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JUPITER-MOON CONJUNCTION:
When the sun goes down tonight,
step outside and look up. The crescent Moon and
Jupiter are having a close encounter in the constellation
Taurus--and don't forget Comet Pan-STARRS near the
western horizon:
sky
map.
STRONG CME IMPACT:
As predicted, a coronal mass ejection
(CME) hit Earth's magnetic field at 0600 UT on March
17th. The impact lifted the solar wind speed from
300 km/s to 700 km/s and sparked a moderately strong
(Kp=6) geomagnetic storm. Northern Lights spilled
across the Canadian border into the United States
as far south as Colorado:
"Just after 4 am local time,
the skies turned green and red behind the twin stone
monoliths of Rabbit Ears Peak near Steamboat Springs,
Colorado," reports photographer and astronomy
professsor Jimmy Westlake.
In the contiguous United States, auroras
also appeared above New York, Washington, Minnesota,
Wisconsin, Wyoming, Michigan and the Dakotas. Scan
the
realtime
photo gallery and count the states.
The show's not over. A mild geomagnetic
storm is
underway
as Earth passes thrugh the wake of the CME. High-latitude
sky watchers should remain alert for auroras.
Aurora alerts: text,
voice.
IS COMET PAN-STARRS
FRAGMENTING? Veteran astrophotographer
Peter Rosen has been monitoring
Comet
Pan-STARRS, and his latest images obtained on
March 15th seem to show a fragment emerging from
the nucleus. It is the speck just below and to the
right of the comet's head:
"It is visible also in two or
three other image stacks," says Rosen. He notes
how the stars in the image are trailed, but the
apparent fragment is not. "It seems to follow
the comet, not the stars. A plane passed through
the field of view during the exposure, making a
red streak through the comet's tail."
"The colorful image is a frequency
modulation that increases the contrast and clearly
shows the fragment as a dark dot below the nucleus,"
he continues. "I hope this splitting can be
confirmed or refuted soon by other observers."
For casual sky watchers:
A growing number of people are reporting that they
can see Comet Pan-STARRS with the naked eye. Best
estimates place the magnitude of the comet at +0.2,
about twice as bright as a 1st magnitude star. As
the comet moves away from the sun, its visibility
is improving, which means
you might be
able to see it in the nights ahead. Step outside
about an hour after sunset and look west:
sky
map.
WILL THE SKY TURN
GREEN ON ST. PATRICK'S DAY? A magnetic
filament snaking around sunspot AR1692 erupted on
March 15th at about 0600 UT. The slow explosion,
which took hours to unfold, produced an
M1-class
solar flare and a bright CME. SOHO (the Solar and
Heliospheric Observatory) photographed the expanding
cloud, which is heading directly toward Earth:
The CME left the sun traveling some
900 km/s (2 million mph). Three-dimensional computer
models based on observations from SOHO and NASA's
twin STEREO probes predict the CME will cross the
void between sun and Earth in two days or less.
NOAA forecasters estimate a 70% chance of polar
geomagnetic storms when the cloud arrives on March
17th. This means the sky could turn green on St.
Patrick's Day! High latitude (and possibly even
middle latitude) sky watchers should be alert for
auroras this weekend.
Aurora alerts: text,
voice.
Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (
PHAs)
are space rocks larger than approximately 100m that
can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU. None of the
known PHAs is on a collision course with our planet,
although astronomers are finding
new
ones all the time.
On
March 17, 2013 there were 1384
potentially hazardous asteroids.
Notes: LD means
"Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance
between Earth and the Moon. 1 LD also equals 0.00256
AU. MAG is the visual magnitude of the asteroid on
the date of closest approach.
|
The
official U.S. government space weather bureau |
|
The
first place to look for information about sundogs,
pillars, rainbows and related phenomena. |
|
Researchers
call it a "Hubble for the sun." SDO
is the most advanced solar observatory ever. |
|
3D
views of the sun from NASA's Solar and Terrestrial
Relations Observatory |
|
Realtime
and archival images of the Sun from SOHO. |
|
from
the NOAA Space Environment Center |
|
the
underlying science of space weather |
|
end quote from:
www.spaceweather.com/
Forecasts of solar flares and geomagnetic storms, plus daily animations of the sun.
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