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AURORA WATCH:
High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras
tonight. Earth is entering a solar wind stream, and the encounter
could spark geomagnetic storms around the poles.
THE SUN IS STIRRING:
NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft
is monitoring an active region hidden behind the sun's eastern limb.
On May 5th, it produced an impressive coronal mass ejection (CME,
movie)
and a burst of Type
II radio emissions caused by a shock wave plowing through the
sun's outer atmosphere. STEREO-B's extreme UV telescope captured
this image during the explosion:
Activity has continued apace today, May 6th, with at least two
more eruptions (stay tuned for movies). Furthermore, the most recent
UV images from STEREO-B reveal not just one but two active regions:
image.
At the root of all this activity is probably a complex of sunspots.
The region is not yet visible from Earth, but the sun is turning
it toward us for a better view. Readers with solar
telescopes should keep an eye on sun's northeastern limb for
an emergence on May 7th or 8th.
more images: from
Alan Friedman of Buffalo, NY; from
Pete Lawrence of Selsey, West Sussex, UK
MASSIVE BUG INVADES
JUPITER: Astrophotographer Mike Salway of
Central Coast, Australia, has witnessed a shocking event on our
solar system's largest planet. "I was imaging Jupiter on the
morning of May 2nd," he says. "You can imagine my surprise
when a massive bug at least 3 times the size of the Earth invaded
the giant planet! Watch the
video to see attack unfold."
Click to play: avi
(0.4 MB) or gif
(4 MB)
"Things were looking grim for the Jovians as the creature
traversed the gas giant, consuming white spots and feeding on power
generated by Jupiter's criss-crossing jet streams," says Salway.
"Did the bug wipe out Jupiter, or did the Jovians repel the
6-legged invader?" A follow-up
photo taken an hour later revealed Jupiter still intact. "It
turns out the invader was just an insect on the mirror of my 12-inch
Newtonian telescope."
Update: Tenho Tuomi
of Lucky Lake, SK, suggests that "the bug was more likely walking
across the CCD. [Judging from the sharp outlines], it has to have
been close to a focal point." If the bug was indeed inside
the CCD camera, "that would make it a shutter bug," says
Bob Burnett of Richland, Washington.
April
2009 Aurora Gallery
[previous Aprils: 2008,
2007, 2006,
2005, 2004,
2003, 2002]
Explore
the Sunspot Cycle
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