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HOAX ALERT:
Today is the day of the Mars Hoax. According to a widespread rumor,
on August 27th Mars will approach Earth so close that it looms as
large as a full Moon in the Thursday-night sky. Don't
believe it.
LUNAR OCCULTATION:
On Thursday, Aug. 27th, the half Moon will pass directly in front
of first-magnitude star Antares. The event is best seen from the
Atlantic side of North America. Small telescopes pointed at the
Moon will show Antares vanish behind the Moon's dark limb around
4:30 pm EDT, all framed by afternoon blue sky. [time
tables]
SOLAR ACTIVITY:
In the pits of a century-level solar minimum, the sun is setting
new records for quiet. But really, how quiet can a 1027-ton
nuclear explosion (a star) ever be? The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory
recorded some lively action on August 25th and 26th:
The 42-hour time-lapse movie shows a prominence, a
swirling cloud of hydrogen held up unsteadily by solar magnetic
fields. Prominences appear to be the one form of solar activity
that continues apace even when sunspots are absent. Readers with
solar
telescopes, for a good show train your optics on the edge of
the sun.
more images: from
Joe Bartolick of Livermore, California; from
Michael Buxton of Ocean Beach, California; from
Adrian Guzman of San Jose, CA; from
Richard Bailey of Barham, Kent, UK; from
Monty Leventhal of Sydney. Australia; from
Stephen Ames of Hodgenville, Kentucky; from
Pavol Rapavy of Observatory Rimavska Sobota, Slovakia; from
Fabio Mariuzza of Biauzzo, Codroipo, Italy
DISAPPEARING MOON:
One of the moons shown below is about to disappear. Click on the
image to watch it happen:
Efrain Morales Rivera of Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, made the
movie on August 19th. It shows Jupiter's giant moon Ganymede
casting its shadow across smaller Europa.
"I used a Meade
LX200 telescope and a CCD camera to record the event,"
he says. The camera rolled for two hours, "and I gathered 10
gigabytes of data before Hurricane Bill intervened." The storm
was passing by Puerto Rico, and its clouds shut down the observing
session.
That's okay, there are more photo-ops to come. Earth is passing
through the orbital plane of Jupiter's moons, lining them up for
a delightful display of mutual occultations and eclipses in September.
Get the full
story from Sky & Telescope.
more images: from
Jeremy Perez of Flagstaff, Arizona; from
Mark A. Brown of Springfield, Virginia; from
Rudi Dobesberger of Neuzeug, Austria; from
Antonios Pantelidis of Florina, Greece; from
Lütfü Çakmak of K.Maras, Turkey
August
2009 Aurora Gallery
[previous Augusts: 2008,
2007, 2006,
2005, 2004,
2003, 2002,
2001]
Explore
the Sunspot Cycle
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