Sometimes it snows on Mars. In autumn, the snow is probably water ice, and in the depths of winter, when temperatures drop to -125 º C, it’s carbon dioxide snow. The atmosphere is thin and dry, and the temperature drops very fast after sunset, so the snow flakes are tiny, about 7 microns in diameter, like a human red blood cell. In fact, it’s a lot like the diamond ice…
The Starlight Initiative has officially recognised La Palma as a “Starlight destination“, meaning that the island has really starry skies and really good activities for tourists to enjoy those skies. Among other things, the auditors were impressed by La Palma’s growing number of hiking trails and viewpoints used for astrotourism, its archaeological sites connected with astronomy, the progress towards a visitor centre at the Roque de Los Muchachos, and the country cottages…
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…
I’m glad I woke up early today. These were taken from my balcony in Breña Baja at 6:30 am. For the top one I used a compact camera (Canan SX220) and tripod. For the bottom one, a Pentax DSLR (K 10D) and tripod. On La Palma, you can get results like this with very modest equipment and skill.
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….