MANHATTANHENGE TODAY: Twice a year at sunset, the concrete canyons of New York City turn into an urban simulacrum of an ancient astronomical observatory. Instead of Stonehenge, New York has Manhattanhenge. Today is one of those days. On Monday, May 29th at 8:13 pm ET, the setting sun will beam directly down Manhattan's east-west streets. Got a picture? Submit it here.
COMPLEX SUN HALO: You're not supposed to look straight at the sun, but... "I'm so glad I did," says R. J. Cobain of Conlig, Northern Ireland. "I was dumbfounded yesterday when I happened to look up at the sky." The sun was surrounded by a lacy network of halos and arcs:
"It's by far the best display of atmospheric optics I have ever seen," he says. "I was shaking as I took as many photos as I could. There was a complete parhelic circle, a circumscribed halo, a supralateral arc, a 22-degree halo, a pair of sundogs, and possibly a Wegener arc."
What caused this? Ice crystals. Freezing-cold cirrus clouds drifted in front of the sun, catching its rays and bending them into exotic forms.
Complex halos like this require not just one type of ice crystal, but many, with gem-like perfection and unusually precise crystal-to-crystal alignment. Clouds that contain such an ensemble of ice crystals are very rare.
more images: from Alan Fitzsimmons of Belfast, Northern Ireland
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BIG EARTH-FACING SUNSPOT: Growing sunspot AR3315 is now 10 times wider than Earth. Philippe Tosi photographed the behemoth from his backyard observatory in Nîmes, France:
It's big and dangerous. The sunspot has a 'beta-gamma-delta' magnetic field that harbors energy for strong explosions. NOAA forecasters estimate a 55% chance of M-class solar flares and a 10% chance of X-flares on May 29th. Any eruptions will be geoeffective because the sunspot is almost directly facing Earth. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text
more images: from Michael Schmidt of Austria; from Pepe Manteca of Begues, Catalunya, Spain; from Alexander Golitschek of Darmstadt, Germany; from Marco Vaccari of Venice, Italy;
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FOR FATHER'S DAY--THE MR. SPOCK COFFEE CUP: Father's Day is coming. Give dad the gift of coffee in a Mr. Spock Cup. It has pointy ears, holds 20 oz. of brew, and comes from the edge of space. The students of Earth to Sky Calculus flew this cup to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon:
You can have it for $99.95. The students are selling Spock cups to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each one comes with greeting card showing the heavy-duty ceramic cup in flight and telling the story of its journey to the stratosphere and back again.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
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