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FAST GROWING SUNSPOT: New sunspot 1199 is growing rapidly in the sun's northern hemisphere, ballooning in area by more than a factor of five during the last 24 hours: movie. If the expansion continues apace, this active region could soon pose a threat for flares. Stay tuned.
STORMY SHUTTLE: The final flight of space shuttle Endeavour is nigh, but only if the clouds part. Jacob Kuiper sends this stormy picture from the Kennedy Space Center on April 26th:
"We are experiencing unstable weather conditions just three days ahead of the launch of Endeavour, currently scheduled for Friday, April 29th, at 3:47 pm EDT," says Kuiper. "Weather conditions in the coming 72 hours will change, but there could be more thunderstorms right up until the big moment."
WEATHER UPDATE (April 27 @ 11 am EDT): The latest forecast calls for an 80 percent chance of favorable conditions at launch time, according to Shuttle Weather Officer Kathy Winters. The only concern for launch may be the crosswinds at the Shuttle Landing Facility.
Endeavour is poised to begin a two week mission to the International Space Station. There it will deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer--a $1.5 billion cosmic ray detector that could reveal the nature of dark matter and find whole galaxies made of antimatter. The shuttle crew will also test a new automated rendevous system named, appropriately, STORMM, that will help future spacecraft dock to the ISS after the shuttle program is over.
Get ready for Endeavour's last flight: Turn your cell phone into a field-tested shuttle tracker.
'B' STANDS FOR ... BORING? On the Richter Scale of solar flares, B-class eruptions are weak and generally considered boring. Really? Consider the following B-class eruption recorded by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) on April 23rd:
That wasn't boring. On the contrary, the blast hurled hundreds of thousands of tons of plasma above the stellar surface with a power akin to millions of atomic bombs. The only thing more amazing than the blast was its aftermath. For all that power, the explosion was insufficient to break the plasma free from the sun's grasp. Magnetic fields arcing above underlying sunspot 1193 held tight to the expanding gas and pulled it back down with a dynamic double bounce.
One of the most significant findings from SDO, barely a year after First Light, is that there are no truly boring solar flares. The observatory's Hubble-like cameras have revealed hidden power and fascination in even the smallest eruptions, leaving us waiting with anticipation for the next B-flare. Stay tuned.
April 2011 Aurora Gallery
[previous Aprils: 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002]