“This has been like looking for a needle in a haystack, but instead we found a crowbar…” From the Stanford Report, March 17, 2014 (h/t to Dr. Leif Svalgaard) video…
Category: Astronomy
Stunning photo: Earth, as seen from Mars
This was just released today by NASA. It is quite a humbling image from the Mars rover Curiosity, though it’s not quite the same impact as the Blue Marble image…
Asteroid Diversity Points to a 'Snow Globe' Solar System
As of today, there are currently 1453 known potentially hazardous asteroids that could impact Earth and cause a real planetary catastrophe. Given the new diverse “snow globe” model of our…
AGU Fall meeting: The Chelyabinsk, Russia, meteor
The Russian Chelyabinsk Meteor was the largest since the 1908 Tunguska event. The airburst from the meteor on February 15, 2013, injured more than a thousand people and damaged thousands of buildings.…
From AGU: comet ISON's struggle of Fire and Ice
San Francisco – After a year of observations, scientists waited with bated breath on Nov. 28, 2013, as Comet ISON made its closest approach to the sun, known as perihelion.…
Comet ISON appears to be toast – goes "poof" in video, then comes back to life
Note: See updates below for the ISON ISOFF ISON nature of this comet that has everybody guessing. Picture at right also updated to reflect the new “zombie” status of this…
A solar eclipse as seen from Mars
From NASA JPL: NASA Mars Rover Views Eclipse of the Sun by Phobos PASADENA, Calif. – Images taken with a telephoto-lens camera on NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity catch the larger…
A new understanding of the solar dynamo published
Our resident solar expert, Dr. Leif Svalgaard, sends word of this new discovery. Stanford solar scientists solve one of the sun’s mysteries The sun’s magnetic field can play havoc with…
New telescope brings the power of Hubble down to Earth
From the University of Arizona UA astronomers take sharpest photos ever of the night sky Using a new camera and a telescope mirror that vibrates a thousand times each second…
Large meteor in Russia caught on tape – building hit
VIDEO: Large meteorite caught on dash cameras in Russia Image from RT video, see below. People are a little jumpy with news of the close flyby of the asteroid 2012…
The French surrender to Astronomers – my town likely to be next
Now enviro-policy to “end light pollution” has France on track to look like North Korea at night: From The Guardian: Lights out – France to force shops and offices to…
Cool pictures from space of recent CME event auroras
Overnight on October 4-5, 2012, a mass of energetic particles from the atmosphere of the Sun were flung out into space, a phenomenon known as a coronal mass ejection. Three…
Looking into solar coronal prominence cavities
by Karen C. Fox NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD › View larger Scientists want to understand what causes giant explosions in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona, such as…
Mars's dramatic climate variations are driven by the Sun
From the University of Copenhagen – something interesting, but not really surprising. It does make me wonder though about dust and carbon soot related to Earth’s own polar ice cap.…
Vaporizing the Earth
From Washington University in St. Louis, and in honor of melted globe week, here’s one more thing for weepy Bill McKibben to worry about. In science fiction novels, evil overlords…
Dark matter mapped in the universe for the first time
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Scientists have, for the first time, directly detected part of the invisible dark matter skeleton of the universe, where more than half of all matter is believed to…
A quiet cue ball sun
Source: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/latest_4096_4500.jpg A couple of people have noticed (as did I) that the sun is essentially blank.
Quote of the Week: 'global warming stunts black holes'
It appears “global warming” is now the most potent force in the universe, according to a scientist from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics. An actual scientific paper preprint published…
2012 Annular solar eclipse – followup
Readers may remember that my family and I made a mad dash through northern California into Nevada trying to get ahead of clouds. Readers may remember this “perfect” image taken…
Time lapse video of Venus transit seen from SDO
Thanks to reader Mike McMillan for pointing this awesome HiDef video out. It is the best I’ve seen.
Transit of Venus as seen in California
My lovely wife is snapping photos already, as it has just started. Here’s a sample.
Transit of Venus today may reveal the "Mysterious Arc of Venus"
From Dr. Tony Phillips Science at NASA When Venus transits the sun on June 5th and 6th, an armada of spacecraft and ground-based telescopes will be on the lookout for…
Asteroid blows past Earth in near miss
From ChicoEr.com Flying close enough to Earth that in astronomic terms one could feel the breeze as it passed, a small asteroid flashed by just after midnight today. NASA reported…
2012 Annular Eclipse
Seen from Pyramid Lake, NV 6:30PM PST May 20th, 2012,had to drive there to avoid high cirrus coming in from front approaching from coast Photo by Stacey Watts Canon 1D…
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