I am hoping this event will bring visible auroras to the New York City metro area.

INCOMING CME: Big sunspot 1402 erupted on Jan. 23rd, producing a strong M9-class solar flare and a fast-moving coronal mass ejection (CME). Analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab say the CME should reach Earth on Jan. 24th at 14:18 UT (+/- 7 hr) and Mars a little more than a day later. Strong geomagnetic storms are possible when the cloud reaches Earth. Our magnetic field is still reverberating from a CME impact on Jan. 22nd, so another blow could spark impressive auroras at high latitudes. Sky watchers in northern Europe, Canada, Alaska, and northern-tier US states such as the Dakotas, Minnesota and Wisconsin should be alert for Northern Lights.

DON'T MISS THE STORM: Would you like a call when geomagnetic storms are in progress? Storm alerts are available from http://spaceweathertext.com (text) and http://spaceweatherphone.com (voice).

On December 27, 2011, the BBC's Cordelia Hebblethwaite had her article about the Congo's Loch Ness Monster, Mokele-mbembe, published. This is awesome. Scotland (Loch Ness Monster) and New York/Vermont (Lake Champlain's Champ) are not the onlt bodies of water with a monster. From her article:

"The search for Scotland's Loch Ness Monster is world famous. Far less well-known is the hunt for a similar creature, Mokele-mbembe, which is reputed to live in the remote north of Congo-Brazzaville. But how strong is the evidence?"

Is it aggressive? The articel also says this:

"Despite being a herbivore, it is said to roar aggressively if approached by humans. Some say it has a single horn, which it uses to kill elephants."

Jump over to the BBC site read the entire article. There is a drawing, maps, pictures, but sadly no pictures of the beast.

 

Additional Links:

• Wikipedia
• Mokele-mbembe: The Living Dinosaur!

@dmgerbino

This is so cool!

NASA Science News for Dec. 16, 2011

Sungrazing Comet Lovejoy has shocked astronomers by surviving its "death plunge" into the sun. Must-see movies of the comet's passage through the sun's atmosphere are featured in today's story from Science@NASA.

FULL STORY at http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/16dec_cometlovejoy/

SUNDIVING COMET: Comet Lovejoy is plunging toward the sun, and its ~200-meter wide core is vaporizing furiously as it approaches the hot star. So far the comet's brightness seems to be exceeding expectations. Indeed, there is a slim chance that the sundiver will brighten enough to be seen with the naked eye in broad daylight on Dec. 15th. Check http://spaceweather.com for further discussion and the latest movies from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory.

____

I really hope I can see it!

Some really cool space events are happening this week. I try to watch the Geminid meteor shower every year. This year looks like a hoops one. Don't forget to watch Tuesday night.

Space Weather News for Dec. 13, 2011
http://spaceweather.com

GEMINID METEOR SHOWER:  Earth is passing through a stream of debris from near-Earth asteroid 3200 Phaethon, source of the annual Geminid meteor shower.  Forecasters expect meteor rates to reach 20-to-40 per hour when the shower peaks in bright moonlight on the night of Dec.13/14.  The best time to look, no matter where you live, is between 10 pm local time on Tuesday, Dec. 13, and sunrise on Wednesday, Dec. 14th. Check http://spaceweather.com for more information and live audio from a meteor radar.

BIG SUNDIVING COMET: A comet nearly as wide as two football fields (200m) is plunging toward the sun where it will most likely be destroyed in a spectacular light show on Dec. 15/16. Solar glare will hide the event from human eyes, but NASA and ESA spacecraft should have a grand view.  Check http://spaceweather.com for full coverage.

Enjoy these events.

@dmgerbino

Space Weather News for Dec. 9, 2011
http://spaceweather.com

LUNAR ECLIPSE:

Sky watchers on the Pacific side of Earth should be alert for a total lunar eclipse on Saturday, Dec. 10th.  The disk of the full Moon will turn a beautiful shade of copper-red as it passes through Earth's shadow between 4:45 am and 8:18 am Pacific Standard Time (12:45 to 16:18 UT).  For observers in western parts of the USA and Canada, the event will be magnified by the Moon illusion as the morning Moon sets behind trees, buildings, and other foreground objects along the western horizon.  

Please check http://spaceweather.com for more information and full coverage of the eclipse as it happens.

@dmgerbino

CME AND RADIATION STORM: A solar radiation storm is in progress around Earth. At the moment (the late hours of Nov. 26th), the storm is classified as minor, which means it has little effect on our planet other than to disturb HF radio transmissions at high latitudes. Bigger effects, however, could be in the offing. The same blast that caused the radiation storm also hurled a CME into space, and this CME appears set to deliver a blow to Earth's magnetic field on Nov. 28th. Geomagnetic storms and auroras are possible when the cloud arrives. Visit http://spaceweather.com for more information and updates.

I was reading the BBC news last night and I found this story about an amazing discovery - the megavirus. The following is the intro from the BBC, click through for the entire article.

 

10 October 2011 Last updated at 15:51 ET

Ocean trawl reveals 'megavirus'

By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

The largest virus yet discovered has been isolated from ocean water pulled up off the coast of Chile.

Called Megavirus chilensis, it is 10 to 20 times longer than the average virus.

It just beats the previous record holder, Mimivirus, which was found in a water cooling tower in the UK in 1992.

Scientists tell the journal PNAS that Megavirus probably infects amoebas, single-celled organisms that are floating free in the sea.

The particle measures about 0.7 micrometers (thousandths of a millimetre) in diameter.

"It is bigger than some bacteria," explained Professor Jean-Michel Claverie, from Aix-Marseille University, Marseille, France.

"You don't need an electron microscope to see it; you can see it with an ordinary light microscope," he told BBC News.

 

Click the picture to see the full story at the BBC

I am looking forward to more pictures and video from this event.

STRONG SOLAR ACTIVITY: New sunspot 1302 is crackling with strong solar flares. This morning it unleashed an X2-class flare--its second X-flare in two days--quickly followed by an M7-class eruption. So far the blasts have not been Earth-directed, but this could change in the days ahead as the sunspot turns toward our planet. The sunspot is growing and there is no sign that it will quiet down soon. Visit http://spaceweather.com for movies and updates.

 

Update: September 26, 2011from http://spaceweather.com/

STRONG SOLAR ACTIVITY: Having already unleashed two X-flares since Sept. 22nd, sunspot AR1302 appears ready for more. The active region has a complex "beta-gamma-delta" magnetic field that harbors energy for strong M- and X-class eruptions. Flares from AR1302 will become increasingly geoeffective as the sunspot turns toward Earth in the days ahead.

On Sunday, Sept. 25th, Dutch astrophotographer Emil Kraaikamp took a magnificent picture of the active region, which is so big only half of it fits on the screen. Click to view the entire sunspot:

"This is how the sunspot looked through my solar-filtered 10-inch Newtonian telescope," says Kraaikamp. "Due to the always-variable daytime seeing here in the Netherlands, it took a couple of hours to finally capture one good set of images, but it was well worth the effort to get this view of the huge sunspot formation."

more images: from Andy Devey of Barnsley South Yorkshire; from Alan Friedman of Buffalo, NY; from Monika Landy-Gyebnar of Balatonfured, Hungary; from Piet Berger of Simpelveld, Netherlands; from Howard Eskildsen of Ocala, Florida; from Dzmitry Kananovich of Tallinn, Estonia; from Chris Schur of Payson, Az; from John Stetson of Falmouth, Maine; from Grenier of Paris France; from Maximilian Teodorescu of Magurele, Romania; from Cai-Uso Wohler of Bispingen, Germany; from Philippe Van den Doorn of Rixensart, Belgium; ;

US defence firm Lockheed Martin hit by cyber-attack

US defence firm Lockheed Martin says it has come under a significant cyber-attack, which took place last week.

29 May 2011 Last updated at 02:39 ET

Few details were available, but Lockheed said its security team had detected the threat quickly and ensured that none of its programmes had been compromised.

The Pentagon said it is working to establish the extent of the breach.

  

Lockheed makes fighter jets, warships and multi-billion dollar weapons systems sold worldwide.

To read the rest of "US defence firm Lockheed Martin hit by cyber-attack" story at the BBC News site.

 

My thoughts: These attacks happen all the time. Many are kept quiet so that investigators can try to capture the perpetrators. What we ALL need to do is take security seriously. The general public should start simple. Make sure allk your computers are virus and malware free. Reducing the number of zombia bots is a good start. Using HTTPS instead of HTTP whenever possible when using the web is also a good idea. Not sure if a site will work using HTTPS, welll just type it in. Other simple tasks are:

• Have a different strong password for every site you use
• Make sure your operating system and software is always upto date
• Use the most upto date version of the web browser
• There are many others - start with Microsoft's Safety & Security Center site

 

Security is up to us, the users and to the companies that house our data. we all need to be diligent.