kimov of Sofia, Bulgaria;
a cautionary note: Never look at the sun through the optical viewfinder of a camera or unfiltered telescope. Even when the sun is dimmed by haze or clouds, sunlight magnified by optics can damage your eyes, resulting in temporary or permanent blindness. Play it safe: Use the camera's LCD screen to preview the scene.
Sept. 2010 Northern Lights Gallery
[previous Septembers: 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2002, 2001, 2000]
Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (
PHAs) are space rocks larger than approximately 100m that can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU. None of the known PHAs is on a collision course with our planet, although astronomers are finding
new ones all the time.
On September 26, 2010 there were 1145 potentially hazardous asteroids.
Notes: LD means "Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance between Earth and the Moon. 1 LD also equals 0.00256 AU. MAG is the visual magnitude of the asteroid on the date of closest approach. | The official U.S. government space weather bureau |
| The first place to look for information about sundogs, pillars, rainbows and related phenomena. |
| Researchers call it a "Hubble for the sun." SDO is the most advanced solar observatory ever. |
| 3D views of the sun from NASA's Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory |
| Realtime and archival images of the Sun from SOHO. |
| from the NOAA Space Environment Center |
| from the National Solar Data Analysis Center |