SPACEWEATHER.COM NEWS: JUNE 15, 2024
A POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS SUNSPOT: New sunspot AR3712 has increased in size 10-fold in the past 48 hours: movie. The fast-growing active region has a mixed-polarity magnetic field that harbors energy for X-class solar flares. Any such eruptions this weekend will be geoeffective as the sunspot is turning to directly face Earth.
May 23, 2024 – Full Flower Moon, MoonGiant.com
May is most notable for being the turning point in the year where temperatures rise and a vast variety of flowers come into full bloom, letting the world break out into a riot of color. As such, May’s full moon has come to be known as the Full Flower Moon. The Anishnaabe tribe also called it the Blossom Moon. In Northern America, you can expect to see flowers such as bluebells, sundrops, violets, and so on, as well as lush greenery to go with the blossoms. The Apache and Lakota peoples named May’s full moon the Green Leaves Moon, while the Mohawk tribe called it the Big Leaf Moon. But there is one specific plant that’s very important during the May season – and it is, in fact, not a flower.
This plant is corn, an important staple food for Northern American peoples. According to the Algonquin tribes, May’s full moon is the Corn Planting Moon. (SOURCE: MoonGiant.com)
SPACEWEATHER.COM: APRIL 22, 2024
RAPID-FIRE PLASMA JETS: Sunspot complex AR3638-47 has been in a almost-constant state of eruption for days. This animation from earlier today shows multiple jets of plasma shooting into space in only a few hours:
M3.4-class solar flare from Sunspot AR3638
SPACEWEATHER.COM NEWS: APRIL 22, 2024
THIS SUNSPOT CAN’T SHOOT STRAIGHT: Over the weekend, giant sunspot complex AR3638-47 hurled at least 6 CMEs into space–all of them heading just south of Earth. NASA models forecast near-miss after near-miss. Finally, however, an explosion occurred that may be Earth directed:
Lyrids Meteor Shower (Source: StarWalk.com)
When to watch in 2024
The optimal viewing window spans from late evening on April 21 to dawn on April 22. According to the International Meteor Organization, the peak is expected on April 22, 2024, at 07:00 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Remember to convert this time to your local time zone.
Moon phase in 2024
Unfortunately, this year, the peak occurs only two days before the Full Moon, so the bright moonlight will certainly hide most meteors from the view. Try to block the moonlight with the trees. Read the other viewing tips below.
Comet P12 Pons/Brooks Taken by MaryBeth Kiczenski on April 1, 2024 @ Eagle Harbor, MI (Source: Spaceweather.com Realtime Image Gallery) “I could see it naked eye once my eyes adjusted–but barely!” she says. “My camera had no trouble, though. This is a stack of 20 images, 30-seconds each.” Comet 12P is approaching the sun for a close encounter later this month. Its increasing brightness and proximity to the sun means it might be visible from the path of totality during the April 8th solar eclipse. Photos of a comet inside the Moon’s shadow are very rare! A tip for eclipse photographers: Take two cameras–one for the sun, and another for Comet 12P. You might be glad you did.
SPACEWEATHER.COM NEWS: APRIL 4, 2024
THE ‘DEVIL COMET’ IS NOW A NAKED-EYE OBJECT: Suddenly, amateur astronomers are seeing a naked-eye comet in the evening sky. It’s Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks, also known as the ‘devil comet‘. Waiting for next Monday’s solar eclipse in Mexico, Petr Horálek photographed the comet last night and found it much brighter than the last time he saw it.
SPACEWEATHER.COM NEWS: March 10, 2024, (Updated)
A SNEAKY-DANGEROUS SUNSPOT: Sunspot AR3599 doesn’t look dangerous. It is relatively small and has a simple, bipolar morphology–two factors which usually add up to “harmless.” Yet today (March 10 @ 1213 UT), it produced a strong M7-class solar flare.
SOLAR EXPLOSION TARGETS MERCURY: A huge magnetic filament erupted from the farside of the sun on March 9-10. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured only a fragment of the 500,000 km-wide blast.
2024 BX1: Asteroid burns over Berlin, Germany; this is how it illuminated the night sky ADN40 (MX)
A SMALL ASTEROID JUST HIT EARTH: During the late hours of Jan. 20th, Hungarian astronomer Krisztián Sárneczky discovered a new asteroid. Three hours later it hit Earth, disintegrating in the atmosphere not far from Berlin (Jan. 24 @ 00:33 UT). The meter-wide space rock, since named 2024 BX1, is thought to have been completely destroyed. Amazingly, Italian astronomer Luca Buzzi managed to photograph it just before it hit.
