Did you miss last night's auroras? Next time get a wake-up call from Spaceweather PHONE.
AURORA WATCH: Earth is exiting a solar wind stream that sparked beautiful arctic auroras on April 1st and 2nd. The display has subsided, and the chance of more auroras tonight is low.
COMET MACHHOLZ: Comet 96P/Machholz is swinging past the sun this week well inside the orbit of Mercury. This makes the flyby difficult to see--unless you're SOHO. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory's coronagraph is able to block the sun's glare to reveal the plummeting comet:
SEE THE MOVIE
Solar heating vaporizes comets and causes them to brighten. Comet 96P/Machholz is not expected to become spectacularly bright, but we've learned this year that anything can happen when comets approach the sun. Join SOHO for a ringside seat.
DID YOU NOTICE? This week's full Moon was the smallest full Moon of 2007. Why? Because the Moon's orbit is an ellipse, not a circle. The full Moon of April 2nd happened to occur at the orbit's far point, making the Moon seem unusually small. (continued below)
Photo details (for both): Canon 400D, 300mm lens, 100 ISO
On average, the Moon is wide enough to cover the sun--that's why we have total eclipses. But look at the above photos of the sun and Moon on April 2nd. "The sun's diameter was 0.53o while the Moon's was only 0.49o," says photographer Vladimir Zivkovic of Dakovo, Croatia. "If the Moon stood in front of the sun, we would have a ring eclipse."
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