FARSIDE SUNSPOTS: NASA's STEREO-A spacecraft is monitoring a pair of UV hotspots on the farside of the sun that might be big sunspots. We will find out soon enough. The active regions will rotate into view over the sun's eastern limb 3 to 5 days from now. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text.
STARLINK RADAR ECHOES: Turn up the volume. You're about to hear a batch of Starlink satellites mimic a mete or outburst. On Nov. 8th Giuseppe Petricca on Scotland's Isle of Lewis was monitoring France's GRAVE space surveillance radar, listening for echoes from the Northern Taurid meteor shower. Instead, he got this:
"For 10 minutes, a train of Starlink satellites passed over the radar, and I recorded the echoes--a very peculiar sound, almost 'spectral', with interesting undertones," says Petricca. "These were satellites from the latest launch (L14). The regularly-spaced Starlink echoes are interspersed with a few natural meteor echoes too."
GRAVE is located 1500 km southeast of Petricca's radio observatory. He uses a Yagi antenna and a radio receiver tuned to 143 MHz (the operating frequency of the radar) to listen for objects passing over the distant radar. In the past, meteors made most of the echoes, but now Starlink can easily overwhelm the natural meteor rate.
Petricca is broadcasting the output of his station live from the Hebrides. "Tune in and you can hear meteor echoes around the clock," says Petricca. And, of course, Starlink.
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COMET ATLAS IS APPROACHING BELLATRIX: Can you say "photo-op"? On Nov. 15th, Comet ATLAS (C/2020 M3) will have a close encounter with Bellatrix at the left shoulder of Orion. Last night in Waldport, Oregon, amateur astronomer Fred Schneider photographed their approach:
"The comet is just off the end of Orion's Belt, heading north toward Bellatrix," says Schneider. "To obtain the image, I stacked 14 one-minute exposures taken with my Nikon D850 digital camera set at ISO 1200."
This is a conjunction for photographers. Although Bellatrix is quite bright (magnitude +1.6), Comet ATLAS is below the threshold of naked-eye visibility (magnitude +8). You'll need a camera to see it. Successful photo settings may be found here, here, and here.
At closest approach on Nov. 15th, telescopic exposures might reveal the blue star shining through the comet's extended green atmosphere. Stay tuned for photos. Sky maps: Nov. 13, 14, 15, 16.
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BLUE AURORA SPACE PENDANT: Inspired by the rarest of all auroras--blue ones--the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched this pendant onboard a cosmic ray balloon. On Oct 24th, it soared to the stratosphere 102,362 feet above the Sierra Nevada mountains of central California:
You can have it for $99.95. The students are selling blue aurora pendants to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the pendant in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space and back again.
The pendant's face shows an outburst of blue auroras, caused by the solar wind activating ionized nitrogen molecules at the top of Earth's atmosphere. A howling Arctic Wolf is silhouetted in the foreground.
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