The other day I mentioned that the Sun had a hiccup, and this might produce aurorae.
It did! Pictures are popping up all over the web, and a good place to start is SpaceWeather’s gallery.
This might cheer up the folks who are fretting over PZ’s apparent win… but the votes haven’t been tallied completely yet, and that last minute surge for the squiddies is a mite suspicious. So I’m not conceding just yet.
Tip o’ the van Allen belt to Astroblog for the aurorae notice.
If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
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"Reading this book is like getting punched in the face by Carl Sagan. Frightening, but oddly exhilarating."
-- Daniel H. Wilson, author of How to Survive a Robot Uprising
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December 16th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Cool to see them aurorae. Too bad I couldn’t see any of them, or the Geminids.
As for the voting thing Phil, I say hope for the best, but expect the worst.
December 16th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
Well, you can pencil your concession speech now. If you don’t need it, you can do what Danny Partridge once did to an unneeded speech: erase it (so you can use the paper another day). Or was that Keith?
December 16th, 2006 at 2:14 pm
Oops! Sorry about that run-on link! My bad!
December 16th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
If the winner ever posts conservative-flavoured editorials, you should sue for a recount, pronto.
December 16th, 2006 at 4:03 pm
BA Whistling in the dark again
Squiddy beat us
December 16th, 2006 at 4:57 pm
i’m sorry, i was going to vote for you, but when when you showed us dr.evil’s cute transgenic kittens i couldn’t resist. Me Want!
Now i’m in thrall to the molluscmeister. aaaaiieee!
December 16th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
Nuts! Proof positive that it really was our sky brightness that was keeping us from seeing the aurorae. Those are neat pictures!
December 16th, 2006 at 5:02 pm
One of those photographers in the Spaceweather gallery is Mike Hollingshead whose tornado images have travelled across the Web. He posted a page of the auroras in Nebraska - one down the page is especially notable as he captured a Geminid meteor streak above the colorful aurora. Very pretty. You can see his aurora images here. (Plus he has great tornado and lightning pics, too.)
As far as the web log contest…well, as a voter I’m willing to concede that Pharyngula came out #1. But the silver lining is that a blog with the tagline, “Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal” won. As an atheist, I especially appreciate PZ Myers’s ruminations on all things biological and then some (as well as the quality of most of his commenters). I haven’t figured out how he posts so prolifically, reads so much, and manages to be a professor, father, etc. as well. I think he really might be an octopus.
But, The Naked Astronomer is still our hero. (-8~
(Oh, and at least Little Green Footballs didn’t win after all.)
December 16th, 2006 at 5:11 pm
I ask again: will phil have to appear in front of those 800 people naked? Can we have a public poll on this question:)?
*votes yes*
December 16th, 2006 at 5:17 pm
FWIW, BABBlog has gained one vote. Was 229 behind, now 228. GO BA!
December 16th, 2006 at 6:26 pm
Squiddies and octopi have a lot of hanging and dangling things… Could chads be among them? I think I’ll go out an’ get squiffy!
December 16th, 2006 at 11:29 pm
“Hiccup”? Ooops, I told my boyt hat the sun had farted. He is at the age where a coronal mass ejection is better explained as a sun-fart.
December 17th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
Does anyone know if any pictures were taken in the southern hemisphere? I went out to look myself, but it was overcast in eastern Australia. Oh well, one day I’ll get to see one.
December 17th, 2006 at 5:14 pm
Another excellent real time source of sun information, intended primarily for radio use, is Propagation. The site continually aggregates information from several sources and updates the extensive page text and graphs.
December 18th, 2006 at 9:34 am
Here’s a picture of last Thursday’s aurora as seen in Iowa (thanks to NASA’s picture of the day).
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061218.html
December 18th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
Dang, I keep forgetting I have a Digital camera now. My daughter sent me the same type my son uses on his scuba dives. It’s a Canon SD600, 6 MegaPixel camera. I guess I need a tripod and to learn to use the time delay. Maybe if I succeed in getting some cool night sky pics they can be posted somewhere? Something else I need to learn about,,,
Gary 7
December 19th, 2006 at 12:38 am
At one point during Thursday’s spacewalk, the astronauts were discussing the aurora below them. Fugelsang, who is from Stockholm, said he had never seen one before (I think due to light pollution, but it was hard to hear everything they said.) Then one of them (Curbeam, I think) mentioned seeing a meteor below him. I think they were discussing the Geminid shower, but I’m not sure if he saw it as he spoke, or earlier in the EVA or on a previous EVA. I think the sun rose at that point and they went back to work…