VENUS AND JUPITER ARE GETTING CLOSE TOGETHER: Tonight, when the sun goes down, go outside and look west. Venus and Jupiter are beautifully close together in the twilight sky. They're converging for a tight conjunction on June 8-9. Watch the distance shrink every night this week. Sky maps: June 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. Free: Space Weather Newsletter
A LUMPY RING AROUND THE BLUE MOON: Not only was the Blue Moon not blue, it was surrounded by a lumpy ring of bright orange. "It was the most beautiful pollen corona that I've ever seen," says Matti Helin, who photographed the phenomenon from Finland on May 31st:
"The shape of the halo and the yellow dust on everything suggests that this was caused by pine pollen," says Helin.
That's 100% correct. Right now, the male cones of Finnish pines are releasing their yellow dust into the atmosphere--a natural part of their reproductive cycle. Every tree produces millions of grains because they rely on wind to deliver the pollen to the female cones. It is a very inefficient to have sex, but a great way to make "pollen coronas."
Coronas are rings of light that surround the sun or Moon when their light is scattered from small particles. Pollen grains are excellent scatterers while they are suspended in mid-air.
Pine pollen coronas are elliptical and lumpy because the underlying grains are, too. This photo of pine pollen seen through a microscope shows what's going on:
They look like Mickey Mouse hats--a result of air sacs that help carry them in the wind. These align the grains so that the unruly swarm can scatter light coherently, encoding their individual structures into the shape of the overall corona.
Pollen halos around the sun are lumpy, too. Here are some recent examples: from Mikko Peussa of Nousiainen, Finland; from Andreas Steinbach of Rödeby, Karlskrona, Sweden.
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THE SPACE WRENCH: 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:
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.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
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