I believe it was unstickied because it wasn't deemed an important thread, but i'll leave it to an admin or whatnot to give the explanation - the unstickied thread is certainly harder to find than the stickied one though particularly when Chit Chat is active lol. It makes its way to page 2 sometimes.
Daily Suspicious0bserver's Weather Post:
May 1, 2014
What's in the sky tonight?
May 1, 2014
-Brilliant Mars, shining in the southeast after dusk, has been drawing closer to Gamma Virginis (Porrima), magnitude 2.7. Look for the little star about 2° to Mars's upper right. They'll appear closest (1.4° apart) on May 4th and 5th. Gamma Vir is a fine, tight telescopic double with a current separation of 2.1 arcseconds. Take a look at it with your scope at high power after you're done with Mars!
-Last night, April 30th, the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) near Earth tipped south, opening a crack in our planet's magnetosphere. Solar wind poured in and ignited a display of auroras bright enough to pierce the Spring twilight around the Arctic Circle. Nancy Dean sends this picture from Sterling, Alaska. "Bright and beautiful auroras danced all night across our Alaskan sky," says Dean. "The colors of sunset made the display even better."
Meanwhile in the southern hemisphere, autumn is unfolding, and the night sky is growing darker. The display was even more dramatic there. Photographer Brendan Davey says "the glow from Tasmania was very bright."
The crack in Earth's magnetosphere has mostly closed, but the IMF could open it again. NOAA forecasters estimate a 50% chance of polar geomagnetic storms on May 1st.
Astro Picture of the Day:
May 1, 2014
Source:
In skies over Brisbane at the southeastern corner of Queensland, Australia, Planet Earth, the Sun and New Moon set together on April 29. There the celestial line-up, the first solar eclipse of 2014, was seen as a partial solar eclipse. This dramatic composite is a digital stack of images taken about 5 minutes apart with telephoto lens and solar filter. It follows the eclipse in progress, approaching a western horizon where crepuscular rays from cloud banks in silhouette joined the silhouetted Moon. From Brisbane, the maximum eclipse phase with the Moon covering about 25% of the Sun occurred just after sunset. Only from a remote spot on the continent of Antarctica was it even possible to see the eclipse in its brief annular phase, the entire dark lunar disk surrounded by a thin, bright ring of fire.