Astronomy

Polar Image is a site with marvelous pictures of atmospheric phenomena, by Pekka Parviainen.

We are grinding our teeth, while looking up against a gray cloudy sky. Not even a dim change of seeing the polar light, as it is blazing across Europe :( I'm gonna stay up some hours, hoping to see the aurora through an slender hole in the clouds. Mike Tullett had more chance than we -- have a look at his marvelous pictures of the event.

Another astronomical event has passed : after a lunar and solar eclipse, a Mercury passage, the Mars opposition, giant solar flares and aurora, 2003 keeps amazing astronomy amateurs with this lunar eclipse. It's really surprising how much light a full moon produces, and how impressive it is to see that light dim during the eclipse. Also impressive are the stars that suddenly pop up in the dimming light of the darkening moon. Star SAO 93170 was also occulted during the eclipse.

I tried a prudent attempt at astrophotography with my digital camera (webcam gives too noisy images). Have a look at the pictures.

In the night of Saterday on Sunday, there will be a lunar eclipse visible for the inhabitants of America and Europe. The eclipse is a total one, though the moon won't pass through the center of the Earth's shadow. As a result, the southern part of the moon disc will be brighter (more reddish) than the rest of the moon. I guess there will be some sites who will emit the event on their webcams. Don't forget space.com''s 10 cool facts on lunar eclipses :

If you were on the moon, on the side facing Earth, the home planet would block out the Sun. The Sun's light would not completely disappear, however. Earth would be ringed by light scattered through its atmosphere. The Sun would be hidden behind a dark Earth outlined by a brilliant red ring consisting of all the world's sunrises and sunsets.

I didn't had any luck last night while taking pictures of the aurora, but here are some pictures of people who were more fortunate than me (or who had better photographic equipment ;)

• On www.lansbergen.net are some pictures made by people from the Lansbergen observatory in Middelburg, Holland.
• Wega, an astronomical user group, has some colourfull pictures.
• Beautifull images by Philippe Mollet.
• The most beautifull picture is by Robert Haas, who made a photo of the aurora in Orion.
• Robert Wielinga made an animated gif of his experience.

Tonight, I have seen the first aurora in my life : at 22h20 local time, a faint green light in the north-east suddenly turned into a bright red curtain with orange borders, stretching out into the zenith. Immensly beautifull and very rare here in Belgium; I tried to capture it on my digicam, but the cam isn't sensitive enough. What a great way to end my birthday :)

Update : an hour later, at 23h10, again a green-white glow in the north, not as spectacular as the previous one, but still impressive.

It is storming on the sun : since a week, there are gigantic solar spots visible on the sun, accompanied by several coronal mass ejections. Today, one of the largest eruptions ever measured, has taken place. The solar flare creates intense radiation levels from high-energetic particles, bombarding the atmosphere of Earth. This phenomenon is called a proton storm, and this one hasn't even yet reached its maximum.

Satellite communication will be disrupted because of the Rontgen- and EUV-radiation, damaging the solar panels, and the satellite computers will be jammed because of the energetic particles. Astronauts on the ISS will be subjected to large X-ray levels, and even passengers on planes will get X-ray doses comparable to the ones of doctor visits.

The increased solar activity will create a very large auroral activity, most noticable in the night of Wednesday on Thursday. So if you've never seen the polar light, keep an eye on the sky during the next nights.

The Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) first acquired images of Mars during its approach to the red planet in mid-1997. The spacecraft began orbiting Mars in September 1997. The primary mission was conducted for one Mars year, through January 2001. An extended mission phase followed. The current plan is to keep the spacecraft operational through September 2004.

Hundreds of highly detailled images with captions describing their contents have been compiled and released at Malin Space Science Systems since 1997.

I took another look at the nova in Scutum; the star looked brighter than expected with an estimated magnitude of 9.1. I took the time now to explore the region around the nova; there are some nice open clusters like M11 (the Wild Duck Cluster) and M26, but also some NGC objects.

The NGC catalogue, which stands for New General Catalogue, is the little brother of the better known Messier catalogue, and contains generally more modest deep sky objects. The NGC catalogue contains all of the Messier objects plus thousands of others which Messier missed or simply couldn't observe from his location. The NGC catalogue was compiled in 1888 by Danish astronomer Johan Ludvig Emil Dreyer, who based his work on earlier lists made by the Herschel family of British astronomers. Dreyer included some 8,000 celestial objects, a total raised to about 13,000 by his first and second Index Catalogues (IC), published in 1895 and 1908, respectively. With these supplements the NGC covers the entire sky, although many objects visible with modern instruments are not listed. Benoit Schillings created a list of photographed NGC items which give a fairly decent impression about what to expect of a NGC object in your scope.

A nova is an astronomical event where a star brightens suddenly and to an unprecedented degree, creating the impression that a new star has appeared where none was before. Hence the name, from nova for "new star". Hideo Nishimura, a Japanese astronomer, has found a nova in the constellation Scutum (the Shield). I was so lucky to locate the nova with my Newton 114 telescope. As the nova has a magnitude of 8.7 to my estimation, the star can be seen with smaller telescopes. Current observations indicate that the star is even getting brighter in the last days ! Information in Dutch and some star maps (overview and detail) can be found on AstroBlog.