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From: PF

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Sent: Saturday, March 21, 2009 2:12 PM

 

Space Weather News for March 21, 2009

http://spaceweather.com

Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive

ISS GETS NEW WINGS: The International Space Station's solar arrays are the largest deployable space assemblies ever built. Yesterday, astronauts unfurled a pair on the starboard side of the outpost, adding more than 8000 sq. feet of light-collecting surface area to the station's profile. Hours after the new wings were deployed, the ISS flew over Europe where amateur astronomers photographed the changes.  Their movies and photos are featured on today's edition of http://spaceweather.com.

SOLAR CONJUNCTION OF JUPITER'S MOONS:  Another must-see movie comes from NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft.  On March 15th and 16th, the solar observatory watched Jupiter and its moons converge on the sun just as a coronal mass ejection was exploding "overhead."  Visit http://spaceweather.com for footage.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2009 March 21

Fermi's Gamma-Ray Sky

Credit: NASA, DOE, Fermi LAT Collaboration

Explanation: Scanning the entire sky in gamma-rays, photons with over 50 million times the energy of visible light, the Fermi mission's Large Area Telescope (LAT) explores the high-energy universe. This all-sky map constructed from 3 months of LAT observations (August 4 to October 30, 2008) represents a deeper, better-resolved view of the gamma-ray sky than any previous space mission. What shines in Fermi's gamma-ray sky? A new paper describes the 205 brightest gamma-ray sources, but this map highlights a Fermi "top ten" list of five sources within, and five sources that lie beyond our Milky Way Galaxy. Within our galaxy: the Sun traces a faint arc across the map between the observation dates, LSI +61 303 is an X-ray binary star about 6,500 light-years away, PSR J1836+5925 is a type of pulsar (spinning neutron star) that is only seen to pulse at gamma-ray energies, and 47 Tuc is a globular star cluster some 15,000 light-years away. A fifth galactic

source (unidentified)

, just above the center of the galactic plane, is intriguing because it is a variable source and has no clear counterpart at other wavelengths. Beyond our galaxy: NGC 1275 is a large galaxy at the heart of the Perseus galaxy cluster some 233 million light-years away, while 3C 454.3, PKS 1502+106, and PKS 0727-115 are active galaxies billions of light-years distant. Another unidentified source, seen below the galactic plane, is likely beyond the boundaries of the Milky Way. Its nature remains a mystery.

digg_url = 'http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090321.html'; digg_skin = 'compact';

March 2009 Aurora Gallery

[previous Marches: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002]

Comet Lulin Photo Gallery

[Comet Hunter Telescope: review] [Comet Lulin finder chart]

Explore the Sunspot Cycle

 

Subject: [WETHEPEOPLE_UNITED] APOD