It's a Valentine's Gift from the stars: Authentic meteorite rings. Select your favorite from dozens of styles. | | |
AURORA WATCH: NOAA forecasters estimate a 20% chance of minor geomagnetic storms during the next 24 hours as Earth glides through a solar wind stream. Arctic sky watchers should be alert for green things above. Aurora alerts: text, voice.
NORTHEASTERN ERUPTION: Solar activity is picking up. During the late hours of Feb. 9th, a dark magnetic filament winding over the sun's northeastern limb rose up and exploded. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the action:
The eruption hurled a bright coronal mass ejection (CME) away from the sun: SOHO movie. The expanding cloud is not heading for Earth, but in a day or so it might make contact with Venus, which appears to be in the line of fire.
The emergence of a new sunspot at the root of the erupting filament plus the rapid growth of existing sunspot AR1416 could foreshadow more activity in the days ahead. Solar flare alerts: text, voice.
MOON-MARS: Mars is approaching Earth for a close encounter in early March. Already the Red Planet is five times brighter than a 1st-magnitude star. Last night it appeared next to the Moon, where the children of Swedish astrophotographer P-M Hedén saw it beaming through the evening mist:
"It was a very cold evening, but my children decided to come along with me to get a nice view of the Moon and Mars rising over a frozen lake," says Heden. "It was worth standing in the cold mist to see this. Now the children are in front of the stove, warm and nice again."
Meanwhile, Efrain Morales Rivera photographed the Red Planet from his private observatory in of Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. "Cross your eyes to see Mars in 3D," he says. The two images were taken one hour apart. The rotation of Mars during that time provided two points of view necessary for a pseudo-stereo effect: more.
January 2012 Aurora Gallery
[previous Januaries: 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2005, 2004]
Comet Lovejoy Gallery
[previous comets: McNaught, Holmes, Lulin, Tuttle, Ikeya-Zhang]
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 February 10, 2012 there were 1287 potentially hazardous asteroids.
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Mag. | Size |
2009 AV | Feb 16 | 44.9 LD | -- | 1.2 km |
2000 ET70 | Feb 19 | 17.7 LD | -- | 1.0 km |
2011 CP4 | Feb 23 | 9.1 LD | -- | 255 m |
2008 EJ85 | Mar 6 | 9.1 LD | -- | 44 m |
1999 RD32 | Mar 14 | 57.9 LD | -- | 2.4 km |
2011 YU62 | Mar 16 | 73.4 LD | -- | 1.3 km |
1996 SK | Apr 18 | 67.2 LD | -- | 1.6 km |
2007 HV4 | Apr 19 | 4.8 LD | -- | 8 m |
2011 WV134 | Apr 28 | 38.6 LD | -- | 1.8 km |
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 |