When is the best time to see auroras? Where is the best place to go? And how do you photograph them? These questions and more are answered in a new book, Northern Lights - a Guide, by Pal Brekke & Fredrik Broms. | | |
TROUBLE CONTACTING MARS: NASA has suspended communications with Mars rovers and orbiters this month as the Red Planet passes almost directly behind the sun. Today, April 17th, is the day of closest approach: Mars is only 0.4o from the center of the solar disk. "The sun can easily disrupt radio transmissions during the near-alignment," explains a NASA press release.
LYRID METEOR SHOWER: Earth is entering a stream of debris from ancient Comet Thatcher, source of the annual Lyrid Meteor Shower. Usually the shower is mild (10-20 meteors per hour) but unmapped filaments of dust in the comet's tail sometimes trigger outbursts ten times stronger. Forecasters expect the peak to occur on April 21-22. Photographer Jeff Berkes caught this early-arriving Lyrid during a deep exposure of the Milky Way on April 14th:
"On the night I saw this meteor, I had been traveling for days while sleeping out of my car as I continue my dark sky projects," says Berkes. "Watching a meteor fall right through the middle of your frame is the best! In addition to this Lyrid over the swamps of Maryland, I was also able to capture a couple of Lyrids over the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and the Bodie Island Lighthouse. This is a good sign that the Lyrids are coming!"
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THE BEHOLDER: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or in this case, the sunglasses. Look carefully at the reflection of the sun in the shades of this young woman. There is a beautiful ring around the sun:
Mustafa Erol took the picture on April 14th from Antalya, Turkey.
The ring around the sun is not an artifact of the lens. "We could see it in the sky," says Erol. It is a luminous halo caused by hexagonal ice crystals in cirrus clouds. When sunlight hits the crystals floating 5 to 10 km above Earth's surface, the rays of the sun are refracted into a circle with radius 22o. Looking through sunglasses is a good way to see this common phenomenon. Apparently, looking at sunglasses works, too.
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
CME IMPACT: A coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth's magnetic field on April 13th. The impact was not a strong one; geomagnetic activity never crossed storm thresholds. Nevertheless, the impact sparked faint auroras photographed in several northern-tier US states. Brian Larmay sends this exposure from Beecher, Wisconsin:
"I got up at 230 am CST to see if the auroras had made their way south, and I saw a glow that looked to he naked eye like light pollution," says Larmay. "My camera revealed the colors. I didn't expect much of a display because the CME impact was rather weak--but there it was."
"I have noticed that the southern hemisphere of the sun is starting to pepper more with spots," he continues. Indeed, the southern hemisphere has been lagging behind the north in sunspot production, and it might be starting to catch up. A surge in southern sunspot production would boost solar activity. "This is good news for the aurora chasers," Larmay opines, and he is right! Aurora alerts: text, voice.
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[previous years: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011]