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HUBBLE CAPTURED:
"Hubble has arrived onboard Atlantis!"
That was the enthusiastic radio message shuttle astronauts sent
to Houston at 1:14 pm EDT today after they had grappled Hubble using
the shuttle's robotic arm and started the process of berthing the
telescope in the shuttle's payload bay. The successful capture of
Hubble sets the stage for servicing. In the days ahead, astronauts
will conduct five spacewalks to repair and upgrade the telescope,
extending Hubble's operational life until at least 2014.
Minutes before Hubble was captured, astronauts snapped this picture--the
first close-up view of the great telescope since March 2002:
Both Atlantis and Hubble are visible to the unaided eye when they
pass overhead in the night sky. Check the Simple
Satellite Tracker to see if you are favored with a flyby.
SHADOWS VANISH IN
INDIA: Today in Pune, India, Anirudh
Walvekar stepped out of his office for lunch and noticed something
missing. "Our shadows were gone!" he says. A second look
revealed them to be merely underfoot:
"On May 13, 2009, at 12:30pm local time, the sun was directly
above our heads in Pune, causing shadows to disappear," he
explains. In the language of astronomy, the declination of the sun
was +18.4 degrees, precisely equal to the latitude of Pune. "This
phenomenon occurs twice a year, once in Spring when the sun passes
overhead going north, and again in Summer (July 30th) when it returns
to the south."
Tomorrow, May 14th, noon shadows will return to Pune, but they
will disappear somewhere else as the sun continues its springtime
journey north. If the latitude of your hometown happens to be +18.6
degrees, go outside on and look for your shadow. Hint: Look
underfoot.
NOT A SUNSPOT:
Solar activity comes in many forms. Today, astronomers are monitoring
an enormous patch of seething magnetism churning through the sun's
surface in a splash of bright, white froth. It is not a sunspot,
but it is worth a look:
"The region is enormous," says photographer Andy Yeung
of Hong Kong. "It's amazing!" He took the picture just
hours ago using a 5-inch refractor capped with a LS100F Lunt
solar filter.
The active region could be a "proto-sunspot"--a sunspot
struggling to form, but not quite able to organize its own magnetic
fields into a coherent, dark core. Or it could be a "sunspot
corpse"--the decaying remains of a farside sunspot turning
toward Earth at the end of its short life. Whatever it is, its magnetic
polarity identifies it as a member of new Solar Cycle 24--and that
makes it a sign of things
to come.
April
2009 Aurora Gallery
[previous Aprils: 2008,
2007, 2006,
2005, 2004,
2003, 2002]
Explore
the Sunspot Cycle
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