A big new sunspot is emerging over the sun's northeastern limb. AR1271 has at least four dark cores and it is crackling with small flares. The sunspot's entrance was captured in this 24-hour movie from the Solar Dynamics Observatory: NOAA forecasters…
Scientist warn about threat to spacecraft and the enviroment that posses space debris orbiting the Earth. According to J.-C. Liou of the Orbital Debris Program Office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, the space junk trend no longer can be reversed by full compliance with
After a few days of quiet, the sun is coming alive again. Amateur astronomers around the world report a beautiful complex of prominences dancing along the eastern limb, one of them big enough to swallow Earth:The blue dot is merely a digital image of Earth inserted
The comet, with the nomenclature C/2009 P1, is now coming into small telescope/binocular view so here’s your chance to see the brightest comet in the current night sky. You can find it in the late evening sky in the constellation Pegasus. Viewing it now,
The comet Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova is expected to brighten rapidly in August as it passes to the south of the Earth. It will be observable from the southern hemisphere for about 2 weeks before getting too close to the Sun.At its closest the comet will be 0.060 AU from
Active sunspot 1263, which just two days ago produced the most powerful solar flare of the new Solar Cycle (an X7), has left the Earthside of the sun. It is now beginning a two week transit across the solar farside. We can still see signs of its ongoing activity,
Earth is entering a stream of debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle, source of the annual Perseid meteor shower. International observers are now reporting more than a dozen Perseids per hour, a number that will increase as the shower reaches its peak on August 12-13. Full
This morning at 08:05 UTC, sunspot 1263 produced an X6.9 solar flare, the third X-flare of new Solar Cycle 24 and the most powerful so far. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the explosion's extreme ultraviolet flash:The brunt of the ex
The largest solar flare of Cycle 24 just took place at 08:05 UTC and it registered a whopping X6.9. The source was Sunspot 1263 which is nearing the Western Limb. Because of its location, any large explosions may not be fully earth directed. When watching new video
A second M-Class flare, this time a M2.5 took place at 03:54 UTC Tuesday morning around Sunspot 1263. This is in addition to the earlier M3.5 flare which we reported yesterday. The first flare produced a small, but fast moving (2010 km/s) Coronal Mass Ejection…
