Skip to main content

OCT. SOLAR ECLIPS - 2023

Would you like to see a total eclipse of the Sun? If so, do any friends or relatives live near the path of next April's eclipse? If yes again, then you might want to arrange a well-timed visit. Next April 8, the path of a total solar eclipse will cross North America from western Mexico to eastern Canada, entering the USA in southern Texas and exiting in northern Maine. All of North America will experience the least a partial solar eclipse. Featured here is a map of the path of totality. Many people who have seen a total solar eclipse tell stories about it for the rest of their lives. As a warmup, an annular solar eclipse will be visible later this year -- in mid-October.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE NGC

The large stellar association cataloged as NGC 206 is nestled within the dusty arms of the neighboring Andromeda galaxy along with the galaxy's pinkish star-forming regions. Also known as M31, the spiral galaxy is a mere 2.5 million light-years away. NGC 206 is found right of center in this sharp and detailed close-up of the southwestern extent of Andromeda's disk. The bright, blue stars of NGC 206 indicate its youth. In fact, its youngest massive stars are less than 10 million years old. Much larger than the open or galactic clusters of young stars in the disk of our Milky Way galaxy, NGC 206 spans about 4,000 light-years. That's comparable in size to the giant stellar nurseries NGC 604 in nearby spiral M33 and the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Post a Comment
Read...

SPACE TODAY

On some nights the sky is the best show in town. On this night, auroras ruled the sky, and the geomagnetic storm that created this colorful sky show originated from an increasingly active Sun. Surprisingly, since the approaching solar CME the day before had missed the Earth, it was not expected that this storm would create auroras. In the foreground, two happily surprised aurora hunters contemplate the amazing and rapidly changing sky. Regardless of forecasts, though, auroras were reported in the night skies of Earth not only in the far north, but as far south as New Mexico, USA. As captured in a wide-angle image above Saariselkä in northern Finnish Lapland, a bright aurora was visible with an unusually high degree of detail, range of colors, and breadth across the sky. The vivid yellow, green, red and purple auroral colors are caused by oxygen and nitrogen atoms high in Earth's atmosphere reacting to incoming electrons.
Post a Comment
Read...

THE RED SKY RING

What's that red ring in the sky? Lightning. The most commonly seen type of lightning involves flashes of bright white light between clouds. Over the past 50 years, though, other types of upper-atmospheric lightning have been confirmed, including red sprites and blue jets. Less well known and harder to photograph is a different type of upper atmospheric lightning known as ELVES. ELVES are thought to be created when an electromagnetic pulse shoots upward from charged clouds and impacts the ionosphere, causing nitrogen molecules to glow. The red ELVES ring pictured had a radius of about 350 km and was captured in late March about 100 kilometers above Ancona, Italy. Years of experience and ultra-fast photography were used to capture this ELVES -- which lasted only about 0.001 second.
Post a Comment
Read...