SpaceWeather.com Archive — Sun, Aug 3, 2025

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TITAN JUST CAST ITS SHADOW ON SATURN: This morning, astronomers watched an inky dot cross the cloudtops of Saturn. It was the shadow of Saturn's strangely-Earthlike moon Titan. The rare event (it can only happen at 15 year intervals during Saturn's equinoxes) was a wonder to behold.

A GIANT MAGNETIC SPIDER: Make that *two* giant magnetic spiders. New sunspot 4167 has two dark cores surrounded by magnetic fibrils stretching outward like spider legs. Dave Wilson recorded this video on Aug. 2nd from his backyard observatory in Inverness, Scotland:

"They are pulsating and sending waves out over the solar surface," says Wilson.

The cephalothoraxes of these arachnids are nearly as large as Earth, and the legs are more than 50,000 km long. Weaving electromagnetic webs across a sea of boiling hydrogen, sunspot 4167 reminds us that the sun is more than just a glowing ball. It’s a dynamic world with weather and 'creatures' of its own.

Next up: The explosion. Magnetic fields connecting the the two dark cores have a 'beta-gamma' configuration that harbors energy for strong M-class flares. Submit your photos here.

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NASA SPACEWALKER $1 COINS: The US Mint has just released a new set of limited edition $1 coins to honor NASA's astronaut core. Yesterday, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched them to the edge of space onboard a cosmic ray research balloon. Here they are, parachuting back from the stratosphere:

You can have a single coin for $49.95 or an entire unbroken roll for $299.95. No longer available from the US Mint, these rare coins flew 113,949 feet above the Sierra Nevada on July 31, 2025. One side shows an American astronaut conducting a spacewalk outside the International Space Station; the other side features the Statue of Liberty in profile.

Bonus: If you need to, you can spend these coins. They're real legal tender.

The students are selling space coins to support to support their cosmic ray research program. (Helium is expensive!) Each order comes with a greeting card showing the coins in flight and telling the story of their journey to the stratosphere and back again.