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AURORA
AUSTRALIS: Not all the lights in the sky
this week were Northern. The geomagnetic storm of
August 3rd and 4th also triggered a ring of Southern Lights
(aurora australis) around Antarctica. Australian researcher
Tom Luttrell sends these
snapshots from Casey Base on the Antarctic coast.
MORE
AURORAS IN THE OFFING? Earth's magnetic field
is still reverberating from the CME impact of August 3rd,
which sparked auroras as far south as Wisconsin
and Iowa
in the United States. Analysts believe a second CME is not
far behind it, due to arrive on August 5th. A second impact
could re-energize the fading geomagnetic storm and spark a
new round of Northern Lights. High-latitude sky watchers should
remain alert for
auroras.
At the height of the August 3rd display "the whole sky
over northern Quebec filled with green and purple," says
photographer Michel Tournay. "I couldn't decide where
to point my camera!" Fortunately, he had a wide-angle
lens:
Meanwhile in Ringsaker, Norway, the auroras were so bright
"we could see them through clouds, moonlight and midnight
sunlight," says Ragnar Johnskås. "It was a
lovely show."
Browse the gallery
for more!
UPDATED:
August
2010 Northern Lights Gallery
[previous Augusts: 2009,
2008, 2007,
2006, 2005,
2004, 2003]
EARLY
PERSEID FIREBALL: This week, Earth is entering
a stream of dusty debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle, the parent
of the annual Perseid
meteor shower. We're only in the outskirts of the stream
now. The shower won't peak until August 12th and 13th when
we're much deeper inside. Nevertheless, sky watchers are already
seeing some early
Perseids. This one, recorded by a NASA meteor camera in
Alabama on August 3rd, was a doozy:
Click
to view a 1 MB Quicktime movie
"On Monday night, a Perseid meteoroid, about 1 inch
in diameter and traveling at 134,000 mph, entered the atmosphere
70 miles above Paint Rock, Alabama," reports Bill Cooke
of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. "Moving at such
a tremendous speed, the meteor cut a path some 65 miles long
above that state, finally burning up 56 miles above Macay
Lake. It was 6 times brighter than the planet Venus--a good
start to the Perseid meteor shower!"
Stay tuned for more Perseids as Earth moves deeper into the
debris stream.
Solar
Eclipse Photo Gallery
[NASA: South
Pacific Eclipse] [animated
map]
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