SOLAR ACTIVITY IS LOW: The sun is napping. Although there are five sunspots facing Earth, all of them have stable magnetic fields. As a result, the sun has not produced a significant solar flare in more than a week. We'll alert you when the sun wakes up.
SOLAR ECLIPSE IMAGES AVAILABLE NOW: Yesterday's solar eclipse was visible in 70 different countries. No place was better than Spain. Totality occured just before sunset, creating an otherworldly ambient light and scenes like this:
"I captured this photo from the Castle of Gormaz in northern Spain," says Alexandre Croisier. "The sun emerging from behind the Moon was fantastic."
Some observers couldn't get enough. Terence Murtagh caught this airplane following the eclipsed sun into the horizon:
"In the afterglow of the spectacular total eclipse I witnessed from the Valencia airport, I spotted this aircraft lining up with setting sun," says Murtagh.
These merely scratch the surface of the amazing images we are receiving from the path of totality. Browse the gallery to see the latest.
Realtime Solar Eclipse Photo Gallery
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IRON METEORITE RING: The iron in this meteorite ring has an interesting history. Thousands of years ago it skipped across the top of Earth's atmosphere, creating a field of fragments in China almost 500 km long. This month, we sent it back again:
The ring flew to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon, above 99.4% of the atmsphere where it once skipped in a glancing blow to our planet.
You can have it for $219.95. This fragment comes from the Altai Mountains in China, and is known as an "Aletai meteorite." Widmanstätten patterns on the ring confirm its celestial origin, and an accompanying full-color greeting card shows the ring in flight.
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Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
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Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
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