Daily Suspicious0bserver's Weather Post:
August 26, 2014
What's in the sky tonight?
August 26, 2014
-If you're in the Earth's mid-northern latitudes, bright Vega shines near your zenith just as night becomes fully dark. Whenever you see Vega most nearly straight up, you know that Sagittarius, with its deep-sky riches, is at its highest in the south.
-Yesterday, active sunspot AR2148 erupted twice, producing a rapidfire pair of M-class solar flares (M2 @ 1511 UT and M3 @ 2021 UT). The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory recorded a corresponding pair of CMEs emerging from the blast site. According to NOAA analysts, the first CME does not have an Earth-directed component. The second CME looks even less Earth-directed than the first. In short, they missed.
More eruptions may be in the offing. Sunspots AR2146 and AR2149 both have complex magnetic fields that harbor energy for strong flares. NOAA forecasters estimate a 55% chance of M-class flares and 10% chance of X-flares on August 26th.
Astro Picture of the Day:
August 26, 2014
Source:
What would it look like to fly past Triton, the largest moon of planet Neptune? Only one spacecraft has ever done this -- and now, for the first time, images of this dramatic encounter have been gathered into a movie. On 1989 August 25, the Voyager 2 spacecraft shot through the Neptune system with cameras blazing. Triton is slightly smaller than Earth's Moon but has ice volcanoes and a surface rich in frozen nitrogen. The first sequence in the video shows Voyager's approach to Triton, which, despite its unusual green tint, appears in approximately true color. The mysterious terrain seen under the spacecraft soon changed from light to dark, with the terminator of night soon crossing underneath. After closest approach, Voyager pivoted to see the departing moon, now visible as a diminishing crescent. Next July, assuming all goes well, the robotic New Horizons spacecraft will make a similar flight past Pluto, an orb of similar size to Triton.