duminică, 14 august 2011

PERSEID METEORS

 The Perseid meteor shower is peaking this weekend as Earth passes through a stream of debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle. Observers from the International Meteor Organization report rates as high as 60 Perseids per hour. That sounds like a good show; in fact, bright moonlight is making many of the meteors difficult to see. Casual observers are experiencing an off-year for the Perseids.
Moonlight was no problem for Stan Nelson of Roswell, New Mexico, who spent peak-night listening to the shower. Nelson monitors the US Air Force Space Surveillance Radar in Texas for echoes of meteors passing over the facility. He recorded this specimen ping at 9:30 am MDT on Aug. 13th.





marți, 28 iunie 2011

Strange Magnetic Bubbles at the Edge of the Solar System

duminică, 22 mai 2011

Super Storm on Saturn

May 19, 2011:  NASA's Cassini spacecraft and a European Southern Observatory ground-based telescope are tracking the growth of a giant early-spring storm in Saturn's northern hemisphere so powerful that it stretches around the entire planet. The rare storm has been wreaking havoc for months and shooting plumes of gas high into the planet's atmosphere.
Super Storm on Saturn (storm, 200px)
This false-color infrared image shows clouds of large ammonia ice particles dredged up by the powerful storm. Credit: Cassini. [more]
"Nothing on Earth comes close to this powerful storm," says Leigh Fletcher, a Cassini team scientist at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, and lead author of a study that appeared in this week's edition of Science Magazine. "A storm like this is rare. This is only the sixth one to be recorded since 1876, and the last was way back in 1990."
Cassini's radio and plasma wave science instrument first detected the large disturbance in December 2010, and amateur astronomers have been watching it ever since through backyard telescopes.  As it rapidly expanded, the storm's core developed into a giant, powerful thunderstorm, producing a 3,000-mile-wide (5,000-kilometer-wide) dark vortex possibly similar to Jupiter's Great Red Spot.
This is the first major storm on Saturn observed by an orbiting spacecraft and studied at thermal infrared wavelengths.  Infrared observations are key because heat tells researchers a great deal about conditions inside the storm, including temperatures, winds, and atmospheric composition. Temperature data were provided by the Very Large Telescope (VLT) on Cerro Paranal in Chile and Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer (CIRS), operated by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
"Our new observations show that the storm had a major effect on the atmosphere, transporting energy and material over great distances -- creating meandering jet streams and forming giant vortices -- and disrupting Saturn's seasonal [weather patterns]," said Glenn Orton, a paper co-author, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
The violence of the storm -- the strongest disturbances ever detected in Saturn's stratosphere -- took researchers by surprise. What started as an ordinary disturbance deep in Saturn's atmosphere punched through the planet's serene cloud cover to roil the high layer known as the stratosphere.

joi, 6 ianuarie 2011

Filme la maximum eclipsei din 4 januarie 2011

Pun inca odata filmele, separat de poze de data asta. A se vedea postarile anteioare.
Atentie, ora care apere setata pe aparat e 2010 (din inertie)!


marți, 4 ianuarie 2011

Poze - eclipsa de Soare din 4 ianuarie 2011

Cateva poze si filme (facute cu un aparat foto oarecare). Data e 2011.01.04, evident si nu 2010, cum gresit a fost setat aparatul. E evident pentru simplul fapt ca pe 4 ianuarie 2010 nu a fost nici o eclipsa.
























Si doua filme facute in jurul momentului de maxim.

sâmbătă, 1 ianuarie 2011

Eclipsa de Soare din 4 ianuarie 2011

Prima eclipsă de soare a anului 2011 are loc la nodul ascendent al Lunii in Sagetator est. O eclipsa partiala va fi vizibila in mare parte din Europa, Africa de Nord şi Asia Centrală.
Penumbra atinge suprafata Pamantului intai in nordul Algeriei, la 06:40:11 UT. Europa de Vest va fi sub o eclipsa partiala de la răsăritul soarelui. Eclipsa va avea amploarea urmatoare in oraşele europene:  Madrid (0.576), Paris (0.732), Londra (0.747), şi Copenhaga (0.826).
Cea mai mare eclipsa apare la 08:50:35 UT in nordul Suediei, unde la orizont  va avea o magnitudine de 0.858. La acel moment, axa umbrei Lunii va trece doar 510 km deasupra suprafetei Pamantului. Cele mai multe din nordul Africii, Orientul Mijlociu şi Asia Centrală se află, de asemenea, în calea lui penumbrei astfel: Cairo (0.551), Ierusalim (0.574), Istanbul (0.713), şi Teheran (0.507).
Un apus de soare in eclipsa va fi vizibil din centrul Rusiei, Kazahstan, Mongolia şi nord-vestul Chinei. Eclipsa partiala se termină  la 11:00:54 UT. 
La Bucuresti, eclipsa partiala incepe la 09:08:11 , are faza maxima la 10:35:28 , si se incheie la 12:08:58 (timp local). Eclipsa va avea magnitudinea 0.753 la Bucuresti.
Urmatoarea eclipsa de Soare (partiala) vizibila la Bucuresti va fi pe 20 martie 2015.
Aceasta eclipsa face parte din ciclul Saros 151. Eclipsele din Saros 151  au loc toate la nodul ascendent al Lunii şi Luna se mişcă spre sud cu fiecare eclipsa. Seria a început cu o eclipsa partiala in emisfera nordica pe 14 august 1776. Seria se va încheia cu o eclipsa partiala in emisfera sudica pe 01 octombrie 3056. Durata totală a seriei Saros 151 este de 1280.14 ani.

Poza de mai jos este a inelului de diamant de la eclipsa totala de Soare din 29 martie 2006, din Turcia. In Romania a fost eclipsa partiana de Soare.