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CELESTIAL TRIANGLE:
This week, Venus, Mars and the Moon are
gathering for a morning sky show. On Wednesday, May 20th, the three
worlds will form a line in the dawn sky. On Thursday morning, May
21st, they will shift to become the vertices of a lovely celestial
triangle. Mark your calendar and set your alarm! Sky maps:
May 20, 21.
REFLECTIONS:
A blue planet, a space telescope, another astronaut--all these things
and more can be found in the visor of John Grunsfeld who paused
to survey his surroundings during a spacewalk on May 14th. Put on
your 3D
glasses and behold:
To create this anaglyph, digital artist Patrick
Vantuyne of Belgium combined two slightly offset photos taken
by spacewalker Andrew Feustal--the guy holding the camera in Grunsfeld's
visor. Readers without red-blue glasses can obtain the same 3D effect
by crossing their eyes while looking at the
original photos.
Grunsfeld and Feustal went out again today to complete
the fifth and final spacewalk of the Hubble repair mission. Thanks
to their efforts, the great telescope is in working order again.
At the end of the spacewalk, Grunsfeld had this to say: "This
is a really tremendous adventure we've been on, a very challenging
mission. Hubble isn't just a satellite- it's about humanity's quest
for knowledge. On this mission, we tried some things that some people
said were impossible.... We've achieved that, and we wish Hubble the
very best."
Well done, NASA.
PINEAPPLE SPLASH:
Sunspot group 1017 is so small and widely
scattered, "it can hardly be seen with all the waves and blistering
surface detail around it," reports astrophotographer Larry
Alvarez of Flower Mound, Texas. "It looks like the remains
of a pineapple dropped from 50 thousand feet."
"I took this picture yesterday, May 17th, using
my Coronado
SolarMax90." says Alvarez.
It's hard to take a sunspot seriously when it looks
like smashed fruit. Sunspot 1017 is, however, important in disproportion
to its size or menace. It is one of the first sunspots of long-awaited
Solar Cycle 24 expected to peak in May
2013. This makes it a herald of bigger things to come--and we
don't mean bigger pineapple. If forecasters are correct, solar activity
should begin to pick up in late 2009 or early 2010, breaking the
monotony of deep
solar minimum with noticeably larger sunspots and occasional
solar flares; a rapid ascent toward stormy solar maximum would follow
in 2011 and 2012. Stay tuned.
more images: from
Mike Borman of Evansville, Indiana; from
Marco Vidovic of Stojnci, Slovenia; from
Pavol Rapavy of Rimavska Sobota, Slovakia; from
Stefano Sello of Pisa, Italy; from
Stephen Ames of Hodgenville, KY; from
Cai-Uso Wohler of Bispingen, Germany; from
Howard Eskildsen of Ocala, Florida; from
Matthias Juergens of Gnevsdorf, Germany; from
Leslie Marczi of Welland Ontario Canada; from
Guenter Kleinschuster of Feldbach, Styria, Austria; from
Stefano Sello of Pisa, Italy; from
Monty Leventhal of Sydney, Australia;
April
2009 Aurora Gallery
[previous Aprils: 2008,
2007, 2006,
2005, 2004,
2003, 2002]
Explore
the Sunspot Cycle
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