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kiss the skies

Welcome to my blog!

NICE TAIL
Posted:Apr 9, 2017 8:34 pm
Last Updated:Mar 19, 2024 4:56 am
15595 Views
More than 180 million km from Earth, something is happening to Comet PanSTARRS, C/2015 ER61. On April 4th and 5th, the comet brightened more than 6-fold, from magnitude +8.5 to +6.5, suddenly reaching the verge of naked eye visibility despite its great distance from our planet. Now amateur astronomers are photographing an incredible tail. Gerald Rhemann took this picture from his private observatory in Farm Tivoli, Namibia.

"The comet's tail is about 2.5 degrees long," says Rhemann.
That means it spans more than 8 million km. For comparison, the entire sun is 1.4 million km wide; you could wrap the comet's tail around the sun's equator twice. Another way of putting it: The distance from Earth to the Moon is only 5% of the length of the gaseous lane behind Comet PanSTARRS.
The comet's outburst is probably caused by a fresh vein of icy material in the comet's nucleus exposing itself to solar radiation. Furiously vaporizing, the comet's core is spewing jets of dust and gas into space, a tail building process that should intensify as the comet approaches the sun between now and early May.
The comet's closest approach to Earth will be 176 million km, 1.18 AU, on April 19th. Even at that distance, the comet might be a beautiful sight in backyard telescopes if current trends continue.
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crocus
Posted:Apr 9, 2017 11:35 am
Last Updated:Mar 19, 2024 4:56 am
15478 Views
The crocus have finally pushed through the fall accumulation. Man, I need to rake. They still look nice.




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Comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak Flyby !!
Posted:Mar 30, 2017 7:33 pm
Last Updated:Mar 19, 2024 4:56 am
15961 Views
The fuzzy green Comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak is flying over Earth's North Pole this week where sky watchers can find it all night long not far from the bowl of the Big Dipper. At closest approach on April 1st it will be just 21 million km from Earth, an easy target for backyard telescopes and almost visible to the naked eye. Amateur astronomer Yasushi Aoshima took this picture of the approaching comet from Fukushima, Japan.



"On March 22nd I caught 41P 'eating' M108, the Surfboard Galaxy," says Aoshima. "The comet's green atmosphere appeared to swallow the distant spiral galaxy as it exited Ursa Major."

The comet is green because, like many comets, it has a verdant hue because its atmosphere contains diatomic carbon (C2), a substance that glows green in the near vacuum of space.

Comet 41P is not only approaching Earth, but also the sun. April 12th is the date of perihelion (minimum distance from the sun). This means we are catching the comet just as solar heating is furiously searing its icy core. The green atmosphere should be well puffed up by streamers of vaporizing gas. Optimistic estimates of the comet's brightness place it at magnitude +6, near the lower limit of naked-eye visibility.

This is not a Great Comet, but it should be a good one. The best time to observe is during the dark hours before sunrise when the green ball of fuzz is high in the northern sky. If you have a GOTO telescope, you can point it using an ephemeris from the Minor Planet Center.

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POWERFUL CORONAL HOLE FACES EARTH
Posted:Mar 26, 2017 5:47 am
Last Updated:Mar 19, 2024 4:56 am
16240 Views
A canyon shaped hole in the sun's atmosphere is facing Earth, and it is spewing a stream of fast moving solar wind toward our planet. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory photographed the giant crack in the sun on March 25th.



This is a coronal hole, a vast region where the sun's magnetic field opens up and allows solar wind to escape. A gaseous stream flowing from this coronal hole is expected to reach our planet during the late hours of March 27th and could spark moderately strong G2-class geomagnetic storms around the poles on March 28th or 29th.

We've seen this coronal hole before. In early March, it lashed Earth's magnetic field with a fast-moving stream that sparked several consecutive days of intense auroras around the poles. The coronal hole is potent because it is spewing solar wind threaded with negative polarity magnetic fields. Such fields do a good job connecting to Earth's magnetosphere and energizing geomagnetic storms.
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CRESCENT VENUS
Posted:Mar 24, 2017 5:20 am
Last Updated:Mar 19, 2024 4:56 am
16255 Views
This week Venus is passing between Earth and the sun and by doing so is turning its night side toward Earth. At the moment all we can see of Venus is an exquisitely slender crescent. Maximilian Teodorescu photographed the second planet from the suns shape from Magurele, Romania.



"Venus was lovely today at 200x thorough my 14 inch telescope," says Teodorescu. "Despite the mostly poor seeing, the superb thin crescent of Venus was a truly fantastic sight."

The Venus-sun distance will be the least on March 25th (only 8.5 degrees), a moment astronomers call "inferior solar conjunction." This is the most beautiful time to observe Venus, but also the most perilous. The glare of the nearby sun magnified by a telescope can damage the eyes of anyone looking through the eyepiece.

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A HOLE HAS OPENED UP IN THE SUN'S ATMOSPHERE
Posted:Mar 17, 2017 12:22 pm
Last Updated:Mar 19, 2024 4:56 am
16581 Views
A hole has opened in the sun's atmosphere, and it is turning toward Earth. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory is tracking the opening, which researchers call a coronal hole. This is a picture from the observatory.



Coronal holes are places, big places, where the sun's magnetic field opens up and allows solar wind to escape. A wide stream of solar wind flowing from this coronal hole is expected to reach our planet on March 23rd. The impact of the solar wind should produce magnetic activity around Earth's poles and could spark the first auroras of northern spring.
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CRESCENT VENUS
Posted:Mar 16, 2017 5:28 am
Last Updated:Mar 19, 2024 4:56 am
16754 Views
VENUS IS A SKINNY CRESCENT
On March 25th, Venus will pass almost directly between Earth and the sun, an event astronomers call "inferior solar conjunction." As Venus approaches the sun, the planet is turning its night side toward us, reducing its luminous glow to a thin sliver. Shahrin Ahmad of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, photographed the crescent on March 15th.



"Venus is about 17 degrees from sun, and shining at only 4.7% illumination," says Ahmad. "This is my clearest view so far. "

In the nights ahead, the crescent of Venus will become increasingly thin and circular. The horns of the crescent might actually touch when the Venus-Sun angle is least on March 25th. This is the most beautiful time to observe Venus, but also the most perilous. The glare of the nearby sun magnified by a telescope can damage the eyes of anyone looking through the eyepiece.
For the rest of this week Venus can still be observed without elaborate precautions. Point your optics at the Evening Star in the western sky after sunset. Even ordinary binoculars will show the planet's lovely curve.

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Total eclipse of sun: August 21, 2017
Posted:Mar 15, 2017 5:18 am
Last Updated:Mar 19, 2024 4:56 am
16806 Views
On August 21, 2017 a total eclipse of the sun will be visible from within a narrow corridor that traverses the United States. The path of the moon's umbral shadow begins in the northern Pacific and crosses the U.S. from west to east through parts of the following states: Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina. The moon's penumbral shadow produces a partial eclipse visible from a much larger region covering most of North America.
This is the first total eclipse of the sun seen from the contiguous United States since 1979. There are countless web pages with voluminous information detailing the event. The graphics and details are amazing.




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PI Day
Posted:Mar 14, 2017 5:53 am
Last Updated:Mar 19, 2024 4:56 am
16882 Views

HAPPY PI DAY
March 14th (3.14) is PI day, and all around the world pi-philes are celebrating one of the most compelling and mysterious constants of Nature. Pi appears in equations describing the orbits of planets, the colors of auroras, the structure of DNA. The value of PI is woven into the fabric of life, the universe and, everything.

Humans have struggled to calculate PI for thousands of years. Divide the circumference of a circle by its diameter; the ratio is PI. Sounds simple, but the devil is in the digits. While the value of PI is finite (a bit more than 3), the decimal number is infinitely long:

3.1415926535897932384626433832795
02884197169399375105820974944592307
81640628620899862803482534211706...and counting
Supercomputers have succeeded in calculating more than 2700 billion digits and they're still crunching!
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SOLAR ECLIPSE IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE
Posted:Feb 27, 2017 1:00 pm
Last Updated:Dec 16, 2017 12:45 pm
18400 Views
Feb. 26th, the Moon passed in front of the sun, off-center, transforming the solar disk into a crescent across much of Earth's southern hemisphere. Oleg Toumilovitch took this picture from Johannesburg, South Africa.



I caught the last moments of the eclipse just before sunset," says Toumilovitch.

While hundreds of millions of people witnessed a crescent sun, a much smaller number saw the ring of fire. In a narrow path stretching across the southern reaches of South America and parts of Africa, the Moon passed directly in front of the sun, covering 99% of the solar disk. This allowed a fiery annulus of solar plasma to circumscribe the mountainous limb of the Moon.
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