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Space

Possible Northern Lights Show for Parts of US and Canada

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Image by Dave Dyet
Image by Dave Dyet

Early Thursday parts of Northern United States and much of Canada could possibly be in for a Northern Lights show (weather permitting). Joe Kunches, a Federal space weather forecaster said the sun had shot out a strong solar flare late on Tuesday and should arrive early Thursday.

“The University of Alaska’s Geophysical Institute predicts much of Canada and the northern fringes of the U.S. should see the northern lights. Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, Seattle and Des Moines might see the shimmering colors low on the horizon.” says www.wkyc.com.

You may also see some disruption in GPS systems due to the solar flare on Thursday.

Stunning Photo of a Meteor Flying Through the Aurora

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A meteor passing through the Aurora Borealis, Photo Credit: Shannon Bileski
A meteor passing through the Aurora Borealis, [Click photo for Larger Version] Photo Credit: Shannon Bileski
This stunning photo was taken by Shannon Bilesk of Signature Exposures.

The aurora was on and off all night, but at 11:10pm just as everyone else was packing up their camera gear, the green glow in the sky intensified. Bileski began snapping some shots with her Nikon D800 and Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens, with settings at f/3.2, 8s, and ISO 800.

Suddenly, during one of the 8-second exposures, there was an intense streak of light in the sky and bright green flashes. It was a meteor that had broken up in the atmosphere, and Bileski captured the whole event as the photo above.”

Thanks to NASAWatch.

View of a Mach 1000 Shock Wave

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Mach1000Shockwave
A photograph of the Tycho supernova remnant taken by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Low-energy X-rays (red) in the image show expanding debris from the supernova explosion and high energy X-rays (blue) show the blast wave, a shell of extremely energetic electrons.
X-ray: NASA/CXC/Rutgers/K. Eriksen et al.; Optical (starry background): DSS

 

This incredible image is of a remnant of the supernova Tycho, which blew up long ago. Supernova remnants are often able to be seen hundreds of years after the initial explosion because of a reverse shockwave that occurs.

This reverse shockwave is created when the outwardly ejected material of the supernova explosion creates sort of a backward current or backwash of material that heads inward at speeds up to mach 1000 or 1000 times the speed of sound. This material then begins to heat up to the point where it begins to emit X-rays, and that’s what you see here in the image above. This image is from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics where you can read more about this particular image.

We wouldn’t be able to study ancient supernova remnants without a reverse shock to light them up,” – Hiroya Yamaguchi

 

LeVar Burton Explains NASA’s Martian MAVEN Mission

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In this cool NASA Public Service Announcement, LeVar Burton tells us all about MAVEN’s mission and explains why it’s important.  On November 18th, NASA has had a successful launch of MAVEN, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission. The Atlas V rocket lifted off at approximately 1:30 P.M EST and is now on it’s way towards Mars to hopefully allow us to better understand why Mars has become so inhospitable and to possibly help us better understand our climate here on Earth.

We’re currently about 14,000 miles away from Earth and heading out to the Red Planet right now,” – MAVEN Project Manager David Mitchell-

NASA is trying to understand why most of the Martian atmosphere has disappeared and just how it lost all of it’s liquid water. Perhaps we can even answer the question we have all been really wanting to know, was there ever life on Mars? The only way to find out is to keep on studying our neighboring planet and to continue to dig deeper into the past of the great red planet.

Leonid Meteor Shower Peaks This Weekend

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Leonids

The Leonid meteor shower is an annual mid-November event and will be peaking this weekend November 16 and 17. Unfortunately at the same time, there will be a full moon which will flood the sky with light and lessen the chances of seeing most of the shower, and this year is expected to have low activity, only about 10 to 20 meteors per hour, if that.  For best viewing chances, the “traditional” times are midnight to dawn. This year, it’s being said that 5am ET Sunday will be the peak time to check it out.

Leonids get their name from the constellation Leo and are associated with the comet Tempel-Tuttle. When the comet passes the solar system every 33.3 years, and gets closest to the sun, it leaves a trail of debris behind. The Earth then comes in contact with that debris, which creates the meteor shower.