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JUPITER & THE MOON: When the sun goes down tonight, step outside and look south. You'll see a beautiful conjunction of Jupiter and the Moon, the two brightest objects in the night sky: sky map.
SUN SHARK: Imagine a shark's fin fifty thousand miles high. Actually, there's no need to use your imagination. Just look at this giant prominence poking above the sun's northwestern limb today:
Photo credit: Cai-Uso Wohler of Bispingen, Germany, using a Coronado Personal Solar Telescope.
Prominences are clouds of glowing-hot solar hydrogen held up by magnetic force fields. They come in all shapes and sizes, constantly changing, and sometimes exploding! What will this one look like tomorrow? Stay tuned.
DOUBLE FLARE: Sky watchers who've witnessed an Iridium flare never forget the experience. Sunlight hits a flat surface on one of the Iridium satellites and--wow!--it looks like a supernova.
Make that two supernovas: On June 5th, Laurent Laveder of Bretagne, France, spotted a pair of Iridium flares in quick succession:
The two satellites were Iridium 7 and Iridium 51, passing overhead only 2 minutes and 30 seconds apart. With a bit of judo photography, Laveder managed to capture both flares in the same image. A larger version of the image also shows Saturn, Mars and the beautifully moonlit Odet River: labeled, unlabeled.
Would you like to see an Iridium flare? Visit Heaven's Above for local predictions.