NEW AND IMPROVED: Turn your iPhone or iPod Touch into a field-tested global satellite tracker. The Satellite Flybys app now works in all countries. | | | BIG MYSTERY: In a surprising development that has transformed the appearance of the solar system's largest planet, one of Jupiter's two main cloud belts has completely disappeared. Get the full story from Science@NASA. NEW SUNSPOT: Magnetic fields are bursting through the surface of the sun and coalescing to form a new sunspot in the sun's southeastern quadrant. Rogerio Marcon sends this picture of the active region from his backyard observatory in Campinas, Brasil: "Many magnetic structures are visible in my H-alpha telescope," says Marcon. "It is a great view!" The sunspot's dark core is growing rapidly, more than doubling in size since the day (May 21st) began. It does not yet pose a threat for significant solar flares, but if its growth proceeds apace, the sunspot could be a source of eruptions during the weekend. The emergence of this not-net-numbered active region breaks a string of 12 days without sunspots. more images: from Cai-Uso Wohler of Bispingen, Germany; from Pavol Rapavy of Observatory Rimavska Sobota, Slovakia TOWERING PLUME: Tina Olholm was flying in a jet airplane 11,000 meters over Iceland yesterday when she looked out the window and saw something billowing up through the cloud deck: "I knew just what it was," she says, "because I had seen the source of the disturbance from ground level just a few days earlier. The Eyjafjallajokull volcano!" Indeed, Eyjafjallajokull continues to erupt unabated and it is throwing ash thousands of meters in the air. In past weeks, the ashy peril grounded thousands of flights across Europe. Now, however, winds are blowing the plume away from the European mainland and flights like the one Olholm was on have resumed. Tune into NASA's Earth Observatory for latest images of the volcano from space. May 2010 Aurora Gallery [previous Mays: 2008, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002] [aurora alerts] |