The Perseids are usually the best meteor shower of the year. The peak will be on Sunday, with perhaps as many as 100 shooting stars per hour (although any meteor shower is best after midnight). In Spain, this shower is known as las lagrimas de San Lorenzo (the tears of St Lawrence) because it happens near the feast day of St. Lawrence the martyr. Fuencaliente town hall and island’s government…
This evening will be the solstice, when the sun appears at its farthest north in the sky. For the northern hemisphere, it’s the longest day of the year. (And for the southern hemisphere, it’s the longest night of the year.) Cielos La Palma will be holding an activity on Wednesday 20th in El Paso, at the archeological site “El Verde”, which many believe was created to enable Awara observers to…
Thierry Legault is a Frenchman who travelled to Queensland, Australia for the Venus transit. He captured both Venus and the Hubble Space Telescope as they passed in front of the sun. This is a composite photograph – 9 exposures taken in under a second, during which the HST zipped in front of the sun. I’m not going to steal his photo. You can see it at: http://legault.perso.sfr.fr/venus_hst_transit.html I’m jealous.
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded this video in ultraviolet ( a wavelength of 171 angstroms.) It shows Venus passing in front of the sun, and also very large coronal loops, which are found around sunspots and in active regions. These structures are associated with the closed magnetic field lines that connect magnetic regions on the solar surface. Many coronal loops last for days or weeks but most change quite rapidly….
If you live somewhere where you can see part or all of the transit, -I hope the clouds stay away for you. REMEMBER NOT TO LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN. If you’re on the wrong part of the planet (like me) or unlucky with the weather, here’s some places to watch it live on the Internet for free. Slooh.com will be broadcasting ten feeds of the Venus transit live from…
On on 5 and 6 June 2012, the planet Venus will pass in front of the sun in what’s called a transit. The last one took place in June 2004, and the next one won’t happen until December 2117. If you’re in the USA or Canada, the transit will be in progress at your sunset on June 5th. If you’re in the UK or Germany or North-east Spain, the transit will…