Space shuttle Discovery has launched! If you would like to see it flying through the night sky, sign up for Spaceweather PHONE.
4TH OF JULY: When the fireworks begin tonight, look beyond the explosions. There, up in the sky, Jupiter and the Moon will be shining brightly side-by-side. You can't miss them. If you're lucky you might see a spaceship, too. Get the full story from Science@NASA.
CORONAL HOLE: A solar wind stream is heading for Earth, and it could spark a geomagnetic storm when it arrives on July 5th or 6th. The source of the stream is this gaping coronal hole:
Image credit: SOHO Extreme Ultraviolet Telescope
Coronal holes are openings in the sun's atmosphere where solar wind escapes into space. Magnetic force fields guide the wind into a well-defined stream blowing a million miles per hour. There's no danger when the stream hits; Earth's planetary magnetic field protects us. All you have to worry about is missing the auroras.
INFRABOW: The colors of the rainbow define what the human eye can see: Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet. But what would a rainbow look like at wavelengths the human eye cannot see? Jonas Förste decided to find out. On June 28th, from his frontyard in Jakobstad, Finland, he photographed a bright rainbow through an infrared filter:
This "infrabow" looks much like an ordinary rainbow, but there is a difference. See the scalloping inside the bright primary? Those are supernumerary arcs, and they appear because the wavelength of infrared light is similar to the diameter of the raindrops forming the bow. Supernumeraries form within visible rainbows, too, but they are somewhat rare.
The whole scene has an eerie, alien feel. Indeed, rainbows like this may be common in far away places such as Saturn's moon Titan: full story.