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THE MOON & JUPITER: When the sun rises on Sunday morning, look out a south-facing window. The moon and Jupiter are having a lovely close encounter. The pair are so bright, they're visible even after the sky turns morning-blue: sky map.
SATURN'S RINGS: Saturn's rings are vanishing! No need to panic, it's happened before. As Saturn goes around the sun, it occasionally turns its rings edge-on to Earth. Because the rings are so thin, they disappear when viewed through a small telescope.
The next "ring plane crossing" isn't due until 2009. Already, though, we can see the process at work. Witness this 3-year animation assembled by Alan Friedman from pictures he has taken from his backyard in Buffalo, New York, between 2004 and 2006:
Animation credit: Alan Friedman and Richard Bosman
In the years ahead, Saturn's rings will become thinner and thinner until, on Sept. 4, 2009, they will briefly disappear. When this happened to Galileo in 1612, he temporarily abandoned his study of the planet. Big mistake: ring plane crossings are good times to discover new moons and faint outer rings.
SUNSPOTS: Finally, a sunspot! Or is that just a passing seagull?
Correct answer: seagull. Mila Zinkova snapped the picture yesterday from the San Francisco bay in California.
At this low ebb of the solar cycle, the only big spots on the sun are seagulls, airplanes and clouds. That doesn't mean, however, that solar activity is nil. Amateur astronomers using H-alpha telescopes have been monitoring some beautiful prominences dancing along the sun's limb, such as this one photographed on March 17th by Didier Favre of Brétigny sur Orge, France. "The sun is not so quiet!" says Favre.