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NEW MEXICO FIREBALL:
On May 12th, a brilliant green fireball (probably meteoritic) flew
over eastern New Mexico and lit up the ground like a full Moon.
Using a Sandia Labs all-sky camera and a 60-80 MHz radio receiver,
Thomas Ashcraft not only photographed the fireball but also recorded
distant radio stations echoing eerily from the fireball's ionized
tail. Click
here and enjoy the show.
SOLAR ACTIVITY:
Is something lurking just over the sun's eastern limb? Yesterday's
impressive display suggests the answer is yes. Amateur astronomers
in Europe and North America witnessed fountains of hot, magnetized
gas surging over the eastern edge of the sun. "My hard drive
is full of movies," says Didier Favre of Brétigny sur Orge,
France, who counted no fewer than seven eruptions.
Veteran observer Pete Lawrence of Selsey, UK, took the picture
above. "This is the first time I've ever seen material moving
visually away from the surface of the Sun," he says. "What
a treat!"
Readers, if you have a solar
telescope, train it on the eastern edge of the sun. "The
area," says Lawrence, "appears full of promise."
UPDATE: Observers
are reporting a sunspot (or proto-sunspot) emerging from the direction
of yesterday's prominence: #1,
#2,
#3.
more images: from
Britta Suhre
of Dortmund, Germany; from
Monty Leventhal of Sydney, Australia; from
Les Cowley of eastern England; from
Stephen Ames
of Hodgenville, Kentucky; from
Cai-Uso Wohler of Bispingen, Germany; from
C. Miller and J. Stetson of South Portland, Maine; from
Malcolm Park of London, England;
WHAT WOULD GALILEO
SAY? Before you read any further, click
here. That's what Galileo saw in 1610 when he turned his small
telescope toward Jupiter: a fuzzy disk surrounded by four point-like
moons. It wasn't much to look at, but his pioneering
observations upended 17th century cosmology.
Times have changed. Fast forward 398 years to the backyard of amateur
astronomer Paul Haese
in Blackwood, South Australia: "I took this picture of Jupiter
on May 10th using my peltier cooled 14-inch
Celestron telescope."
"The seeing was great," he says. Jupiter's moon Io appears
in the foreground not as a dimensionless point of light, but a true
3D orb. The Great Red Spot, an anti-cyclone
twice as wide as Earth, reveals its inner swirls while two companion
red spots turn nearby: labels.
The overall detail is breathtaking.
"I'm a happy camper, says Haese. "This is my best picture
of Jupiter yet." And it didn't even upend cosmology. What would
Galileo say to that?
[Galileo replies: "If
I had used a 14-inch Celestron back in 1610, I would have undoubtedly
observed that the Medicean planet has more than four moons, and
I would have needed to name them not only for Prince Cosimo, but
for his entire extended family!"]
Readers, Jupiter is a wonderful target for any backyard telescope
and it's easy to find. Before dawn, look south for a bright light
in the constellation Sagittarius: sky
map.
April
2008 Aurora Gallery
[Aurora Alerts] [Night-sky
Cameras]
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