FLYBY ALERT! Space shuttle Discovery launches on May 31st. Get your flyby alerts from Space Weather PHONE | | | MARS LANDING: NASA's Phoenix Lander is approaching Mars and preparing to touch down on May 25th. If successful, the landing will kick off an unprecedented 3-month investigation of the Red Planet's arctic realm. Get the full story from Science@NASA. IS THAT AN ASTRONAUT? On the night of May 11th, the ISS flew over Sonnenbuehl-Genkingen, Germany, where Martin Wagner was waiting with his 10-inch telescope and a Canon 400D. He snapped this picture, and wants to know, "is that an astronaut?" The disembodied point of light denoted by the flashing circle is, in fact, not a body. There were no spacewalks in progress on May 11th; all the astronauts were indoors. Barring unauthorized EVAs, the answer probably lies in the shadows--the increasingly complicated shadows of a growing space station. The ISS is bristling with sun-tracking solar arrays, zig-zagging thermal radiators, a bewildering assortment of modules and habitats--and don't forget there are two other spacecraft (Jules Verne and Soyuz 16) currently parked at station docking ports. This assembly casts shadows across itself, occasionally creating the appearance of disconnected pieces. Our best guess for the spot in Wagner's photo: The sun-exposed tip of a thermal radiator. Better ideas are welcomed. 3D BONUS: Put on your 3D glasses and check out the space station's shadows in stereo. Patrick Vantuyne of Belgium assembled the red-blue anaglyph from recent NASA photos. POLLEN CORONAS: It begins with a sneeze. Pollen floating through the air tickles your nose, and your body responds by expelling the allergen. Gesundheit! That's German for "look at the sun." Not really, but look anyway. The same pollen that makes you sneeze can also make beautiful coronas around the sun, like this one photographed on May 11th by Reinhard Nitze of Barsinghausen, Germany: "Coronas are produced when light waves scatter from the outsides of small particles," says atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley. "Tiny droplets of water in clouds make most coronas, but opaque equal-sized pollen grains do even better. They make small but very colorful multi-ringed coronas." "Unlike water droplets, pollens are non-spherical--and this adds to their magic," he continues. "Many have air sacs to help carry them in the wind. These align the grains to give beautiful elliptical coronas with bright spots." This is why Nitze's pollen corona looks the way it does. "So, the next time you sneeze..." Gesundheit! "...look for coronas near the sun." more images: from Eva Seidenfaden of Trier, Germany April 2008 Aurora Gallery [Aurora Alerts] [Night-sky Cameras] |