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What's in the sky tonight?
November 8, 2013

-The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a strange asteroid with six comet-like tails. Researchers think the asteroid, named P/2013 P5, is spewing jets of dust as it rapidly rotates to the breaking point. The full story from Science@NASA is found here: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news.../07nov_6tails/

-Big sunspot AR1890 is crackling with strong flares. The latest, which peaked on Nov. 8th at 04:32 UT, registered X1 on the Richter Scale of Flares. (Note: Earlier, we underestimated the intensity of this flare as M8.) NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded a flash of extreme UV radiation from the blast site. This sunspot has a signature: It tends to produce very brief flares. The X1-flare was no exception as it lasted barely a minute. Brevity mitigates Earth-effects, so this intense flare was not strongly geoeffective--at least, not at first. The explosion also hurled a CME into space. The cloud could deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field on Nov. 10-11, possibly sparking polar geomagnetic storms.

News Posted Today:
November 7, 2013
New Chelyabinsk Results Yield Surprises


Astro Picture of the Day:
November 8, 2013

Source:
The Sun's disk was totally eclipsed for a brief 20 seconds as the Moon's dark umbral shadow raced across Pokwero in northwestern Uganda on November 3rd. So this sharp telescopic view of totality in clear skies from the central African locale was much sought after by eclipse watchers. In the inspiring celestial scene the Moon just covers the overwhelmingly bright photosphere, the lower, normally visible layer of the Sun's atmosphere. Extending beyond the photosphere, the reddish hydrogen alpha glow of the solar chromosphere outlines the lunar silhouette, fading into the Sun's tenuous, hot, outer atmosphere or corona. Planet-sized prominences reaching beyond the limb of the active Sun adorn the edges of the silhouette, including a cloud of glowing plasma separated from the chromosphere near the 1 o'clock position.