DOOMED SPACECRAFT: Jules Verne is about to become a fireball. On Sept. 29th, with NASA airplanes looking on, the 22-ton European spacecraft will plunge into Earth's atmosphere over the south Pacific Ocean. Jules Verne recently spent five months docked to the space station where it delivered supplies, used its engines help the station avoid a piece of space junk, and served as an impromptu bedroom for the ISS crew. Mission accomplished, the doomed spacecraft is now making its final orbits around Earth. If you'd like to see it, check the Simple Satellite Tracker for viewing times. MICKEY MOUSE EARS: Ultraviolet photos taken by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) reveal the a strange pair of "Mickey Mouse" ears on the sun. They've been sighted many times in recent weeks and are especially prominent today: What are they? Coronal cavities--regions of low density, high temperature gas contained by loops of magnetic field. Coronal cavities are where prominences are born. Indeed, there is a prominence inside the righthand cavity; look for it in the red image, above, also from SOHO. There's more to this story. The two ears appear to be two distinct cavities. In fact, they are one. The actual cavity is a collosal ring encircling the north pole of the sun. Geometrically, it is similar to the auroral ovals of Earth. The two ears are cross-sections of the translucent ring, distinctly visible because they hang out over the edge of the solar disk. The ring-shaped cavity is also known as the sun's "polar crown" and it spawns some truly beautiful prominences. The polar crown is easiest to see during solar minimum when the sun is not cluttered with spots--so now is the perfect time. Look for the ears in daily images from SOHO. SUN PILLAR: When the sun went down this evening in Frankfurt, Germany, a blood-red column of light lept up to signal its exit. Horst Templin snapped this picture using his Nikon Coolpix 4500: This is a sun pillar and it is a sign of ice in the sky. Flat, plate-shaped ice crystals fluttering down like leaves from high clouds caught the red rays of the setting sun and redirected them into a vertical column of light. Sun pillars may be seen whenever icy clouds drift across the sunset. Look for your own this evening! more images: from Alan Barrington of Hammerfest, Norway; from Jon Hayden of Indian Trail Springs, Oregon; from Marek Nikodem of Kcynia, Poland; from John Stetson of Sebago Lake, Maine; from Mike Sessions of Mauna Kea, Hawaii; Sept. 2008 Aurora Gallery [Aurora Alerts] [Night Sky Cameras] |