Posted on 04/10/2010 10:13:57 AM PDT by TaraP
Decaying sunspot 1060 delivered a parting shot on April 8th. The active region's magnetic field erupted, sparking a B3-class solar flare and hurling a faint coronal mass ejection (CME) almost directly toward Earth. Geomagnetic disturbances are possible when the cloud arrives on April 11th or 12th. [UPDATED: aurora gallery]
SUNGRAZING COMET: Today, the sun had a comet for breakfast. The icy visitor from the outer solar system appeared with no warning on April 9th and plunged into the sun during the early hours of April 10th. One comet went in, none came out. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) had a good view of the encounter
The comet was probably a member of the Kreutz sungrazer family. Named after a 19th century German astronomer who studied them in detail, Kreutz sungrazers are fragments from the breakup of a giant comet at least 2000 years ago. Several of these fragments pass by the sun and disintegrate every day. Most are too small to see but occasionally a big fragment like today's attracts attention.
This has been an active year for big, bright sungrazers. There was one on Jan. 4th, one on March 12th, and now one today. Normally we see no more than 3 or 4 bright ones in a whole year; now we're seeing them almost once a month. It could be a statistical fluctuation or, maybe, a swarm of Kreutz fragments is nearing perihelion (closest approach to the sun). Stay tuned for doomed comets!
Be interesting to listen to the transformers in the switchyard come Monday...
Gonna be a weird week for us.
I think so too..
Yikes maybe another large earthquake......
Toooo bad we can't plunge the cold hearted Pharaoh BamBamKennedy's 'deathcare' system, and the liberal US tax code in a like manner. Someday......
Thunderdome?
Northern Lights could be interesting this week.
Can we blame Global Warming™ for this?
Interesting. You could be right.
Fits right in with everything else.
Maybe. But can we blame Wobble Globing?
Maybe you already posted about this.
If not, that is very interestig also. Here's a picture from that article:
Space Shuttle trail
Yeah, it is.
SHUTTLE CLOUD: On April 5th, space shuttle Discovery blasted off from Cape Canaveral at the crack of dawn. The shuttle began its journey in darkness--the sun was still below the horizon--but moments after it left the pad, Discovery burst into high altitude sunlight and proceeded to put on an extraordinary show. University of Florida astronomy professor Howard Cohen describes what he saw from his home in Gainesville, more than 130 miles from the Cape:
"The launch began in typical fashion- a brilliant, yellowish glow rising out of the southwest gradually morphing into a white contrail. Impatient observes might have thought that was it. But then an amazing contrail, the likes of which I have never seen before, rapidly appeared around and following the shuttle's path. For a short time it resembled a comet streaking across the dawn sky." He took this picture using his Canon EOS 5D:
Photo from that article
History channel is on this topic right now.
Clouds from that day:
Oh it is? Thank you!!! Searching for the history channel.
One man enters! Two men leave!
Thunderclone.
My goodness. Do you live next door to me? I have the very same picture from that launch! Maybe the same tree line!
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