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ASTEROID FLYBY: Newly-discovered asteroid 2011 CA7 is going to fly past Earth on Feb. 9th only 63,000 miles away, or 1/4th the distance to the Moon. At closest approach around 1700 UT, the VW-Bug-sized space rock will zip through the constellation Orion glowing like a 17th magnitude star. [
On Super SUNday Feb. 6, 2011, NASA will release humankinds first ever view of the entire Sun and NASA’s Robonaut 2 will make a first ever guest appearance on the NFL’s Super Bowl Pre game showWhat do NASA, Robots, the Sun and the NFL have in common ?
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NOAA forecasters estimate a 60% chance of polar geomagnetic storms on Feb. 3rd. They say a high-speed solar wind stream and a CME could hit Earth’s magnetic field on Wednesday–a double whammy almost certain to spark some degree of geomagnetic activity. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras.
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DOUBLE ERUPTION: Jan. 28th began with not one but two major eruptions on the sun. Separated by more than a million kilometers, the two blasts occurred almost simultaneously on opposite corners of the solar disk. Click on the image to view a movie recorded by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory:
On the lower left, a magnetic filament became unstable and erupted, hurling a portion of itself into space. On the upper right, departing sunspot 1149 produced an M1-class solar flare and a bright coronal mass ejection (SOHO movie). Is this all a big coincidence? Maybe not. New research shows that eruptions on the sun can “go global” with widely separated blasts unfolding in concert as they trigger and feed off of one another.
These blasts are going to miss in concert, too. Plasma clouds ejected by the two eruptions will sail wide of our planet, one on the left and one on the right. No Earth-effects are expected
1/25/11
by Michael E. Salla, Ph.D.
exopolitics.org
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Earth could be getting a second sun, at least temporarily.
Dr. Brad Carter, Senior Lecturer of Physics at the University of Southern Queensland, outlined the scenario to news.com.au. Betelgeuse, one of the night sky’s brightest stars, is losing mass, indicating it is collapsing. It could run out of fuel and go super-nova at any time.
When that happens, for at least a few weeks, we’d see a second sun, Carter says. There may also be no night during that timeframe.
The Star Wars-esque scenario could happen by 2012, Carter says… or it could take longer. The explosion could also cause a neutron star or result in the formation of a black hole 1300 light years from Earth, reports news.com.au. …
OMEGA SUNSET: “Last night’s sunset was an amazing sight,” reports Pete Lawrence from West Beach in Selsey, UK. “As the sun approached the horizon, the lower half of the solar disk extended downwards to touch an image of itself rising out of the waves.” He took this picture of the phenomenon:
Jules Verne famously likened this kind of sunset to an Etruscan Vase. Others call it an “Omega sunset” because it resembles the Greek letter. Either way, it is caused by warm air overlying the sea surface, which refracts the rays of the setting sun to produce a mirage, as shown.
This is a good weekend to watch the sunset. Not only are mirages a possibility, but also you might observe a sunspot in the twilight.
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Last night in Tromsø, Norway, the solar wind combined with moonlight and snow to produce a scene that had onlookers asking themselves,can it get any better than this? One of those onlookers was Thilo Bubek, and he took this picture:
“The whole evening was a perfect show with strong auroras in many colours,” says Bubek. “We were able to capture some fantastic images.”
But can it get any better? Maybe later today: A solar wind stream is due to hit Earth’s magnetic field on Jan. 14-15, possibly sparking even stronger displays
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An active region on the far side of the sun is crackling with solar flares and hurling CMEs into space. Click on the image to view the latest blast on Jan. 14th:
This eruption was nearly as dramatic as another one the day before, and suggests that more eruptions are in the offing.
The explosions are occuring almost directly beneath NASA’s STEREO-B spacecraft. STEREO’s onboard telescope has recorded bright flashes of extreme UV radiation and shadowy shock waves emanating from the blast site (Jan. 13th movie). The telescope has also pinpointed the source: It is located just over the sun’s eastern limb. Solar rotation is turning the region toward Earth, so geoeffective solar activity could commence within days.
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On Jan. 11th around 8:45 pm CST, many people in the southeastern USA saw something streak across the sky and explode. The blast produced infrasound waves detected as far away as Canada. Data from a University of Western Ontario monitoring station reveals the nature of the event: “It was a meter-size meteor with more than a metric ton of mass, exploding like 40 to 80 tons of TNT,” says Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. “This was one big rock, and the odds are good that there are fragments on the ground.” An analysis of sightings by meteorite hunter Rob Matson suggests the fall zone is in central Mississippi, possibly around Jackson. People in the area should be alert for odd-looking rocks.
