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).

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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

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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/

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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!

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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

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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

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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

 

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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; ;

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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.

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Wow, the video is amazing. I watched it a dozen times. Just spectacular! Seriously, plan on spending several minutes viewing all this video of the sun.

February 6, 2011: It's official: The sun is a sphere.

On Feb. 6th, NASA's twin STEREO probes moved into position on opposite sides of the sun, and they are now beaming back uninterrupted images of the entire star—front and back.

"For the first time ever, we can watch solar activity in its full 3-dimensional glory," says Angelos Vourlidas, a member of the STEREO science team at the Naval Research Lab in Washington, DC.

NASA released a 'first light' 3D movie on, naturally, Super Bowl Sun-day:

The solar sphere as observed by STEREO and the Solar Dynamics Observatory on January 31, 2011. Because the STEREO separation was still slightly less than 180^o at that time, a narrow gap on the far side of the Sun has been interpolated to simulate the full 360^o view. The gap and quality of farside imaging will improve even more in the days and weeks ahead. [YouTube video]  [full 42MB movie]

"This is a big moment in solar physics," says Vourlidas. "STEREO has revealed the sun as it really is--a sphere of hot plasma and intricately woven magnetic fields."

Each STEREO probe photographs half of the star and beams the images to Earth. Researchers combine the two views to create a sphere. These aren't just regular pictures, however. STEREO's telescopes are tuned to four wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet radiation selected to trace key aspects of solar activity such as flares, tsunamis and magnetic filaments. Nothing escapes their attention.

An artist's concept of STEREO surrounding the sun. [more]

"With data like these, we can fly around the sun to see what's happening over the horizon—without ever leaving our desks," says STEREO program scientist Lika Guhathakurta at NASA headquarters. "This could lead to significant advances in solar physics and space weather forecasting."

Consider the following: In the past, an active sunspot could emerge on the far side of the sun completely hidden from Earth. Then, the sun's rotation could turn that region toward our planet, spitting flares and clouds of plasma, with little warning.

"Not anymore," says Bill Murtagh, a senior forecaster at NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado. "Farside active regions can no longer take us by surprise. Thanks to STEREO, we know they're coming."

NOAA is already using 3D STEREO models of CMEs (billion-ton clouds of plasma ejected by the sun) to improve space weather forecasts for airlines, power companies, satellite operators, and other customers. The full sun view should improve those forecasts even more.

The forecasting benefits aren't limited to Earth.

"With this nice global model, we can now track solar storms heading toward other planets, too," points out Guhathakurta. "This is important for NASA missions to Mercury, Mars, asteroids … you name it."

Observing solar storms from two points of view has allowed forecasters to made 3D models of advancing coronal mass ejections (CMEs), improving predictions of Earth impacts. Credit: NOAA/SWPC [movie]

NASA has been building toward this moment since Oct. 2006 when the STEREO probes left Earth, split up, and headed for positions on opposite sides of the sun (movie). Feb. 6, 2011, was the date of "opposition"—i.e., when STEREO-A and -B were 180 degrees apart, each looking down on a different hemisphere. NASA's Earth-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory is also monitoring the sun 24/7. Working together, the STEREO-SDO fleet should be able to image the entire globe for the next 8 years.

The new view could reveal connections previously overlooked. For instance, researchers have long suspected that solar activity can "go global," with eruptions on opposite sides of the sun triggering and feeding off of one another. Now they can actually study the phenomenon. The Great Eruption of August 2010 engulfed about 2/3rd of the stellar surface with dozens of mutually interacting flares, shock waves, and reverberating filaments. Much of the action was hidden from Earth, but plainly visible to the STEREO-SDO fleet.

"There are many fundamental puzzles underlying solar activity," says Vourlidas. "By monitoring the whole sun, we can find the missing pieces."

Researchers say these first-look images are just a hint of what's to come. Movies with higher resolution and more action will be released in the weeks ahead as more data are processed. Stay tuned!

Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

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This is such a cool story. The thunder storm is weeks old! Not minutes or hours but weeks, like in almost two months!

Anyway, the pictures are awesome and the best part they are by an amateur astronomer!

STORM ON SATURN: A vast thunderstorm that erupted on Saturn during the closing weeks of 2010 is still going strong. "It looks like a comet plowing through Saturn's northern hemisphere," reports amateur astronomer Christopher Go. He took these pictures on Feb. 5th using an 11-inch Celestron telescope in Cebu City, the Philippines:

"The storm is very bright," says Go. "I spent a few minutes observing it visually (through the eyepiece) and it is very prominent."

Researchers call the storm the "northern electrostatic disturbance" because (1) it is in Saturn's northern hemisphere and (2) it is strongly charged with lightning. Receivers onboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft are picking up radio crackles each time a bolt discharges--much like the static you hear on a car radio when driving through an electrical storm on Earth.

The storm is stretching around much of Saturn's northern hemisphere--and growing longer. This means there a good chance of catching it no matter when you look. Amateur astronomers are encouraged to monitor developments. Saturn may be found high in the southern sky before dawn shining like a yellow 1st-magnitude star.

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Today's blog post by venture capitalist Fred Wilson ( @avc ) titled "Anatomy of a Pirate" got me thinking about my music listening habits over the last 15 years. Over the last 15 years my music listening habits have plummeted. I used to listen to and buy a lot of music. So what happened? Well, for one thing, the music deleivery system changed. Innovation in the industry was also stiffled. I remember IBM and Blockbuster were stopped from doing some music related innovation decades ago.

What about the artists? There has been a lot of good music over the last 15 years. I bought some. Most of it I missed. Radio changed for one thing but so did the delivery of music to the public. Fred mentions how messed up some of it is.

Recently I started listening a lot again. I heard an amazing song on the radio and I used the Verizon SongID app on my feature phone to e-mail me the artist. Thanks to @amazonmp3 and a $5 payment I am the proud owner of Grace Potter and the Nocturnals ( @GracePotter ) latest and it is awesome. I listen to it twice a day. While at Amazon I bought Cage the Elephant and for the 4th time in my life, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. Why the drought? Maybe its the quality of the music. Maybe it was the DRM that made it a pain to buy music and to add it to all your devices. Amazon MP3's are DRM free, you just copy the music to your devices and listen.

What I think really kept my flame for music going was the indie artists I have been listening too over the last couple of years. People like Natalie Gelman and bands like McMule. People who love music and love to play music.

Disclaimer: I gave $25 to Natalie Gelman to help fund the recording of her current album via her fan funded album project.

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While outside during last night's snow storm, I took pictures and video of some dripping isicles.

The picture (click for full size) below captured a drop of water after it left its isicle.

The video below was shot at 720p at 60 frames per second.

110_0240.MOV Watch on Posterous

110_0240-at_1_fifth_speed.mov Watch on Posterous

Camera: Canon PowerShot SD1000

Video: Kodak Zi8

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FANTASTIC SOLAR ECLIPSE: When the sun rose over Europe this morning, a piece of it was missing.  The Moon had covered as much as 86% of the solar disk, producing a partial solar eclipse and a fantastic crescent-shaped sunrise.  The most amazing apparition, however, may have occurred in the Sultanate of Oman, where for a split second the Moon and the International Space Station partially eclipsed the sun at the same time.

DOUBLE SOLAR ECLIPSE: Not satisfied with an ordinary blow-your-socks-off partial eclipse,

celebrated photographer Thierry Legault traveled to the Sultanate of Oman to record a rare double eclipse. For a split-second on Jan. 4th the disk of the sun was partially covered by the Moon and the International Space Station. I can not share the awesome pictures here so you will have to goto Thierry Legault's website. Go there now!

Enjoy!

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Asteroid Itokawa Sample Return

Dec. 29, 2010:  The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's Hayabusa spacecraft has brought home to Earth tiny pieces of an alien world–asteroid Itokawa.

"It's an incredible feeling to have another world right in the palm of your hand," says Mike Zolensky, Associate Curator for Interplanetary Dust at the Johnson Space Center, and one of the three non-Japanese members of the science team. "We're seeing for the first time, up close, what an asteroid is actually made of!"

Hayabusa photographs its own shadow on asteroid Itokawa in 2005 prior to collecting samples from the big space rock. [more]

He has good reason to be excited. Asteroids formed at the dawn of our solar system, so studying these samples can teach us how it formed and evolved.

Hayabusa launched in 2003 and set out on a billion kilometer voyage to Itokawa, arriving a little over two years later. In 2005, the spacecraft performed a spectacular feat -- landed on the asteroid's surface⁽¹⁾. The hope was to capture samples from the alien world.

But there was a problem. The projectiles set to blast up dust from the surface failed to fire, leaving only the particles kicked up from landing for collection. Did any asteroid dust made it into the collection chamber?

The return of Hayabusa went exactly according to plan, according to JAXA:full story.

Zolensky and other eager scientists, with eyes riveted skyward, watched the answer plunge back into Earth's atmosphere at 27,000 miles per hour on the night of June 13th, 2010. Hayabusa's main bus shattered over the Australian outback during reentry, and the intact sample return capsule drifted to Earth via parachute.

"We were mesmerized," says Zolensky. "As we waited for it to land, no one even moved."

But the waiting was only just beginning. Because attempting retrieval of the capsule in the dark was too dangerous, he spent a sleepless night before getting a closer look.

"I was one of the first people to board the helicopter that flew to the landing site the next morning. And I was the first person to walk up to the capsule."

He had to stop within 10 feet of it. More waiting.

"I watched the retrieval team recover it. They wore face masks and gloves and blue padded suits. They had to disable the unexploded parachute release charges, and that was pretty nerve wracking. Then they picked up the capsule oh so carefully and placed it in a box."

The precious cargo was flown via charter jet to Japan for analysis. Guess who was waiting for it when it arrived?

"I was ready to work," says Zolensky, who along with fellow team member Scott Sandford of NASA Ames Research Center had traveled to Japan for the opening.

"The first results were disheartening. When we scanned the capsule with a modified CAT scan, there appeared to be nothing inside."

Next, Japanese members of the team painstakingly dismantled the capsule, piece by piece. "They had to use a micromanipulator to avoid contamination, and the process took months."

More waiting.

Electron microscope photos of material found inside Hayabusa's sample return container. Red arrows point to particles from the asteroid. [more]

"Once we got inside the capsule, we could see dust on the interior walls. I thought to myself, 'we've got asteroid dust here!' But there was still a possibility the contents could be contamination from launch or reentry and landing."

The next step was to remove and analyze the particles -- another agonizingly slow process, and more waiting.

"The particles are each smaller than the diameter of a human hair. We finally used a Teflon spatula to sweep out a large number of tiny particles."

Though most of the particles are still in the capsule, the team has removed and analyzed 2000 of them with an electron microscope.

And?

"At least 1500 of them are from the asteroid! We're seeing pieces of another world. It looks like a very primitive type asteroid. We'll tell you more in March at the 2011 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston."

This is only the third time ever that samples of a solid extraterrestrial body have been brought back to Earth. The Apollo astronauts and Soviet Luna robots were first – they brought us samples of moondust. And NASA's Stardust spacecraft returned samples of comet Wild 2 in 2006.

"The Japanese people are thrilled, and so are we. The emperor even requested a personal tour of the capsule. This is their Apollo mission. They're showing us all a new world!"

Author: Dauna Coulter | Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

For More Information

Web Links:

Asteroid Explorer Hayabusa -- JAXA mission home page

Identification of origin of particles brought back by Hayabusa -- JAXA press release

Bringing Hayabusa Back to Earth -- JAXA feature story

End Notes:

(1) This is only the second time an asteroid landing has been achieved. The only other time in history a spacecraft landed on an asteroid's surface was when NASA’s Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous-Shoemaker spacecraft landed on asteroid Eros in February 2001.

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See the full gallery on Posterous

Clouds are moving in to my viewing area (Brewster, NY) of the big lunar eclipse of 2010. The clouds are producing a haze over the moon and a very big ring. Using my Canon PowerShot SD1000 Digital ELPH camera, I attempted to capture the ring around the moon. I used both standard settings and custom settings to product these images. The real grainy shots are ISO 1600, 800 and 400. When the ISO gets to 80 the rings all but disappear. Enjoy.

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Observing a lunar eclipse is very easy. All you have to do is look up in the cloud less sky, find the moon and look. I have observed many and they are cool. This will be the first time in hundreds of years that a lunar eclipse will fall on the winter solstice. From AOL News: Geoff Chester of the U.S. Naval Observatory inspected a list of eclipses going back 2000 years for NASA. "Since Year 1, I can only find one previous instance of an eclipse matching the same calendar date as the solstice, and that is 1638 DEC 21," Chester said, according to NASA. "Fortunately we won't have to wait 372 years for the next one ... that will be on 2094 DEC 21."

From SpaceWeather.com: LUNAR ECLIPSE:  For the first time in many years, northern winter is beginning with a total lunar eclipse.  On Dec. 21, 2010, the date of the northern winter solstice, the full Moon will pass through Earth's shadow, turning the lunar orb a delightful shade of coppery-red. Sky watchers in North America are favored with an overhead view as the eclipse unfolds on Tuesday morning between 02:41 am and 03:53 am EST. Visit http://spaceweather.com for full coverage of the event including live webcasts, observing tips, and a look at the surprising connection between lunar eclipses and Earth's climate.

From Nasa's Press Release:Solstice Lunar Eclipse

Dec. 17, 2010:  Everyone knows that "the moon on the breast of new-fallen snow gives the luster of mid-day to objects below."

A similar lunar eclipse in Nov. 2003. Credit: Jim Fakatselis. [more]

That is, except during a lunar eclipse.

The luster will be a bit "off" on Dec. 21st, the first day of northern winter, when the full Moon passes almost dead-center through Earth's shadow. For 72 minutes of eerie totality, an amber light will play across the snows of North America, throwing landscapes into an unusual state of ruddy shadow.

The eclipse begins on Tuesday morning, Dec. 21st, at 1:33 am EST (Monday, Dec. 20th, at 10:33 pm PST). At that time, Earth's shadow will appear as a dark-red bite at the edge of the lunar disk. It takes about an hour for the "bite" to expand and swallow the entire Moon. Totality commences at 02:41 am EST (11:41 pm PST) and lasts for 72 minutes.

If you're planning to dash out for only one quick look -­ it is December, after all -­ choose this moment: 03:17 am EST (17 minutes past midnight PST). That's when the Moon will be in deepest shadow, displaying the most fantastic shades of coppery red.

From first to last bite, the eclipse favors observers in North America. The entire event can be seen from all points on the continent. Click to view a world map of visibility circumstances. Credit: F. Espenak, NASA/GSFC.

Why red?

A quick trip to the Moon provides the answer: Imagine yourself standing on a dusty lunar plain looking up at the sky. Overhead hangs Earth, nightside down, completely hiding the sun behind it. The eclipse is underway. You might expect Earth seen in this way to be utterly dark, but it's not. The rim of the planet is on fire! As you scan your eye around Earth's circumference, you're seeing every sunrise and every sunset in the world, all of them, all at once. This incredible light beams into the heart of Earth's shadow, filling it with a coppery glow and transforming the Moon into a great red orb.

Back on Earth, the shadowed Moon paints newly fallen snow with unfamiliar colors--not much luster, but lots of beauty.

Enjoy the show.

Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

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