On March 3, 2021, the red planet Mars and Pleiades star cluster in Taurus will appear close together on the sky’s dome. The two won’t get this close again until 2038! See photos of the big event. Source: https://earthsky.org/todays-image/mars-pleiades-march-3-2021-conjunction-photographs…
Tag: auroras
Scientists image a bright meteoroid explosion in Jupiter’s atmosphere
From aboard the Juno spacecraft, a Southwest Research Institute-led instrument observing auroras serendipitously spotted a bright flash above Jupiter’s clouds last spring. The Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) team studied the data and determined that they had captured a bolide, an extremely bright meteoroid explosion in the gas giant’s upper atmosphere. Source: https://phys.org/news/2021-02-scientists-image-bright-meteoroid-explosion.html…
Upheaval and extinctions linked to magnetic reversal 42,000 years ago
42,000 years ago, a breakdown in Earth’s magnetic field led to environmental catastrophes and mass extinctions. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/magnetic-field-reversal-42000-years-ago-neanderthal-extinction…
The myths behind the southern and northern lights
For millennia, humans have viewed the northern and southern lights – aurora borealis and aurora australis – and created myths and folklore to explain the dancing lights they saw in the sky. Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/legends-folklore-myths-northern-southern-lights-auroras…
What are coronal mass ejections?
Coronal mass ejections – CMEs for short – are powerful eruptions near the surface of the sun that can ripple through our solar system and can interrupt satellites and power grids on Earth. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/what-are-coronal-mass-ejections…
Rosetta’s ‘rubber ducky’ comet has ultraviolet auroras
Planets aren’t the only things in the solar system with auroras. Comets can have them too, data from the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission has revealed. Source: https://www.livescience.com/comet-67p-has-ultraviolet-auroras.html
Aurora mysteries unlocked with NASA’s THEMIS mission
A special type of aurora, draped east-west across the night sky like a glowing pearl necklace, is helping scientists better understand the science of auroras and their powerful drivers out in space. Known as auroral beads, these lights often show up just before large auroral displays, which are caused by electrical storms in space called substorms. Previously, scientists weren’t sure if…
Juno’s new images reveal Ganymede’s north pole
These are the first spacecraft images yet acquired of the north pole of Ganymede, largest moon of the giant planet Jupiter. NASA’s Juno spacecraft – now orbiting Jupiter – obtained them. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/ganymede-north-pole-infrared-images-juno-spacecraft-jupiter…
The North Poles of Jupiter’s Moon Ganymede Probed by NASA Spacecraft
“NASA’s Juno Jupiter probe has captured unprecedented views of the largest moon in the solar system,” reports Space.com:
During a close flyby of Jupiter on Dec. 26, 2019, Juno mapped the north polar regions of the icy satellite Ganymede in infrared light, something no other spacecraft had done before. The data, which Juno gathered using its Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument,…
Using radio waves to discover and study exoplanets
A new study from researchers in the Netherlands shows how scientists can detect exoplanets orbiting red dwarf stars, and learn about their environments, from the radio waves generated by auroras on those worlds. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/exoplanets-red-dwarfs-radio-waves-auroras…