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Saturn? Is that a UFO--or the ISS? What's the name
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AURORA WATCH:
"We had a very active
display of auroras last night," reports Mike O'Leary of
Fairbanks, Alaska. Watching alongside, Tara O'Leary says, "this
was my first aurora viewing and what a
show it was!" The display could repeat itself tonight.
The solar wind continues to blow and NOAA forecasters estimate a
40% chance of high-latitude geomagnetic activity: gallery.
LAVA AND STARS:
"This looks like an ordinary scenic of the Milky Way, but it
isn't," says photographer Stephen
James O'Meara writing from the Big Island of Hawaii. "The
real excitement is the fiery red glow at lower left." What
is it? Scroll down for the answer:
Photo details: Canon
20D, 229 second exposure, f/4, ISO 1600
If it's Hawaii, it must be a volcano. Photographed on March 14th,
"this is first time incandesence from molten rock beneath the
surface has been sighted at the summit of Kilauea volcano in more
than a quarter century!" he says. "The last time red was
seen at the summit crater, Halemaumau, was in April/May 1982 during
a brief fissure eruption." O'Meara's close-up
shot is truly hot stuff.
more images: from
Jim Pastore flying in a helicopter above the Big Island of Hawaii.
NOT A VOLCANO:
Yesterday when the sun set among the waves of Lake Superior in Michigan,
Ken Scott witnessed
a red glow of his own, but despite a cursory resemblance to Halemaumau,
it was not a volcano:
The "eruption" is a sun
pillar. Plate-shaped ice crystals fluttering among the clouds
offshore caught the rays of the setting sun and spread those rays
into a vertical column of light. "The pillar started out below
the sun. Then it shot upwards as the sun set," describes Scott.
He angled his camera to position the pillar just behind a mountain-shaped
pile of snow and voila--"an ice volcano."
more images: from
Jerry Mitchell of Lake Kabetogama/Voyaguers National Park, Minnesota;
from
Lois Reinert of Tracy, Minnesota; from
Stephen Ames of Hodgenville, Kentucky;
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