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HEAVENLY TRIANGLE:
Ringed planet. First-magnitude star. Gibbous moon. Add them all
together and you get a heavenly triangle visible tonight.
Look up after sunset for Saturn, Regulus and the Moon in scalene
formation: sky map.
ERUPTING PROMINENCE:
Today, astronomers are monitoring an unusually active prominence
on the sun's eastern limb. "The eruptions at times are almost
volcanic
in appearance," says Les Cowley in England. "It's
off again!" reports Pete Lawrence of Selsey, UK, who sends
this photo of the latest eruption:
Stephen Ames of Hodgenville, Kentucky, has been watching the action
through his Coronado PST and he has witnessed eruptions twice
today
already. "I was totally amazed!"
This high level of activity may herald an approaching sunspot.
Readers, if you have a solar
telescope, train it on the limb of the sun.
more images: from
Britta Suhre
of Dortmund, Germany; from
Cai-Uso Wohler of Bispingen, Germany; from
C. Miller and J. Stetson of South Portland, Maine; from
Malcolm Park of London, England;
WHAT WOULD GALILEO
SAY? Before you read any further, click
here. That's what Galileo saw in 1610 when he turned his small
telescope toward Jupiter: a fuzzy disk surrounded by four point-like
moons. It wasn't much to look at, but his pioneering
observations upended 17th century cosmology.
Fast forward 398 years to the backyard of amateur astronomer Paul
Haese in Blackwood, South Australia: "I took this picture
of Jupiter on May 10th using my peltier cooled 14-inch
Celestron telescope."
"The seeing was great," he says. Jupiter's moon Io appears
in the foreground not as a dimensionless point of light, but a true
3D orb. The Great Red Spot, a hurricane twice as wide as Earth,
reveals its inner swirls while two companion red spots turn nearby:
labels.
The overall detail is simply breathtaking.
"I'm a happy camper, says Haese. "This is my best picture
of Jupiter yet." And it didn't even upend cosmology. What would
Galileo say to that?
Readers, Jupiter is a wonderful target for any backyard telescope
and it's easy to find. Before dawn, look south for a bright light
in the constellation Sagittarius: sky
map.
more images: from
Anthony Wesley of Murrumbateman, NSW Australia; from
Mike Salway of Central Coast, NSW Australia; from
Christopher Go of Cebu City, Philippines;
April
2008 Aurora Gallery
[Aurora Alerts] [Night-sky
Cameras]
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