[Bluearrowll]

Daily Suspicious0bserver's Weather Post:
September 23, 2014

What's in the sky tonight?
September 23, 2014

-Solar activity is low. However, new sunspot AR2172 threatens to break the quiet. Karzaman Ahmad photographed the behemoth active region on Sept. 22nd from the Langkawi National Observatory in Maylasia. The sunspot's primary dark cores are nearly as wide as Earth, and the entire group stretches more than 80,000 km from end to end. These dimensions make AR2172 an easy target for small solar telescopes. "I took the picture using an 11-inch telescope," says Ahmad.

Yesterday, for a while, the sunspot's magnetic field displayed an unstable mixture of polarities that harbored energy for strong explosions. Now the threat has subsided. As the situation shifts back and forth, NOAA forcasters estimate a 30% chance of M-class flares and a 5% chance of X-flares on Sept. 23rd.

-Today, Sept. 23rd at 0229 UT, the sun crossed the celestial equator heading south. The crossing marks the beginning of fall in the northern hemisphere--a.k.a. the autumnal equinox. Equinox means equal night. With the sun near the celestial equator, we experience equal amounts of daylight and darkness, 12 hours of each. Good news for sky watchers: It's also the beginning of aurora season.

Astro Picture of the Day:
September 23, 2014

Source:
That's no sunset. And that thin red line just above it -- that's not a sun pillar. The red glow on the horizon originates from a volcanic eruption, and the red line is the eruption's reflection from fluttering atmospheric ice crystals. This unusual volcanic light pillar was captured over Iceland earlier this month. The featured scene looks north from Jökulsárlón toward the erupting volcano Bárðarbunga in the Holuhraun lava field. Even the foreground sky is picturesque, with textured grey clouds in the lower atmosphere, shimmering green aurora in the upper atmosphere, and bright stars far in the distance. Although the last eruption from Holuhraun was in 1797, the present volcanic activity continues.