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LIVING WITH A STAR:
What if you woke up one morning and found
your whole planet had been swallowed by the atmosphere of a star?
Don't laugh, it could happen to you, and NASA has a special program
to deal with it: full
story.
NEW SUNSPOTS: A
new sunspot is emerging near the sun's eastern limb. Pavol Rapavy
sends this picture from his backyard observatory in Rimavska Sobota,
Slovakia:
These spots aren't large, but they are noteworthy
as the first sunspots in more than a month. Moreover, they are growing
rapidly, offering an opportunity for onlookers to witness sunspot
genesis in action. If you have a solar
telescope, take a look.
more images: from
Pete Lawrence of Selsey, West Sussex, UK
OZONE FRINGE: When
you think of a lunar eclipse, the color that comes to mind is red.
The core of Earth's shadow is reddened by atmospheric scattering,
and when that shadow falls across the Moon, the lunar landscape
turns as red as a sunset. Yet telescopic observers of the Aug. 16th
lunar eclipse saw another hue--turquoise:
This photo, taken by Theodoros Jiaourtsis of Nea Moudania, Greece,
using an 8-inch telescope and a Canon 350D digital camera, shows
how the inner red shadow has a pale blue-green circumference.
The source of the turquoise is ozone. Eclipse researcher Dr. Richard
Keen of the University of Colorado explains: "Most of the light
illuminating the moon passes through the stratosphere, and is reddened
by scattering. However, light passing through the upper stratosphere
penetrates the ozone layer, which absorbs red light and actually
makes the passing light ray bluer!" This can be seen, he says,
as a turquoise fringe around the red.
Browse the gallery for more ozone:
Aug.
16th Lunar Eclipse Gallery
[Interactive
Eclipse Map]
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