Heading 350km north to Algonquin Park for Winter Camping and astrophotography trip today until very late Sunday. Due to this thread no longer being a stickied thread, it's necessary for it to keep running to stay on the front page. Sky Kitten will be manning the posts over the weekend while I hope for good weather. Forecast for tonight looks like snow, -23, with a potential clearing spot between 10am-2am. We'll see what happens.
Daily Suspicious0bserver's Weather Post:
February 7, 2014
What's in the sky tonight?
February 7, 2014
-This season, Jupiter turns the Winter Triangle into a bigger, brighter Winter Diamond! The Diamond's bottom is Sirius, its two side corners are Betelgeuse and Procyon, and Jupiter forms its top. It tilts leftward in early evening, then stands vertically in the south around 9 p.m. (depending on your location east or west in your time zone).
-Polar geomagnetic storms are possible on Saturday, Feb. 8th, when a solar wind stream and a minor CME are expected to hit Earth's magnetic field. This will not be a major storm, but the double-impact could spark high-latitude auroras.
-All week long, big sunspot AR1967 has has been crackling with activity, seemingly on the edge of producing an X-class solar flare. That hasn't happened. However, a new sunspot growing alongside AR1967 could push things over the edge. Emerging active region AR1968 has an unstable 'beta-gamma-delta' magnetic field that harbors energy for strong explosions. NOAA forecasters estimate an 60% chance of M-class solar flares and a 20% chance of X-class solar flares on Feb. 7th. Last night in Key West, Florida, Scott Wilson looked out over the Gulf of Mexico and saw the two big sunspots melting into the sea:
The strange shape of the sun in Wilson's picture is a mirage caused by refraction in warm air just above the sea surface. There are many types of sunset mirages. This one is called the "Omega Sun" because the sun resembles the Greek letter omega.
Astro Picture of the Day:
February 7, 2014
Source:
Stars come out as evening twilight fades in this serene skyscape following the Persian proverb "Night hides the world, but reveals a universe." In the scene from last November, the Sun is setting over northern Kenya and the night will soon hide the shores of Lake Turkana, home to many Nile crocodiles. That region is also known as the cradle of humankind for its abundance of hominid fossils. A brilliant Venus, then the world's evening star, dominates the starry night above. But also revealed are faint stars, cosmic dust clouds, and glowing nebulae along the graceful arc of our own Milky Way galaxy.