The space shuttle flies in April. Would you like a call when it soars over your backyard? Spaceweather PHONE!
ASTEROID FLYBY: Asteroid 2006 VV2 is about to fly past Earth. On March 30th at 11 pm PDT the 2 km-wide space rock will streak through the constellation Leo only 2 million miles away glowing like a 9th-to-10th magnitude star. This makes it an easy target for backyard telescopes with CCD cameras. Observers in the Americas are favored. [ephemeris] [3D orbit]
SOLAR CINEMA: Astronomers are calling Japan's Hinode spacecraft a "Hubble for the sun." Watch this movie and you'll see why. (continued below)
Click on the image to view a 2.8 MB movie.
On Dec. 13, 2006, Hinode caught sunspot 930 in the act of exploding. The eruption produced an X3-class solar flare, a billion-ton coronal mass ejection, and spectacular auroras on Earth. Now, with a high-resolution movie to study, astronomers can see what caused the explosion: Two sunspots of opposite magnetic polarity bumped together. Boom!
Stay tuned for more movies from Hinode.
PLUTO ECLIPSE: On March 18th, Pluto eclipsed a dim red star in the constellation Sagittarius. Amateur astronomer Chris Peterson recorded the event from his backyard observatory in Guffey, Colorado:
"For about 5 minutes, the combined intensity (star+Pluto) dropped about 0.45 magnitudes as the planet's shadow passed my observatory." He used an SBIG ST-8 camera and a 12-inch LX200 telescope to obtain the light curve.
When a star goes behind Pluto, its light is not extinguished abruptly, as if hidden by a sharp edge, but rather gradually--a sign that Pluto is surrounded by a fuzzy layer of gas. Such eclipses, properly called "stellar occultations," are a valuable tool for astronomers studying Pluto's surprising atmosphere.
March 19th Solar Eclipse Gallery
Updated March 23, 2007