Where's Saturn? Is that a UFO--or the ISS? What's the name of that
star? Get the answers from mySKY--a
fun new astronomy helper from Meade. .
NEW MEXICO FIREBALL:
"There was a large fireball over New
Mexico this morning at 3:20 am MDT," reports Thomas Ashcraft.
"It literally turned night into day," he says. Ashcraft
operates an all-sky camera that captured the meteor in flight: movie.
Don't forget to turn up the volume: The soundtrack is the echo of
a distant radio station reflected from the fireball's ionized trail.
Stay tuned for updates.
PROMINENCE ALERT:
"Even in these quiet times there is
life on the sun," reports Les Cowley of England. This morning
while peering through the eyepiece of his SolarMax60
he sketched a beautiful prominence twisting over the sun's western
limb: image. It's still
there, beckoning to onlookers. If you have a solar telescope, take
a look. "Don't delay," Cowley advises. "The sun's
rotation will soon carry this prominence out of sight."
AURORA WATCH: Tomorrow
night, Sept. 14th, a solar wind stream is due to hit Earth, possibly
triggering a geomagnetic storm. High latitude sky watchers should
be alert for auroras.
On Sept. 3rd, auroras in Kirovsk, Russia, were bright
enough to shine through clouds and twilight. Alexander
Chernucho took the picture above using his Nikon
D200 set at ISO 800. The complete panorama is a must-see.
September
2007 Aurora Gallery
[August 2007 Aurora Gallery]
[Aurora Alerts]
SOLAR
S'MORES: You
know what happens when you hold a marshmallow close to a camp fire.
It puffs up. But do you know what happens when you hold a planet
close to a star? The same thing: planets puff up, too.
Earth is a good example. Extreme ultraviolet (UV) radiation from
the sun heats Earth's upper atmosphere and causes it to expand into
space. During solar maximum when UV radiation is most intense, the
atmosphere can puff up hundreds of kilometers higher than normal,
actually enveloping satellites and degrading their orbits.
Yesterday, researchers at the Living
With a Star workshop in Boulder, Colorado, announced a new way
to study this phenomenon. But first, consider the following image:
On the left is an aerial photo of the building where the workshop
is taking place. On the right is a blurry version of the same scene.
The blur represents our best view of solar extreme UV radiation
today. The sharper image illustrates improvements expected from
a UV monitor called EVE
slated for launch on NASA's Solar
Dynamics Observatory in 2008. "EVE will improve our spectral
resolution of solar extreme UV by a factor of 70 and our time resolution
of UV fluctuations by a factor of 30," says Tom Woods of the
University of Colorado. With EVE on duty, the puffing up of Earth's
atmosphere will become better understood and more predictable--welcome
news for satellite operators.
Stay tuned for more updates from the workshop!
September
2007 Aurora Gallery
[August 2007 Aurora Gallery]
[Aurora Alerts]
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