Daily Suspicious0bserver's Weather Post:
July 6, 2014
What's in the sky tonight?
July 6, 2014
-The Moon this evening poses midway between Saturn at its left and the Mars-Spica pair at its right.
The Moon is very much in the foreground, just 1.3 light-seconds from Earth. Mars is currently 8½ light-minutes away, Saturn is 78 light-minutes away, and Spica is 250 light-years in the background.
-As wide as a World Cup football field, the biggest spacecraft ever built makes a impressive silhouette when it passes in front of the sun. Yesterday, Maximilian Teodorescu of Romania caught the winged shadow of the International Space Station in conjuncton with sunspots AR2104 and AR2107. "This is my first attempt to catch the station with a small-sensor camera at high magnification," he says. "I managed to catch the ISS in three frames."
His wife Eliza was right beside him with her own camera and solar filter, and she caught it too. "The moment was all the more spectacular because the ISS path was almost parallel to the very numerous string of sunspots," she notes. One conjunction after another unfolded as their cameras rolled.
With the sunspot number so high, now is a good time to catch ISS-sunspot conjunctions.
Astro Picture of the Day:
July 6, 2014
Source:
This coming Saturday, if it is clear, well placed New Yorkers can go outside at sunset and watch their city act like a modern version of Stonehenge. Manhattan's streets will flood dramatically with sunlight just as the Sun sets precisely at each street's western end. Usually, the tall buildings that line the gridded streets of New York City's tallest borough will hide the setting Sun. This effect makes Manhattan a type of modern Stonehenge, although only aligned to about 30 degrees east of north. Were Manhattan's road grid perfectly aligned to east and west, today's effect would occur on the Vernal and Autumnal Equinox, March 21 and September 21, the only two days that the Sun rises and sets due east and west. Pictured above in this horizontally stretched image, the Sun sets down 34th Street as viewed from Park Avenue. If Saturday's sunset is hidden by clouds do not despair -- the same thing happens twice each year: in late May and mid July. On none of these occasions, however, should you ever look directly at the Sun.