Terry's Astronomy Thread.

[Bluearrowll]

What's in the sky tonight?
November 14, 2013

-Look left of the waxing gibbous Moon after dusk for the two or three leading stars of Aries, lined up more or less horizontally. High above the Moon and perhaps a bit right is the Great Square of Pegasus. The Moon itself inhabits dim Pisces.

-Solar activity has been low for 24+ hours, but the forecast calls for flares. Two large, complex sunspots are transiting the Earthside of the sun with mixed-polarity magnetic fields that harbor energy for strong eruptions. The next big flare will probably come from one of these two circled regions. NOAA forecasters estimate a 60% chance of M-class flares and a 30% chance of X-flares during the next 24 hours. Flares from AR1890 could be particularly geoeffective. Because of the way the sun's magnetic field spirals through interplanetary space, AR1890 is magnetically connected to our planet. Particles accelerated by an explosion there would be guided in our direction, possibly causing a radiation storm around Earth.

Astro Picture of the Day:
November 14, 2013

Source:
Enigmatic spiral galaxy NGC 1097 shines in southern skies, about 45 million light-years away in the chemical constellation Fornax. Its blue spiral arms are mottled with pinkish star forming regions in this colorful galaxy portrait. They seem to have wrapped around a small companion galaxy below and left of center, about 40,000 light-years from the spiral's luminous core. That's not NGC 1097's most peculiar feature, though. The very deep exposure hints of faint, mysterious jets, most easily seen to extend well beyond the bluish arms toward the lower right. In fact, four faint jets are ultimately recognized in optical images of NGC 1097. The jets trace an X centered on the galaxy's nucleus, but probably don't originate there. Instead, they could be fossil star streams, trails left over from the capture and disruption of a much smaller galaxy in the large spiral's ancient past. A Seyfert galaxy, NGC 1097's nucleus also harbors a supermassive black hole.