PENUMBRAL LUNAR ECLIPSE: Today, June 5th, the full Moon will pass through the outskirts of Earth's shadow, producing a penumbral lunar eclipse. Play this movie to see what it will look like. The faint eclipse will be visible from Africa, Australia, Antarctica, parts of South America and Asia--basically everywhere except North America. Maximum eclipse occurs at 1925 UTC. Browse: Eclipse Photo Gallery.
ANOTHER NEW CYCLE SUNSPOT: Solar Cycle 25 is stirring. The latest sign of life is sunspot AR2765, now turning toward Earth in the sun's southern hemisphere. Alan Friedman sends this picture from Buffalo, New York:
"I was so excited at the prospect of seeing a new-cycle sunspot begin its journey across the disk that I schlepped out my 10-inch scope (safely filtered!) to have a peek," says Friedman.
The sunspot's primary dark core is almost twice as wide as Earth, and it is followed by a frothy wake of magnetic turbulence stretching 70,000 miles behind the sunspot. These dimensions make it an easy target for backyard solar telescopes.
The sunspot is crackling with minor solar flares. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded this B3-class eruption at 00:01 UT on June 5th:
The explosion hurled a cloud of plasma into space, but not toward Earth. Future explosions could be geoeffective, however, as the sunspot turns toward Earth this weekend. Stay tuned! Solar flare alerts: SMS Text.
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ARCTIC WOLF PENDANT: This wolf glows in the dark--and it's been to space. The students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched this special pendant to the stratosphere on April 15, 2020, on board a high-altitude cosmic ray balloon. The payload of radiation sensors (and lupine jewelry) traveled 107,611 feet above Earth's surface:
You can have it for $99.95. The students are selling these pendants to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the wolf in flight and describing its journey to the stratosphere and back again.
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