Comet Lulin (C/2007 N3), discovered in 2007 by a collaborative team of Taiwanese and Chinese astronomers, is swinging around the sun and approaching Earth. The photogenic comet has a bright tail and an "anti-tail" visible in mid-sized backyard telescopes. This comet will pass 0.41 AU from Earth on 24February 2009, At closest approach , Comet Lulin is expected to brighten to naked-eye visibility.For the second time this week, a sunspot is coalescing on the surface of the sun. The spot's high latitude and magnetic polarity identify it as a member of new Solar Cycle 24; its appearance continues a recent trend of gradually intensifying new-cycle solar activity. The spot is growing rapidly and may soon provide a nice target for backyard solar telescopes.
This weekend's full Moon is the biggest and brightest of 2009. It's a "perigee Moon" as much as 50,000 km closer to Earth than other full Moons we'll see later this year. Perigee moonlight shining through icy winter air can produce beautiful halos, coronas, moondogs and other atmospheric optics phenomena.
If you are lucky you will have a spectacular moon this weekend. If you are like me and expecting snow all weekend, you will miss it. But you can catch some of the action at SpaceWeather.com, a great place to find out more about the sky above us.
5 comments:
Yesterday we had sunshine and temps in the 60's. Last night we had winds around 40+mph and this morning 24 deg. with windchill of about 10 deg. So it goes in my part of the country.
No cloud cover so I'll check the moon tonight.
Dear author,
My name is Gin Shao. I am an editor for science monthly magazine in Taiwan, which is published in Chinese. We are about to publish an article about comet lulin, and your photo on this website is really eye-catching. Would you please offer us the file so we can publish and share it with our readers?
Sincerely,
Gin
I wish I did own the picture of the comet, but I found it on-line a year ago. I use this generic picture of a comet when posting about comets that can be seen with the naked eye or a simple telescope.
You might be able to find a decent picture of Comet Lulin at SpaceWeather.com
They have many pictures of Comet Lulin linked to their site.
I hope this has been helpful.
Thank you so much, I'll be checking it.
If not too much trouble, please forward info that may help us find the pitcure.
Thank you again.
Gin
I do believe that this is the addy in which I found the picture:
http://wmatem.eis.uva.es/.../comets/comet-west.gif
I hope that it helps.
Post a Comment