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QUIET SUN: With no strong flares for more than 48 hours, the sun's x-ray output has nearly flatlined. Solar activity is low, and NOAA forecasters put the odds of an X-flare today at less than 1%. Solar flare alerts: text, phone.
MARTIAN TRIANGLE: The "Martian Triangle" is back. You can see it tonight beaming through the twilight in the southwestern sky after sunset. The triangle is a triple conjunction of Mars, Saturn, and blue-giant star Spica--last seen by most people on Aug. 5th when Curiosity landed on Mars. Sky maps: Aug. 21, 22.
Last night, John Chumack photographed the trio over Yellow Springs, Ohio:
"I saw the conjunction on August 21st just before a storm rolled in on me," says Chumack. "I was dodging lightning bolts around my observatory, but still got the shot."
More images of the triangle may be found in the realtime photo gallery:
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
SATELLITE THROWN OVERBOARD: On August 20th, more than 400 km above Earth, Russian cosmonauts spacewalking outside the International Space Station threw a 20-pound metal sphere into orbit. Some reporters have likened the launch to a game of Lacrosse because of the Lacrosse-style basket station commander Gennady Padalka used to propel the satellite overboard.
Last night in Brockville, Ontario, veteran satellite watcher Kevin Fetter video-recorded the "Spherical Satellite" as it passed by the 2nd-magnitude star gamma Cygnus:
"It looked to be between mag 7 and 8--too dim for the naked eye but bright enough to see in binoculars," says Fetter.
The 21-inch-wide satellite will serve as a target in space that Russian scientists will use to test space tracking techniques for monitoring space junk and to study how it re-enters Earth's atmosphere. The ball is expected to stay in orbit for about three months before falling back to Earth.
Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
Realtime Noctilucent Cloud Photo Gallery
[previous years: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011]
Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (
PHAs) are space rocks larger than approximately 100m that can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU. None of the known PHAs is on a collision course with our planet, although astronomers are finding
new ones all the time.
On August 22, 2012 there were 1327 potentially hazardous asteroids.
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Mag. | Size |
2012 PD20 | Aug 18 | 9.7 LD | -- | 36 m |
2000 ET70 | Aug 21 | 58.5 LD | -- | 1.1 km |
1998 TU3 | Aug 25 | 49.2 LD | -- | 4.9 km |
2009 AV | Aug 26 | 62.8 LD | -- | 1.0 km |
2012 QC8 | Sep 14 | 22.7 LD | -- | 1.1 km |
1998 UO1 | Oct 4 | 60.1 LD | -- | 2.1 km |
2005 GQ21 | Oct 12 | 77 LD | -- | 1.0 km |
1998 ST49 | Oct 18 | 28.7 LD | -- | 1.3 km |
1991 VE | Oct 26 | 34 LD | -- | 1.1 km |
2001 CV26 | Oct 30 | 68 LD | -- | 2.4 km |
Notes: LD means "Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance between Earth and the Moon. 1 LD also equals 0.00256 AU. MAG is the visual magnitude of the asteroid on the date of closest approach. | The official U.S. government space weather bureau |
| The first place to look for information about sundogs, pillars, rainbows and related phenomena. |
| Researchers call it a "Hubble for the sun." SDO is the most advanced solar observatory ever. |
| 3D views of the sun from NASA's Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory |
| Realtime and archival images of the Sun from SOHO. |
| from the NOAA Space Environment Center |
| the underlying science of space weather |