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Daily Suspicious0bserver's Weather Post:
January 13, 2014

What's in the sky tonight?
January 13, 2014

-Betelgeuse is lower right of the Moon this evening. Jupiter is to the Moon's lower left, with Pollux on beyond. Look far under the Moon for Procyon.

-Blowing with gusts as fast as 800 km/s (1.8 million mph), a stream of solar wind is buffeting Earth's magnetic field. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras on Jan. 13th.

-On Jan. 12th, a robotic arm on the ISS reached out and snagged another spaceship--Orbital Sciences Corporation's Cygnus cargo carrier. Cygnus reached the ISS on time despite a launch delay last Wednesday caused by stormy space weather. The docking on Sunday morning at 8:05 am EST marked the first successful contracted cargo delivery by Orbital Sciences.

Only five hours before docking, the two spacecraft flew over the Netherlands where veteran satellite observer Marco Langbroek was waiting with his camera to take this picture.

"The Cygnus cargoship was too faint to be seen by the naked eye for most of the pass, but around 5:57:05 UTC it briefly flared to mag +2 and the close duo ISS-Cygnus was suddenly and briefly well visible as a result," says Langbroek. "This picture shows the moment when the Cygnus flared."

Cygnus delivered almost 2800 lbs of equipment and crew supplies to the space station. This includes dozens of new science experiments including 23 designed by students. One newly arrived investigation will study the behavior of ants in microgravity. Another will probe the decreased effectiveness of antibiotics during spaceflight--a possible problem for astronauts on long space journeys. Yet another will explore how different materials burn in microgravity to improve fire safety in future spacecraft.

-Compare what Suspicious0bserver's mentioned about the fireball in his video today with the January 12 fireball orbital network, and see if there is any consistencies. On Jan. 12, 2014, the network reported 11 fireballs. (10 sporadics, 1 Canum Venaticid)

Astro Picture of the Day:
January 13, 2014

Source:
What would it be like to visit the Moon? The first major fictional cinematic film exploring this enduring transcultural fantasy was titled Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) and made in 1902, becoming one of the most popular movies of the early years of the twentieth century. The silent film starred the filmmaker Georges Melies himself and portrayed a club of astronomers voyaging to the Moon and back. Pictured above is a frame from the movie that has become an enduring icon for both film and space. Alluding to a bullseye trajectory, the Man in the Moon is caricatured as being struck by the human-built spaceship. The entire 14-minute film is now freely available. Visiting the Moon remained a very popular topic even 67 years later in 1969 when humans first made an actual voyage.
The movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FrdVdKlxUk
The movie rescored: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNVmYxc6iZ4