Terry's Astronomy Thread.

[Bluearrowll]

Thanks for the complements guys! The thread will be run as long as there are enough people who wish to see it. Feel free to throw in suggestions that could improve the current thread as well.

What's in the sky tonight?
June 22, 2013

-The largest full Moon of 2013 rises around sunset and shines all night. Tomorrow night it's almost as full and almost as large (for the longitudes of the Americas, since the Moon is exactly full at 7:32 a.m. Sunday morning EDT.) On both nights, though, this "supermoon" is only a trace larger than an average Moon: 7% wider.

-On June 21st at 03:16 UT, the sun itself marked the solstice with an M2-class solar flare from sunspot AR1777. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory photographed the extreme ultraviolet flash and a plume of material flying out of the blast site. As sunspots go, AR1777 is neither large nor apparently menacing, yet it has been crackling with flares for days. Before it rotated over the sun's eastern limb on June 20th, it unleashed a series of farside flares and CMEs. Today's explosion was not Earth directed, but future explosions could be as the sun's rotation continues to turn AR1777 toward our planet. NOAA forecasters estimate a 30% chance of M-flares and a 5% chance of X-flares during the next 24 hours.

Astro Picture of the Day:
June 22, 2013

Source:
As of today, our Sun begins its southern movement as a result we will experience shorter days. In the Netherlands, the duration of the day is now 16 hours and 45 minutes. With an empty beercan, many visitors of the Philippus Lansbergen Observatory in Middelburg, the Netherlands, captured the movement of the Sun with a single six month long exposure. The first solargraphs have been revealed, and this is the result of the sun's movement over the course of six months. This photo was taken by Jan Koeman. Missing sections represent cloudy ovvercast days. The general view that the Netherlands is often cloudy seems to be incorrect in the past six months as there is a large amount of sunlight present in the photo.