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Daily Suspicious0bserver's Weather Post:
September 26, 2014

What's in the sky tonight?
September 26, 2014

-New sunspot AR2175 didn't exist one day ago. Now it stretches more than 100,000 km across the face of the sun with a primary dark core larger than Earth. The fast-growing region has a 'beta-gamma' magnetic field that harbors energy for M-class solar flares.

-As early as 8 or 9 p.m. now look for Fomalhaut, the lonely 1st-magnitude Autumn Star, twinkling on its way up from the southeast horizon. It will be highest due south around 11 or midnight (depending on your location).

-The waxing crescent Moon works its way eastward above the star-and-planet display low in the southwestern twilight. (These scenes are plotted for the middle of North America.)

Astro Picture of the Day:
September 26, 2014

Source:
Launched on November 18, 2013, the MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) spacecraft completed its interplanetary voyage September 21, captured into a wide, elliptical orbit around Mars. MAVEN's imaging ultraviolet spectrograph has already begun its planned exploration of the Red Planet's upper atmosphere, acquiring this image data from an altitude of 36,500 kilometers. In false color, the three ultraviolet wavelength bands show light reflected from atomic hydrogen (in blue), atomic oxygen (in green) and the planet's surface (in red). Low mass atomic hydrogen is seen to extend thousands of kilometers into space, with the cloud of more massive oxygen atoms held closer by Mars' gravity. Both are by products of the breakdown of water and carbon dioxide in Mars' atmosphere and the MAVEN data can be used to determine the rate of water loss over time. In fact, MAVEN is the first mission dedicated to exploring Mars' tenuous upper atmosphere, ionosphere and interactions with the Sun and solar wind. But the most recent addition to the fleet of spacecraft from planet Earth now in martian orbit is MOM.