TWILIGHT LUNAR OCCULTATION ALERT: When the sun sets on Wednesday, Feb. 18th, go outside and look west. Mercury and the crescent Moon will be extremely close together low in the twilight sky. Across at least 10 southern US states, the Moon will eclipse or "occult" the planet, producing a photo-op of rare beauty. Resources: sky map | city-by-city timetables | Mercury photos
THE SUNSPOT REPORT FROM MARS: Almost every day, NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars looks up the sun. It's a great way to check the air for dust. Today's image caught something more--a large sunspot:
Regular readers may recognize it. It's sunspot 4366, which unleashed six X-class solar flares in early February. We can no longer see the sunspot from Earth, because it has moved to the farside of the sun, but Perseverance has a good view from Mars.
To photograph the sun, Perseverance uses its mast camera (MASTCAM), which puts about 90 pixels across the solar disk. It takes a large sunspot to show up in these low-resolution images. Sunspot 4366 is very large, indeed.
The photo confirms that sunspot 4366 is still intact. It could pose a renewed threat for geoeffective flares when it again turns toward Earth later this month.
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THE FLOATING SPACE HAMMER: No toolkit is complete without one: The Floating Space Hammer. This one drifted through the stratosphere for more than three hours during a cosmic ray research balloon flight:
You can have it for $97.95. This compact 8 oz. hammer is light enough to fly on a balloon yet dense enough to deliver a powerful blow. The magnetic head holds a nail for one-handed starting, and the stubby 6 in. length is perfect for tight work areas.
The space hammer comes with a card showing the tool floating at the top of Earth's atmosphere. The interior of the card tells the story of the flight and confirms that this gift has been to the edge of space and back again.
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