A recent study, appearing online in the Journal of Geophysical Research on February 29, 2012, has found clear evidence on Venus for a type of space weather outburst quite common at Earth, called a hot flow anomaly. These anomalies, also known as HFAs, cause a temporary
A CME impact followed by a gusty solar wind stream have combined to produce bright lights around the Arctic Circle on Feb. 26-29. Arctic sky watchers should be on alert for more auroras tonight. The green flash, the fleeting emerald light that sometimes appears
If the weather is clear this weekend, even those who normally do not look at the sky may be struck by a dazzling celestial scene in the west after sunset: a view of two bright planets and an even more eye-catching crescent moon. You can catch them before the sky fades
The CME cloud launched from the Sun on February 24th should reach Earth today, Feb. 26th around 13:30 UTC, according to analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab. A filament of magnetism erupted at the sun’s northeastern limb on February 24th and hurled CME into
The eruption of a magnetic filament at the sun’s northeastern limb split the sun’s atmosphere during the early hours of February 24th, creating a “canyon of fire”. The glowing walls of the canyon are formed in a process closely related to that of arcade loops, which
On January 27, 2012, Curiosity’s spacecraft was hit by the most intense solar radiation storm since 2005. The event began when sunspot AR1402 produced an X2-class solar flare. (On the “Richter Scale of Solar Flares”, X-flares are the most powerful kind.) The
Jupiter,Venus and Moon will be seen in close proximity to each other on the nights of Saturday and Sunday (Feb. 25 and 26), forming an astronomical event and skywatching treat known as a triple conjunction.A triple conjunction is an astronomical event, where
In the middle of the night on February 13th, something disturbed the animal population of rural Portal, Georgia. Cows started mooing anxiously and local dogs howled at the sky. The cause of the commotion was a rock from space.”At 1:43 AM Eastern, I witnessed an
The new Moon passed briefly in front of the sun, positioning itself between SDO spacecraft and Sun, producing a partial solar eclipse on February 21 at 14:11 UTC (about 9:11 a.m. EST). No ground observers could spot it, it was visible only from space. It was a fairly
Observations made by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have come up with a new class of planet, a waterworld enshrouded by a thick, steamy atmosphere. It’s smaller than Uranus but larger than Earth.An international team of astronomers led by Zachory Berta of the
