Metallic photos of the sun by renowned photographer Greg Piepol bring together the best of art and science. Buy one or a whole set. They make a stellar gift. | | |
CHANCE OF FLARES: The magnetic field of sunspot 1236 harbors energy for M-class solar flares. NOAA forecasters estimate a 25% chance of such an eruption during the next 24 hrs. Solar flare alerts: text, voice.
LUNAR ECLIPSE: On Wednesday night, June 15th, sky watchers in Africa, Asia, South America, Australia and Europe witnessed the longest lunar eclipse in nearly 11 years. Only North America was excluded as Earth's shadow engulfed the full Moon for a whopping 100 minutes.
In the countryside near Szubin, Poland, clouds and fog combined with the amber light of the eclipse to produce this eerie scene:
"The view of the Moon was amazing and fantastic," says photographer Marek Nikodem.
NEW: June 15th Lunar Eclipse Gallery
more images: from Amir H. Abolfath of Firuzkuh, Tehran, Iran; from Iakovos Marios Strikis of Athens, Greece; from Moulley Charaf Chabou of Setif, Algeria; from Monika Landy-Gyebnar of Veszprem, Hungary; from Cadu Rolim of Mole Beach, Florianópolis, SC, Brazil; from Tony Surma-Hawes of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia; from Rafael Schmall of Veszprem, Hungary; from Mohammad Shirani of Cyberjaya ,Malaysia; from Johan Pauly of Belgium; from Andrej Gustin of Ljubljana, Slovenia; from Jarle Aasland of Stavanger, Norway; from Albert Kong of Hsinchu, Taiwan; from Liz Gleeson of Townsville, North Queensland, Australia
CORONAL MASS EJECTION: On June 14th around 0810 UT, a magnetic filament near the sun's eastern limb became unstable and erupted. The resulting blast hurled a bright and massive CME into space:
The expanding cloud was observed by 3 spacecraft: STEREO-A, STEREO-B and SOHO. Researchers at the Goddard Space Flight Center's Space Weather Lab assembled data from the fleet to create a 3-dimensional model of the expanding cloud: movie. According to their analysis, the cloud blew away from the sun at a speed of 830 km/s and it could deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field on June 17th at 10:50 UT (plus minus 7 hours). The impact is not expected to provoke strong geomagnetic storming. Nevertheless, high-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras when the CME arrives. Aurora alerts: text, voice
June 2011 Aurora Gallery
[Aurora alerts: text, voice] [previous Junes: 2010, 2008, 2001]
Midnight Solar Eclipse Gallery
[NASA: A Rare Eclipse of the Midnight Sun]
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 June 16, 2011 there were 1224 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 |
| the underlying science of space weather |
| for out-of-this-world printing and graphics |