When is the best time to see auroras? Where is the best place to go? And how do you photograph them? These questions and more are answered in a new book, Northern Lights - a Guide, by Pal Brekke & Fredrik Broms. | | |
ASTEROID BREAKUP: NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has recorded the never-before-seen break-up of an asteroid into as many as 10 smaller pieces. [full story]
STORM CLOUDS ON MARS: In April, Earth and Mars will converge for their closest approach of 2014. Opposition occurs on April 8th. That's when Mars rises in the east at sunset, almost perfectly opposite the sun, and soars overhead at midnight shining 8 times brighter than a 1st-magnitude star. Although closest approach is still more than a month away, astronomers are already enjoying great views of the Red Planet. Australian astrophotographer Anthony Wesley took this picture using a 16-inch telescope on March 6th:
His high-resolution image shows orographic clouds over the Elysium volcanoes just north of the Martian equator and an even brighter blue cloud over the Hellas impact basin in the southern hemisphere. Hellas is the lowest point on Mars, and some of the haze evident there could be icy fog.
Getting such Hubblesque results from a 16-inch telescope requires a combination of good seeing and long years of experience. Wesley, who is one of the world's top amateur astrophotographers, had both working for him on the morning of March 6th. "Skies were stable and clear," he says. "Using a Point Grey Research low-light Grasshopper3 camera, I recorded 2 minutes through red, green and blue filters with red @ 83fps, green@70fps and blue @50fps. I sorted all the frames according to image sharpness and stacked the best 2000 in each channel to make the color image, with additional wavelet sharpening in Registax, deconvolution in Astra Image and final color correction and touchups+captioning in the GIMP."
Observers with less experience can take good photos, too, especially as March gives way to April and Mars approaches Earth. Look for burnt-orange Mars rising in the east around around 10 p.m. about 5° from the blue 1st-magnitude star Spica. The Moon passes by Mars on March 19-20 and provides a convenient "landmark" for finding the Red Planet.
Realtime Mars Photo Gallery
CORONAL HOLE: In the sun's northern hemisphere, magnetic fields have opened up, allowing a stream of solar wind to escape into space. Such openings are called "coronal holes". NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory took this picture of the structure during the early hours of March 6th:
A stream of solar wind flowing from this coronal hole should reach Earth on or about March 9th. Because the "spigot" is located in the sun's northern hemisphere, the stream will sail mostly north of our planet, delivering only a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field.
A glancing blow, however, might be enough to spark polar auroras. For reasons that researchers don't fully understand, spring is aurora season. With the northern vernal equinox just around the corner, even small gusts of solar wind can stir up geomagnetic activity. Stay tuned for auroras. Aurora alerts: text, voice
Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
HELIOPHYSICS SUMMER SCHOOL: Are you an undergraduate physics or astronomy instructor? There might be a seat waiting for you at the 2014 Heliophysics Summer School. The program's sponsor, UCAR, is looking for a number of qualified instructors to attend with most expenses paid. Apply here. The deadline has been extended to March 22nd.
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
Realtime Comet Photo Gallery
Every night, a network of NASA all-sky cameras scans the skies above the United States for meteoritic fireballs. Automated software maintained by NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office calculates their orbits, velocity, penetration depth in Earth's atmosphere and many other characteristics. Daily results are presented here on Spaceweather.com.
On Mar. 6, 2014, the network reported 6 fireballs.
(6 sporadics)
In this diagram of the inner solar system, all of the fireball orbits intersect at a single point--Earth. The orbits are color-coded by velocity, from slow (red) to fast (blue). [Larger image] [movies]
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 March 7, 2014 there were 1458 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 |