[Bluearrowll]

What's in the sky tonight?
July 27, 2013

-During the late hours of July 26th, two filaments of magnetism erupted on the sun. The first to blow was this loop on the sun's southwestern limb. A second filament connecting sunspots AR1800 and AR1805 erupted shortly thereafter. The explosions hurled coronal mass ejections (CMEs) into space. One of them (the one propelled by the filament connecting AR1800 and AR1805) might be heading in the general direction of Earth. An analysis the CME's trajectory is in progress as more imagery becomes available.

-The students of Earth to Sky Calculus have recovered the petunias they sent to the stratosphere last Friday. The flowers left Earth July 19th onboard a helium research balloon, ascended to 110,570 feet, then parachuted back to Earth on the same day. The below four screenshots show the following scenarios:

(1) The flowers were pink and alert when they left Earth. (2) An hour later, in the stratosphere, the flowers appear limp and wilted, but they were not. Actually, the flowers were frozen. The petals were bent downward by onrushing wind during the ascent, and they froze in place as the petunias passed through the tropopause where the temperature was -63 C. (3) You can see that the flowers were frozen stiff because when the balloon exploded, they did not move at all. (4) Finally, as the payload parachuted back to Earth the flowers thawed and turned deep purple.

Astro Picture of the Day:
July 27, 2013

Source:
Storm clouds do sometimes come to Chile's Atacama desert, known as the driest place on Earth. These washed through the night sky just last month during the winter season, captured in this panoramic view. Drifting between are cosmic clouds more welcome by the region's astronomical residents though, including dark dust clouds in silhouette against the crowded starfields and nebulae of the central Milky Way. Below and right of center lies the Large Magellanic Cloud, appropriately named for its appearance in starry southern skies. City lights about 200 kilometers distant still glow along the horizon at the right, while bright star Canopus shines above them in the cloudy sky.