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Daily Suspicious0bserver's Weather Post:
April 8, 2014

What's in the sky tonight?
April 8, 2014

-Mars, blazing at magnitude –1.5 in Virgo, is at opposition. It rises around sunset and dominates the southeast after dark. Fainter Spica shines about 7° below it during evening. They're highest in the south around 1 a.m. daylight-saving time.

-Now's the time for Mars in a telescope! It's practically at the 15.1-arcsecond diameter it will display when passing closest by Earth on April 14th.

-Mars was imaged by Christopher Go on April 5th from the Philippines, where Mars is seen about half a rotation out of phase with the view we have from the Americas. South here is up.
This is the "interesting" side of Mars. Dark Syrtis Major is left of center. Sinus Sabaeus and Sinus Meridiani are upper right of center. Go writes, "Hellas [south of Syrtis Major] is covered with bright cloud. Utopia and Ismenius Lacus [in the north] are well resolved. There are morning clouds at Chryse (left) and evening clouds at Aetheria (right)." The North Polar cap has shrunk, exposing the dark band around it. Faint lines paralleling sharp edges are a processing artifact.

-With no sunspots actively flaring, solar activity is low. NOAA forecasters put the odds of an X-flare today at no more than 1%.

Astro Picture of the Day:
April 8, 2014

Source:
The Great Nebula in Orion, an immense, nearby starbirth region, is probably the most famous of all astronomical nebulas. Here, glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1500 light-years away. In the above deep image composite in assigned colors taken by the Hubble Space Telescope wisps and sheets of dust and gas are particularly evident. The Great Nebula in Orion can be found with the unaided eye near the easily identifiable belt of three stars in the popular constellation Orion. In addition to housing a bright open cluster of stars known as the Trapezium, the Orion Nebula contains many stellar nurseries. These nurseries contain much hydrogen gas, hot young stars, proplyds, and stellar jets spewing material at high speeds. Also known as M42, the Orion Nebula spans about 40 light years and is located in the same spiral arm of our Galaxy as the Sun.