Hearts.
Flowers. Heavenly fireworks. Give Spaceweather
PHONE for Valentine's Day.
QUIET
SUN:
X-rays from the sun have dropped to their lowest levels
since July 1997. The reason: no sunspots. Sunspots are
strong sources of solar X-rays, but the sun has been mostly
spotless for two weeks. No sunspots, weak X-rays, low
solar activity: solar
mininum has arrived.
SNOW
MOON, FOG MOON:
According to folklore, last night's full moon was the
Snow
Moon. In San Francisco--always the rebel--it was instead
the Fog Moon. "I
drove to the beach," says Mila
Zinkova, "but the only thing I could see was
fog. Well ... I live in San Francisco. Sometimes I need
to drive a few hundred extra feet to find clear skies.
I drove those few hundred feet and spotted the red, not
round moon and a boat popping up from the mist:"
Elsewhere
the Snow Moon was its usual self--more images:
from Mike O'Leary
of El Cajon, CA; from
Chris Schur of Payson, AZ; from
Dominic Cantin of Quebec, Canada; from
Ginger Mayfield of Divide, CO; from
Thomas Cakalic near Boise, Idaho.
STORM
ON SATURN:
For the third week in a row, amateur astronomers are monitoring
a storm on Saturn. It's the white spot in this February
11th photo taken by Ian
Sharp of Ham, West Sussex, UK:
Compared
to the body and rings of Saturn, the storm seems small,
but consider this--it's large enough to swallow the planet
Mercury. Lately, NASA's Cassini
spacecraft has been detecting crackling radio bursts
of the sort you hear on your car radio when a thunderstorm
is nearby. The white spot is the likely source, making
it a lightning storm.
Got
a backyard telescope? You can monitor Saturn yourself.
Even small backyard telescope will show you Saturn's rings
and clouds. Look for the planet rising in the east after
sunset: sky
map.