SOLAR ECLIPSE ON THURSDAY: Sunrise has never been so beautiful … or weird. On Thursday, June 10th, dawn will break over the northeastern USA and Canada with a solar eclipse in progress. Here is what it will look like. The eclipse will be visible at other times of day from Greenland, Siberia, and much of Europe. Get the full story with visibility maps from GreatAmericanEclipse.com.
PARTING SHOT: Departing sunspot AR2831 erupted on June 10th (1159 UT) and hurled a massive plume of plasma into space. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the debris in mid-flight:
The plume in this image is almost 400,000 km long--about the same as the distance from Earth to the Moon. It cut through the sun's atmosphere faster than 2800 km/s (6.2 million mph) and probably produced a CME. (Confirmation awaits the arrival of coronagraph images from SOHO).
Because of the sunspot's location near the sun's extreme western limb, this eruption will miss Earth. Maybe next time! Solar flare alerts: SMS Text.
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NOCTILUCENT CLOUD SIGHTINGS: Noctilucent clouds (NLCs) have reached the Netherlands. "The long expected noctilucent clouds finally arrived in our province on June 9th," reports Jan Koeman, who sends this picture from the city of Kloetinge:
"My phone started to get excited with many reactions, so I ran outside with my camera and tripod," he says.
NLCs are clouds of frosted meteor smoke. They form in early summer when wisps of water vapor rise up to the edge of space and crystalize around partially disintegrated meteoroids. This year's season is just getting started. The clouds were first sighted in late May and have been intensifying ever since. By mid-June, the electric-blue clouds should reach the middle latitudes of both Europe and the USA.
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THE SPACE WRENCH FOR FATHER'S DAY: It's the Father's Day gift for the dad who has everything: The Space Wrench. This unique tool has just returned to Earth after a flight to the stratosphere onboard an Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray balloon. Here it is floating 101,243 feet above Mono Lake on June 3rd:
You can have it for $97.95. Made of chrome vanadium steel, this wrench is tough enough to parachute from the edge of space and still tighten a nut more than an inch wide. Imperial and metric scales allow it to be used by mechanics in the Klingon Empire and the Federation.
Each wrench comes with a greeting card showing the tool in flight and telling the story of its trip to the stratosphere.
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