The Space News Archive *Warning, massive resolution pictures inside*

[Link Reborn]

Thanks!

Tell me more about these CMES Storms. How On earth heaven or hell do these somehow "fling" Auroras? With any luck, it will go right above where I live.  I knew about the poles, but The EQUATOR? I never would've even guessed this could gone that far down.

[LLR]

Heres a bit o news from December 14th 06

AURORA ALERT
Sky watchers, be alert for auroras. A coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth today at approximately 1400 UT, and the impact may cause strong geomagnetic storms. Stay tuned for updates.
The CME was hurled toward Earth on Dec. 13th by an X3-class explosion from sunspot 930:



NOAA forecasters estimate a 35% chance of more X-flares today. Sunspot 930 has an unstable "delta-class" magnetic field that could erupt at any moment.

Then the NEXT day..

SUBSIDING STORM: A geomagetic storm that sparked Northern Lights as far south as Arizona last night is subsiding. The cause of the storm: a coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth on Dec. 14th. Our planet's magnetic field reverberated for more than 24 hours after the impact.

Another CME is on the way, but it won't cause such a widespread display. The incoming cloud was launched yesterday by an X1-explosion above sunspot 930. The blast was not squarely Earth-directed, so the CME's impact will be a glancing one. Nevertheless, sky watchers should remain alert for auroras when the CME arrives on Dec. 16th.



Above: Auroras over Kalamazoo, Michigan, on Dec. 14th. "We're so lucky!" says photographer Richard Bell. "First, we get to observe the Geminid meteor shower on Wednesday then we get more Geminids and a nice aurora display on Thursday."

Now HERE:
http://www.spaceweather.com/aurora/gallery_01dec06_page3.htm

is a link to a photo gallery of auroras from THAT solar storm.  Check out the ones as far down as Kansas!

So how to describe CMEs..
In one word... BOOM..


**edit**
BTW, I brought up that TS Fay formed at around the same time as the sunspots..   in relation with THIS post from December 14th 06 the following happened here on Earth..


PSE Storm EVENT, Largest storm to hit Washington...

also..
http://www.ocs.orst.edu/page_links/whats_new/dec_windstorm.html

http://photo.net/photography-news-forum/00J9fD


This was around the time I really started following the weather on the SUN in relation to what goes on here on Earth.   You tell me, related?  There are no coincidences... 

[LLR]

EARLY WARNING: NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft follows Earth around the sun, lagging behind our planet by 33o ("B" stands for "behind"). This allows the spacecraft to see a portion of the sun we on Earth cannot. Here is an example:



The sprawling coronal hole, photographed this morning by STEREO-B, is only partially visible from Earth. STEREO-B thus provides an early warning system: The coronal hole is spewing a solar wind stream that will eventually reach our planet. STEREO-B reveals the hole's location, its full extent, and the likely dates of solar wind impact: Sept. 3rd - 5th. High latitude sky watchers, mark your calendar for auroras.

SOLAR ACTIVITY: Warning. This story contains material that may make you feel very small.

For the past two days, a colossal prominence has been dancing along the northwestern limb of the sun. "Here's a photo from Aug. 27th," offers Pete Lawrence of Selsey, UK. "The Earth has been added for scale."


 "It does makes you feel small, doesn't it?"

Lawrence's photo frames a towering sheet of hydrogen gas stretched 75,000 km high by solar magnetic fields. The foreground is filled by a "shag carpet" of spicules--Texas-sized jets of gas that shoot up from the sun's surface and fall back again on 10 minute time scales. Spicules are the smallest thing in the photo and they're as big as Texas. Have you ever driven across Texas?

[LLR]

For more than a year, the largest planet in our solar system has been transiting across the center of our Milky Way galaxy(Appearing to do so anyway). This alignment happens only once every 12 years. Several things are notable about this event at this time. First, Jupiter is currently hovering on the eastern edge of the center of the Milky Way. Antares, one of the brightest stars in our sky, holds a permanent position on the western edge of the galactic central bulge. The position of Jupiter affords a breath-taking view of the immense size of the center of our galaxy in the sky.

The visible width and breadth of the central portion of our galaxy fills an area more than 5,000 times greater than the apparent size of our moon. Jupiter’s current placement provides a beautiful highlight bringing the attentive viewers’ awareness to the immense dimensions of the heart of the largest of cosmic beings within which we all live together.

Sky watchers looking to the south right after dark will witness this incredible sight--even those who live near bright city lights. Jupiter is easily visible as the brightest object in the southern sky. Sharing the southern sky on the western edge of the heart of our galaxy is the bright orange star, Antares (Heart of the Scorpion) In late August at dusk, the line between Jupiter and Antares will be mostly horizontal, and centered in the south. To locate Antares, hold your hands together at arms length in front of you. With your left pinky near Jupiter, Antares will be the bright orange star close to your right pinky.



This alignment is highlighted by the fact that Saturn is currently in a highly harmonious trine alignment with Jupiter. This weekend’s new moon (exact at 12:58 p.m. PDT on Saturday, August 30) will align closely with Saturn and also trine Jupiter.






Large Prominence





OK WHO SAW THIS COMING WITH WHAT THE RUSSIAS SAID ABOUT USING THEIR SHIPS?!
(sorry for caps.. but I did see this coming..)

Nasa 'reviews shuttle shelf-life'

Nasa will study whether the space shuttle can operate beyond its planned retirement in 2010, reports say.

The agency will look at what might be required to delay the retirement of its fleet until the shuttle's replacement - Ares-Orion - begins flying in 2015.

The exercise is aimed at answering questions it expects on the matter from Congress and the incoming president.

News of the study comes from a leaked internal email obtained by a Florida-based newspaper.

Nasa chief Michael Griffin, who is reported to have ordered the study, had previously opposed extending the shuttle programme.

The agency's administrator argued that the money and effort required to do so would stymie progress on the Ares rockets and the Apollo-style Orion capsules that will succeed the shuttle.

These are being developed by Nasa as part of its "Constellation" programme. The system is expected to carry astronauts to the Moon under the Vision for Space Exploration plans announced by President George W Bush in 2004.

Russian flights

In April, Dr Griffin told a Senate sub-committee: "The shuttle is an inherently risky design. We currently assess the per-mission risk as about one in 75 of having a fatal accident.

"If one were to do, as some have suggested, fly the shuttle for an additional five years - say two missions a year - the risk would be about one in 12 that we would lose another crew."

But an e-mail obtained by the Orlando Sentinel suggests Nasa will now research this option.

In it, John Coggeshall, manifest and schedules manager at Nasa's Johnson Space Center in Houston, writes: "The [shuttle] programme in conjunction with [Constellation] and [space station] have been asked by the administrator to put together some manifest options to assess extending shuttle flights to 2015.

He added: "We want to focus on helping bridge the gap of US vehicles travelling to the [space station] as efficiently as possible."

But Nasa spokesman John Yembrick described the e-mail as "premature".

"The parameters of the study have not yet been defined," he said.

The agency remains committed to retiring the shuttle in 2010.

Five-year gap

In the five-year gap between the retirement of the shuttle and the first flights of the Orion capsule, Nasa will be reliant on Russia's Soyuz system for transporting astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).

But some are now concerned about the wisdom of this plan to purchase seats aboard the Soyuz, given the diplomatic tension between the US and Russia over the conflict in Georgia.

Last week, Republican presidential candidate John McCain, and other senators, sent a letter urging President Bush to "direct Nasa to take no action for at least one year from now that would preclude the extended use of the space shuttle beyond 2010".

This letter said Russia's conduct during the Georgia conflict "raised concerns about the reliability of Russia as a partner for the International Space Station".

It added: "Our concern is that we do not have a guarantee that such co-operative and mutually beneficial activity will continue to be available, and the successful utilisation of the ISS may thus be jeopardized."

The Democrats' presidential candidate Barack Obama has also talked about the possibility of additional shuttle flights to close the five-year gap.

Nasa currently has an agreement with Russia to fly astronauts to the ISS aboard the Soyuz spacecraft until 2011. After that, the agency would have to seek approval from Congress for an extension.

Nasa has previously said it would cost between $2.5bn and $4bn per year to keep the shuttles flying past 2010.

The agency has also given seed money to a commercial venture to develop a spacecraft for transporting crew and cargo to the space station.

[Trap7740723]

Interesting facts.

[LLR]

Been a while since an update, heres whats happened:

Dust Devils Photographed in Martian Arctic
story





Search for Magical Dark Matter Gets Real
Story
Also related to the LHC!




 Naked-Eye Gamma-ray Burst Aimed Directly at Earth
Story
Sept. 10, 2008: Astronomers announced today that a remarkable gamma-ray burst visible to the human eye earlier this year came from an explosive stellar jet aimed almost directly at Earth.


Above: GRB 080319B makes a brief appearance among the stars of Bootes in a movie made by Pi of the Sky, a Polish group that monitors the sky for afterglows and other short-lived phenomena.



NASA to Explore 'Secret Layer' of the Sun
story

 Researchers call it "the transition region." It is a place in the sun's atmosphere, about 5000 km above the stellar surface, where magnetic fields overwhelm the pressure of matter and seize control of the sun's gases. It's where solar flares explode, where coronal mass ejections begin their journey to Earth, where the solar wind is mysteriously accelerated to a million mph.

It is, in short, the birthplace of space weather.


Now this one is pretty cool..
New Partial Rings Discovered Around Saturn
source

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found two new, partial rings around Saturn that each accompany a small moon, shedding light on what determines whether a partial or complete ring forms with the moon.

The partial rings, called ring arcs, extend ahead of and behind the small Saturnian moons Anthe and Methone in their orbits.

Both Anthe and Methone orbit Saturn in locations called resonances, where the gravity of the nearby larger moon Mimas disturbs their orbits. Mimas provides a regular gravitational tug on each moon, which causes the moons to skip forward and backward within an arc-shaped region along their orbital paths, said Nick Cooper of Queen Mary, University of London an a member of the Cassini imaging team.

"When we realized that the Anthe and Methone ring arcs were very similar in appearance to the region in which the moons swing back and forth in their orbits due to their resonance with Mimas, we knew we had a possible cause-and-effect relationship," Cooper said.

Scientists believe that the faint ring arcs likely consist of material knocked off the small moons by micrometeoroid impacts. The material doesn't spread all the way around Saturn to form a complete ring because the interactions of the moons with Mimas confine the material to a narrow region along the moons' orbits.

The recent Cassini images were the first detection of arc material near Anthe. The images confirmed the presence of the Methone arc, which was previously detected by Cassini's Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument.

Previous Cassini images have also shown faint rings connected with other small moons within or near the outskirts of Saturn's main ring system, such as Pan, Janus, Epimetheus and Pallene. Cassini has also previously observed an arc in the G ring, one of Saturn's fain, major rings.

"This is probably the same mechanism responsible for producing the arc in the G ring," said Matthew Hedman of Cornell University and another Cassini imaging team member.

Hedman and his colleagues previously determined that the G-ring arc is also formed by gravitational resonance with Mimas.

"Indeed, the Anthe arc may be similar to the debris we see in the G-ring arc, where the largest particles are clearly visible," Hedman said. "One might even speculate that if Anthe were shattered, its debris might form a structure much like the G ring."

The material that orbits with Pallene, Janus and Epimetheus, however, isn't subject to the same powerful resonant forces and is free to spread out around the planet, forming a complete ring.



THIS RAWKS.  IMO of course.. *coughs* (pun intended)

 Rosetta probe makes asteroid pass
Steins: A diamond in the sky
full story and watch the movie!
larger video



http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Rosetta/index.html

6 September 2008
The first images from Rosetta’s OSIRIS imaging system and VIRTIS infrared spectrometer were derived from raw data this morning and have delivered spectacular results.
 
"Steins looks like a diamond in the sky," said Uwe Keller, Principal Investigator for the OSIRIS imaging system from the Max Planck Institut Fuer Sonnensystemforschung, Lindau.

Visible in the image are several small craters on the asteroid, and two huge ones, one of which is 2 km in diameter, indicating that the asteroid must be very old.

The images are 50 to 60 pixels in diameter, enough to characterise the shape and other characteristics of the body of the asteroid. 

Rita Schulz, Rosetta Project Scientist, said, "In the images is a chain of impact craters, which must have formed from recurring impact as the asteroid rotated. The impact may have been caused by a meteoroid stream, or fragments from a shattered small body."

The chain is composed of about 7 craters. To determine the age of the asteroid, a count of the craters on the asteroid’s surface has been started (the more the number of craters, the older the asteroid). So far, 23 craters have been spotted.

From the images, scientists will try and understand why the asteroid is unusually bright, and how fine grains of the surface regolith are. This will tell them more about how the asteroid formed.
 
Gerhard Schwehm, Mission Manager for Rosetta said, "It looks like a typical asteroid, but it is really fascinating how much we can learn from just the images. This is our first science highlight; we certainly have a lot of promising science ahead of us. I’m already looking forward to encountering our next diamond in the sky, the much bigger Lutetia."
 
 
The OSIRIS imaging system's Wide Angle Camera (WAC) worked perfectly through the fly-by.

The OSIRIS team expects that the images that they will retrieve from the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) will be of comparable resolution. This will add to the detailed colour information and hence to knowledge of the surface composition.

Science team members noted that the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) appears to have switched to safe mode a few minutes before closest approach, but switched back on after a few hours. The software is programmed to switch to safe mode when certain parameter thresholds are crossed to protect the camera. The team will concentrate investigating the reasons for this anomaly once the science data has been analysed.

After analysis of the Rosetta data, Steins will be one of the best-characterised asteroids so far.
 
more stories



THEN
High Res Camera FAILURE at critical moment with asteroid fly by.
YEA RIGHT! *doesn't buy the story*




Closest Look Ever at the Edge of a Black Hole

Full story



In Solar News (our sun)  No sunspots and solar wind is at a minimum.  Things are looking pretty good!
(There was a small sunspot last Thursday but dissolved with in a day)



My last update today is a wild one..  Its LONG so I'll refrain from posting the whole thing but I urge you to read it if your curious about Mars and the Phoenix Mission.   Its kinda ODD that regular news updates kinda STOPPED after the announcement of WATER & ICE ON MARS.  After it could no longer be disputed, just about all pictures (save for those posed up there with the dust devils) have just stopped.  This is after the fact that over a month ago NASA said "we are getting ready for a major news announcement next week and we have already talked to Washington about it.  This is big."   Then nothing..  If you think something is odd with that, then read this article.

World-Class Astrobiologist Says "NASA's Hiding Current Life on Mars!"


-LLR

[darkscar888]

Im not sure if yall have heard about it but last year a probe called "Horizon" was sent out into the direction of pluto. This probe is planned to take the most detailed photographs of the planets it passes. Once it reaches pluto it will take detailed scans as it passes and will then head out beyond pluto to rocky horizons of our solar system. This in and of itself will take 9 years all together.

[LLR]

Time for some news.. 
This may be the last bit of news for a while...  I'll be moving next week.  So lets get all we can in here!



First up..

YIKES!  Looks like a scene from that cheesy movie "Armageddon" with Bruce Willis.

Space shuttle moved to launch pad as rescue ship

Space shuttle Atlantis on pad 39A, left, and space shuttle Endeavour on pad 39B stand ready at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, Sept. 19, 2008. Atlantis is scheduled for an Oct. 10 launch on mission STS-125 to service the Hubble Space Telescope. Endeavour will be on standby in the unlikely event that a rescue mission for the Atlantis's crew would be necessary. It is the first time since 2001 - when flights were more closely spaced - that both of NASA's shuttle pads have been occupied. And it will probably be the last. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

Full Story
Interesting story!  Mission to Save the Hubble!





Stars Migrate Through Galaxies, Study Suggests
Full Story
Unfortunately , this article is oddly claiming our Sun came from the Milky Way, (read earlier posts of exact origin of our Sun)All stars in the Milky Way are Massive, our Sun is a speck compared to normal stars of Milky Way, However there is a trail of Stars that are nearly the same size as ours and they lead to the Dwarf Galaxy Sagittarius

Still a neat story though.




PLANET DEBATE GETS GREATER
LOL,  Kinda neat story about all the planets, dwarf planets, plutoids...and waffles..


Well color me surprised!
Scientests name the ODD BALL (err egg shaped) Plutoid  Better than its old name "2003 EL61" or something to that effect..  Haumea is better..




WOW!
Japan hopes to build the SPACE ELEVATOR!
Go Japan!



Ok now the SUN


Odd as this sounds, our Sun is gradually going into a Solar Maximum (to peak on 2012)  However... Its DOWN much lower than normal in activity..  As strange as this sounds, the sun seems to be kicking out less power this year.  Perhaps it will pick up though.

SOLAR WIND LOSING POWER:
In a briefing today at NASA HQ, solar physicists announced that the solar wind is losing pressure, hitting a 50-year record low for the Space Age. This development has repercussions across the solar system. Get full story here


We got a sunspot!!  Oh wait, there it goes....  damn..   

FADING SUNSPOT: A small sunspot emerges, flickers, and fades away in less than 48 hours, gathering attention once reserved for Jupiter-sized behemoths. Welcome to solar minimum.

The real excitement about sunspot 1002 is not its size or duration--but rather its polarity. The orientation of the sunspot's magnetic field identifies it as a member of new Sunspot Cycle 24. Because the year 2008 has brought so many blank suns, some observers have wondered if we are ever going to climb out of the ongoing deep solar minimum. Sunspot 1002 is an encouraging sign that the 11-year solar cycle is indeed progressing, albeit slowly.



And finally..

Fatal Error for Jules Vern..
The ship the European Space Agency was so excited about, the automated computer controlled UNMANNED ship that flew up on its own and docked with the ISS at the beginning of this year...  Has had a fatal error.  It was sent back to earth to resupply and on entry it skewed its path and it is now unsavable.  You CAN see this thing though for the next week in all its glory.

Just put your zip code in here and it will give you the time and location of the fireball of the doomed ship

Thats all for now..

<S>

[LLR]

**edited**
Again, dummy here hit QUOTE instead of EDIT.  Man, I gotta get that right one day.  Mods!  Feel free to delete THIS post...  was un-intentional.

[Link Reborn]

I heard without sunspots that the sun woudln't give off enough radiation to heat the earth. Is this true?

[LLR]

Yes, it is true.  The last time the Sun had a solar maximum but for some reason it produced little or NO Sunspots was about 500  years ago and we got a mini ice age from it.  Most of Europe froze and Northern Canada got covered in ice as well. The little Ice Age 500 years ago.  Although sunspots and CMES are bad for us because of the radiation and solar storms, they are a necessary evil to keep the Earth the right temperature.   Thats what some of the links and posts were about in the global warming thread, perhaps we are not going to keep heating up, perhaps we will gradually cool down into a new ice age.  All we can do is keep watching.. and hoping for that perfect Goldilocks balance.  Not too hot, not too cold..

[Link Reborn]

Yeah..Yeah! I saw a segment on the history channel about the mini ice age. They blamed witchcraft!

[Link Reborn]

That gamma ray thing that came to earth for 15 seconds is pretty cool!

Nice find!

[LLR]

Well, I'm back so its time to start updating this thread again.  I have a lot to catch up on.  While I've not had the internet, India and China have gotten into space, the hubble has been repaired (yah!) 3 NEW moon sized objects have been found beyond Pluto, SOLAR ACTIVITY has been up with solar storms and new sunspots.  But first, before I get to any of that, I have something VERY important to discuss with you guys and it may seem a bit out of place.   Here goes.

Last May I made a prediction on my own website, I predicted that when certain planets align and conditions seems right that it might trigger a bigger earth quake than the ones that were happening in St Louis and Cali.  I suggested to my friends that a large quake might hit California in the next week.  Well, a week to the day I said that a huge quake did happen, but it was in China, not Cali.   

I came to this conclusion from looking at a moon cycle, a tide cycle that was abnormal in the Pacific and planetary alignment.   If ya think I'm making it up about the quake prediction you can check the dates here nothing has been edited or modded

I'm brining all this up because from what I'm seeing with planetary alignment, conditions could be right for another quake.  Heres some of the data:

Here are 2 of the planets that are lining up and could start some trouble.

SUNSET PLANETS: 

When the sun goes down tonight, step outside and look southwest. What you see might surprise you: Venus and Jupiter, so far apart only a week ago, are now beautifully close together. The two brightest planets are rapidly converging on a spot in Sagittarius where they will form a rare double-conjunction with the Moon on Dec. 1st. It's a good show; start watching now:


Stock up on batteries and what not if you live in an area that has a history of earthquakes.

And heres what I said on July 20th

Look out for a large quake from the last of November to the middle of December (08). Most importantly the date December 12th.

Now about the actual SPACE NEWS, I'll have to get to that tomorrow!  REAL updates are coming though, promise.

<S>
-LLR

[LLR]

 
Ok "tomorrow" kinda looked a lot like a week, ehh?  Sorry folks!

Lets just jump right in to RECENT news.  I'll attempt to go backwards and show a bit of past 2 months news at a time so it won't get so over whelming.  So pay attention to the dates on the news so it wont get confusing.

So first up!

SOLAR WIND RIPS MARS:  The solar wind appears to be ripping big chunks of air from the atmosphere of Mars. This could help solve a longstanding mystery about the Red Planet: full story.

BTW, The Phoenix mission is over, its batteries failed and its now destroyed... or so they say...  More on that later...  But man, that lander sure found out a LOT of info!






LEONID OUTBURST:  Just as predicted, the Leonid meteor shower surged during the early hours of Nov. 17th. "Earth passed through a filament of debris shed by parent comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle in the year 1466," says forecaster Jérémie Vaubaillon of Caltech. The result was a sharp flurry of meteors numbering almost 90 per hour. "In Slovakia, we saw many bright and quick Leonids during the peak," reports Roman Piffl. Here is one of them over the town of Marianka:





AURORA WATCH: On Nov. 9th, flying photographer Brian Whittaker was 35,000 feet over the Arctic Circle when he looked out the window of his airplane and saw this:

"For several hours I had experienced a good display of dynamic green auroras," says Whittaker. "The best view was when we neared the coast of Greenland. Snow-capped peaks and glaciers were easily visible in the bright moonlight while auroras danced overhead."

It's time to book another flight. On Nov. 24th or 25th, a solar wind stream will hit Earth and probably spark a new round of Northern Lights. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras.
Gallery

Being Moon from the ISS?

 



If you remember before I mentioned about an alignment that may trigger a large quake 
Well, heres a bit more info on the alignment.



On the 12th the moon will be full, should be quite nifty to see this alignment on the first though!  Be sure to   pop out side just after sun set and look west.




OK OLD NEWS POST NOW!

DISINTEGRATED ASTEROID: Asteroid 2008 TC3 was discovered on Oct. 6, 2008, and a day later it hit Earth. The 3 meter-wide space rock disintegrated in the atmosphere, producing a fireball about as bright as a full Moon. Although the time and location of impact were predicted with some precision, few people saw it because it happened over a remote area of northern Sudan.

Now, for the first time, a ground-based photo has come to light:

This is a single frame from a video taken by Mr. Mohamed Elhassan Abdelatif Mahir and communicated by Dr. Muawia H. Shaddad of the University of Karthoum. It shows the fireball's aftermath--a smoky trail of debris twisted by high-altitude winds and illuminated by the rising sun. Researchers hope publication of this photo will encourage other photographers to come forward and submit their images of the debris or, better yet, the fireball itself.


Thats all for today!





 

[LLR]

Update:

ORBITING TOOLBAG:  When Endeavour astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper dropped her toolbag during a spacewalk on Nov. 18th and it floated away, mission controllers probably figured they'd seen the last of it. Think again. Last night, Nov. 22nd, veteran satellite observer Kevin Fetter video-recorded the backpack-sized bag gliding over his backyard observatory in Brockville, Ontario. "The star in the video is 4th-magnitude eta Pisces," he says. The toolbag, he estimates, was "8th-magnitude or brighter"--invisible to the naked eye but a fine target for small telescopes.

LMAO Video





CORONAL HOLE:  Japan's Hinode spacecraft is monitoring a dark hole on the sun--a coronal hole:



Coronal holes are places in the sun's atmosphere where the magnetic field opens up and allows solar wind to escape. In images taken by X-ray telescopes, such as the one Hinode uses, coronal holes appear dark because the hot glowing gas which would otherwise fill them has spilled out in the solar wind. A stream of gas flowing from this particular hole is heading for Earth. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras when it arrives on or about Nov. 25th.





3D BEHEMOTH:  It masses 300,214 kg, has wings almost as wide as a football field, occupies 12,626 cubic feet of living space--and now it's jumping out of your computer screen. Put on your 3D glasses and behold in the International Space Station:



Graphic artist Patrick Vantuyne of Belgium created the anaglyph using photos taken from space shuttle Endeavour on Nov. 16th. Endeavour was hovering near the ISS for a mutual inspection prior to docking hours later. When Endeavour did link up, it added about 110,000 kg of mass and 23 meters of wingspan to the complex. If only a third spacecraft had been present to take photos of that....

Docked together, Endeavour and the ISS are circling Earth and flying over many towns and cities after dark. They're bright, eye-catching, and if you look at them through a telescope

Tracker

[Hyruleansoldier]

Holy wow, this is an awesome thread.  I love astro... stuff.  Nice pictures and stories there.  More coming?

[LLR]

Always man!  Sorry I hadn't updated until recently.  Just got the internet back last week sometime and I moved back in September!  @__@    Missed the heck out of you guys and drove me crazy not knowing what was going on out there.   I'll post up some OLD news that I missed while I was away too.   Heres some classic solar news.

OCTOBER 23!  (one month ago)

ORIONID OUTBURST: The 2008 Orionid meteor shower put on a surprisingly good show. At maximum on Oct. 21st, observers around the world counted 40+ meteors per hour, about twice the usual rate. A fireball monitoring station at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, recorded this flurry:

In the movie, the "floodlight" arcing slowly across the sky is the Moon. "Lunar glare should have spoiled the show, but the shower was so bright, we saw it despite the Moon's interference," says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office.

The source of the Orionid meteor shower is Halley's Comet. Every year in October, Earth's crosses a stream of Halley-dust, and meteors fly out of the constellation Orion. The extra Orionids of 2008 probably came from a denser-than-usual filament of dust. This is the third October in a row Orionids have surged, suggesting a trend. Maybe next year's outburst won't be such a surprise!

Gallery





OCTOBER 12th    MAN!  I missed this!  If memory serves me right... it was abnormally warm that week... hmm..
------------------


NEW-CYCLE SUNSPOT: A "new-cycle" sunspot belonging to Solar Cycle 24 has emerged near the sun's northeastern limb. Sunspot 1005 has two fast-growing dark cores wider than Earth and a simple bipolar magnetic field that poses no threat for solar flares. Alan Friedman sends this picture from his backyard observatory in Buffalo, New York:



This is the third time in as many weeks that a new-cycle sunspot has interrupted the year's remarkable run of blank suns. The accelerating pace of new-cycle sunspot production is an encouraging sign that, while solar activity remains very low, the sunspot cycle is unfolding more or less normally. We are not stuck in a permanent solar minimum. Readers with solar telescopes should train them on the sun this weekend to observe sunspot genesis in action.


As Jupiter and Saturn converge on the date 2012 December, Solar activity will continue to increase.  The solar activity (sunspots and solar storms) are due to the gravitational pull of Saturn and Jupiter pulling the Sun away from its Barycenter.  Also an extra alignment of our solar system with the galactic center (the center of our glalaxy)  This will also increase solar activity.  Stay tuned!




One more thing, I'm just going to put this on the table and let you guys read it. Some parts can seem very far fetched.. however with an open mind and researching the links.... it makes you wonder.. still.. the idea of a 3 mile wide CUT diamond is fascinating...


You be the judge.   

[Hyruleansoldier]

Sweet.  Thanks for the update 8)

I reckon I should look through all the above posts...  What's a sunspot exactly?

[LLR]

NP MAN!  Thats one reason I'm posting all this, so folks will learn what these things are and what causes them.  Despite what some folks think, this stuff IS relevant to every day life and does effect us.  Back in the 1980s a large solar flare (solar flares come from VERY LARGE sun spots, these are huge explosions on the sun) knocked out all the power from north eastern Canada to New York USA.  it FRIED all the power grids.  Thats a pretty big deal.  Other than that solar flares and solar storms are known to:
Knock out satellites
Knock out cell phone signals
over load power grids causing black outs
effect older people with pace makers implanted in their heart.  (can trigger a heart attack)
Make people more moody and cause emotional distress (no, I'm not kidding, its been studied)
Cause increased strength in storms on Earth
Increase temperatures on Earth (climate change, anyone? yes, I think global climate change is due to the sun)
mess with the navigational system is birds, fish and whales.  Whales tend to beach them selves more often during solar activity



And there are quite a few others.  To see some of the "best of" sun spots, check out page 1.  To see what actually CAUSES sun spots all ya need to do is scroll up to the top of this page (that is if you see 4 pages in this thread).

<S>!  and enjoy and I'll try to answer any questions you folks might have about this stuff.   I'll do my best.