SOLAR WIND SPARKS GEOMAGNETIC ACTIVITY: Earth is entering a stream of high-speed solar wind on April 20th, and this is causing G1 to G2-class geomagnetic storms around the poles. NOAA forecasters say there is a 50% chance that these disturbances will continue until April 21st as our planet moves deeper into the stream.
"Last night, northern lights danced across the sky over northern Wyoming," reports Kevin Palmer, who sends this picture from the Bighorn Mountains:
"There were plenty of Lyrid meteors as well," says Palmer.
High-latitude sky watchers should remain alert for auroras tonight as the solar wind continues to blow. Free: Aurora Alerts
CONTACT BINARY ASTEROID: When mountain-sized asteroid 2014 JO25 flew past Earth on April 19th, it looked like a fast-moving speck of light in backyard telescopes. NASA radars saw much more. The 70-meter antenna at Goldstone CA pinged the asteroid, illuminating it with radio energy as it passed by. The resulting images reveal a peanut-shaped asteroid that rotates about once every five hours:
"The asteroid has a contact binary structure - two lobes connected by a neck-like region," says Shantanu Naidu, a scientist from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who led the Goldstone observations. "The largest of the asteroid's two lobes is about 2,000 feet (620 meters) across."
These images have a resolution as fine as 25 feet (7.5 meters) per pixel. Additional radar observations are being conducted at both Goldstone and Arecibo on April 20 and 21, and could provide even greater detail. Stay tuned!
Realtime Asteroid Photo Gallery
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery