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Daily Suspicious0bserver's Weather Post:
March 18, 2014

What's in the sky tonight?
March 18, 2014

-The Moon, Mars, and Spica form a striking triangle after they rise in the east late tonight and on into dawn on the morning of the 19th.

-Tomorrow, For skywatchers in the New York City region and certain areas northward, the faint asteroid 163 Erigone (eh-RIG-uh-nee) will black out 1st-magnitude Regulus for up to 14 seconds a little after 2 a.m. EDT Thursday morning. This is the best asteroid occultation ever predicted to cross such a heavily populated area.

-Despite a relatively high sunspot number, solar activity is low. None of the half-a-dozen sunspot groups on the solar disk is actively flaring. NOAA forecasters estimate a 35% chance of M-class flares and a 5% chance of X-flares on March 18th.

News Posted Today:
March 17, 2014
First Direct Evidence of Big Bang Inflation


Astro Picture of the Day:
March 18, 2014

Source:
Did the universe undergo an early epoch of extremely rapid expansion? Such an inflationary epoch has been postulated to explain several puzzling cosmic attributes such as why our universe looks similar in opposite directions. Yesterday, results were released showing an expected signal of unexpected strength, bolstering a prediction of inflation that specific patterns of polarization should exist in cosmic microwave background radiation -- light emitted 13.8 billion years ago as the universe first became transparent. Called B-mode polarizations, these early swirling patterns can be directly attributed to squeeze and stretch effects that gravitational radiation has on photon-emitting electrons. The surprising results were discovered in data from the Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization 2 (BICEP2) microwave observatory near the South Pole. BICEP2 is the building-mounted dish pictured above on the left. Note how the black polarization vectors appear to swirl around the colored temperature peaks on the inset microwave sky map. Although statistically compelling, the conclusions will likely remain controversial while confirmation attempts are made with independent observations.