Earth is passing through a stream of gravelly debris from Comet Encke, source of the annual Taurid meteor shower.
Because the debris stream is not very congested, Taurid meteor rates are low, no more than 5 per hour.
The special thing about Taurids is that they tend to be fireballs. Check http://spaceweather.com for the latest videos and images of the … Read the rest of this article
ESA’s Space Situational Awareness programme is taking centre stage during the ninth European Space Weather Week, with experts showcasing a recently opened space weather service centre and highlighting European space weather research and development.
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As part of ESA’s SSA Preparatory Programme, the Space Weather (SWE) Segment focuses on services for owners/operators of satellites in space and infrastructure on the ground. …
On the 12th anniversary of crews continuously living and working aboard the International Space Station, NASA announced Friday a new service to help people see the orbiting laboratory when it passes overhead. “Spot the Station” will send an email or text message to those who sign up for the service a few hours before they will be able to see … Read the rest of this article
AAVSO Alert Notice 473Darryl Sergison (University of Exeter) has requested AAVSO assistance with a campaign he is organizing on six T Tauri stars. He writes: “In Autumn 2013 I [and my PhD supervisor Tim Naylor of Exeter University are] undertaking a new study into the nature of pre-main-sequence low mass stars, … Read the rest of this article
ESA’s quartet of satellites studying Earth’s magnetosphere, Cluster, has discovered that our protective magnetic bubble lets the solar wind in under a wider range of conditions than previously believed.
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When Earth’s magnetic field and the interplanetary magnetic field are aligned, for example in a northward orientation as indicated by the white arrow in this graphic, Kelvin–Helmholtz waves are generated at …
NASA’s car-sized rover, Curiosity, has taken significant steps toward understanding how Mars may have lost much of its original atmosphere.
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This picture shows a lab demonstration of the measurement chamber inside the Tunable Laser Spectrometer, an instrument that is part of the Sample Analysis at Mars investigation on NASA’s Curiosity rover. This demonstration uses visible lasers – rather than the …
Solar systems with life-bearing planets may be rare if they are dependent on the presence of asteroid belts of just the right mass, according to a study by Rebecca Martin, a NASA Sagan Fellow from the University of Colorado in Boulder, and astronomer Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md.
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This illustration shows three possible scenarios …
New results from NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity show that the mineralogy of Martian soil is similar to weathered basaltic soils of volcanic origin in Hawaii.
The minerals were identified in the first sample of Martian soil ingested recently by the rover. Curiosity used its Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument to analyze the sample.
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This graphic shows results of the first …
A literal shot in the dark by imaging cameras on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has yielded an image of a visible glow from Titan, emanating not just from the top of Titan’s atmosphere, but also – surprisingly – from deep in the atmosphere through the moon’s haze. A person in a balloon in Titan’s haze layer wouldn’t see the glow because … Read the rest of this article
The cosmic cauldron has brewed up a Halloween trick in the form of a ghostly face that glows in X-rays, as seen by ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope. The eerie entity is a bubble bursting with the fiery stellar wind of a ‘live fast, die young’ star.
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A giant bubble blown by the massive Wolf-Rayet star HD 50896, the pink star …
The Sun Now (Visible light)
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The Sun Now (H-Alpha light)
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Aurora Oval
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Aurora Oval
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