[Bluearrowll]

Daily Suspicious0bserver's Weather Post:
March 25, 2014

What's in the sky tonight?
March 25, 2014

-The biggest and brightest asteroids, 1 Ceres and 4 Vesta respectively, are only about 2° apart in eastern Virgo in the early morning hours, some 12° northeast of Mars. They've brightened to magnitudes 7.3 and 6.1, respectively. They'll be at opposition in mid-April.

-Earth is looking down the double barrel of two potentially active sunspots: AR2010 and AR2014 have complex magnetic fields that harbor energy for strong eruptions, and both have grown since the week began. The CME expected to sideswipe Earth later today was propelled toward us by a C-flare from sunspot AR2014 on March 23rd. Otherwise the two sunspots have been mostly quiet. Is it the calm before the storm? NOAA forecasters estimate a 45% chance of M-class flares and a 5% chance of X-flares on March 25th

Astro Picture of the Day:
March 25, 2014

Source:
What surrounds a hotbed of star formation? In the case of the Orion Nebula -- dust. The entire Orion field, located about 1600 light years away, is inundated with intricate and picturesque filaments of dust. Opaque to visible light, dust is created in the outer atmosphere of massive cool stars and expelled by a strong outer wind of particles. The Trapezium and other forming star clusters are embedded in the nebula. The intricate filaments of dust surrounding M42 and M43 appear gray in the above image, while central glowing gas is highlighted in brown and blue. Over the next few million years much of Orion's dust will be slowly destroyed by the very stars now being formed, or dispersed into the Galaxy.