Sungrazing comets are a special class of comets that come very close to the Sun at their nearest approach, a point called perihelion. To be considered a sungrazer, a comet needs to get within about 850,000 miles from the sun at perihelion. Many come even closer, even
A NASA spacecraft that discovered and characterized tens of thousands of asteroids throughout the solar system before being placed in hibernation will return to service for three more years starting in September 2013. It will again be assisting in effort
An icy comet with estimated size of few tens of meters plunged into the Sun on August 19/20, 2013 but just before it dissipated, a far-side region on the Sun expelled a magnificent full-halo CME.
Today's comet belonged to Kreutz Sungrazer family which
A small comet is diving toward the Sun today, August 19, 2013 and is visible on SOHO Lasco C3 imagery. It entered visual field of Lasco C3 coronagraph at 07:54 UTC on August 18th.
The comet belongs to Kreutz Sungrazer family. Those
A meteor weighing 10,000 metric tons exploded only 23km above the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia on February 15, 2013. Unlike previous such events, this time scientists had the highly sensitive OMPS instrument on NPP to deliver unprecedented data and help them track and
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have solved the 40-year-old mystery of the origin of the Magellanic Stream, a long ribbon of gas stretching nearly halfway around the Milky Way. New Hubble observations reveal that most of this stream was stripped
For almost 1 1/2 hours the Moon made an appearance in NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory's view on August 6, 2013. The Moon itself looks much bigger than the Sun – as the Moon is many times closer to Earth (and to SDO) than the Sun
The peak of this year's Perseid meteor shower, the biggest annual meteor shower event, will be on a "Moon free" night of August 12 – 13. The source of this meteor shower is stream of debris from Comet
As it does approximately every 11 years on a solar cycle, the Sun's magnetic field is now reversing. Measurements have confirmed that we are about 3 – 4 months away from complete magnetic field reversal when Sun's inner magnetic dynamo will re-organize itself.
What to look for in the night sky during August 2013?! Your guide to constellations, deep-sky objects, planets and events.
Evening Planets
In the evening twilight, brilliant Venus makes a dazzling appearance over the western horizon. Catch it quickly before
