MOON-VENUS CONJUNCTION TONIGHT: When the sun goes down tonight, step outside and look southwest. Venus and the slender crescent Moon will be beautifully close together--less than 2 degrees apart over the Americas. Try to catch them before the sky fades to black. The sight of a Venus-Moon conjunction framed by twilight blue is out of this world. More: sky map, photo gallery.
'RING OF FIRE' SOLAR ECLIPSE: On Dec. 26th, the Moon passed in front of the sun, transforming the Middle Eastern sun into a "ring of fire." Shahrin Ahmad sends this photo of the eclipsed sun from Ras AlRuwais, Oman:
"It was very cloudy," says Ahmad. "This was an extremely lucky shot through a brief gap in the cloud cover. The 'ring of fire' was amazing!"
The eclipse was widely visible from the Indian-Asian side of Earth. Unlike a total eclipse, which reveals the sun's ghostly corona, this eclipse was annular. The Moon on Dec. 26th was just a little too small to cover the entire solar disk. At maximum, only 97% of the sun's surface was eclipsed, leaving a bright annulus visible around the edge of the Moon--a.k.a., the "ring of fire."
Before the ring was fully developed, Peter Aniol also in Oman, witnessed a very strange sunrise as the partially eclipsed sun emerged from the waves of the Arabian Sea:
Temperature gradients in the air above the sea surface refracted and bent the rays of the rising sun, distorting the crescent shape of the 30%-eclipsed solar disk. At one point, a horn of the crescent seemed to pinch off and leave the rest of the sun behind. "It was a once-in-a-lifetime sunrise," says Aniol.
Photos are still pouring in from the eclipse zone. Check them out.
Realtime Solar Eclipse Photo Gallery
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ZEN ASTRONAUT AT THE EDGE OF SPACE: Are the holidays stressing you out? Find your zen ... at the edge of space. On Dec. 2nd, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched a cosmic ray balloon to the stratosphere. This meditating spaceman pendant went along for the ride:
You can have one for $79.95. They make great gifts for space fans and are guaranteed to soothe holiday stress. Each premium stainless steel pendant comes with a greeting card showing the astronaut in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space and back again.
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Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
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