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THE MOON &
JUPITER: When the sun rises
on Sunday morning, look out a south-facing window. The moon
and Jupiter are having a lovely close encounter. The pair are
so bright, they're visible even after the sky turns
morning-blue: sky
map.
SATURN'S
RINGS: Saturn's rings are
vanishing! No need to panic, it's happened
before. As Saturn goes around the sun, it occasionally
turns its rings edge-on to Earth. Because the rings are so
thin, they disappear when viewed through a small
telescope.
The next "ring plane crossing" isn't due until 2009.
Already, though, we can see the process at work. Witness this
3-year animation assembled by Alan Friedman from
pictures he has taken from his backyard in Buffalo, New York,
between 2004 and 2006:
Animation credit:
Alan Friedman and Richard Bosman
In the years ahead, Saturn's rings will become thinner
and thinner until, on Sept. 4, 2009, they will briefly
disappear. When this happened to Galileo in 1612, he
temporarily abandoned his study of the planet. Big mistake:
ring plane crossings are good times to discover new
moons and faint outer rings.
SUNSPOTS: Finally, a
sunspot! Or is that just a passing seagull?
Correct answer: seagull. Mila Zinkova snapped the
picture yesterday from the San Francisco bay in
California.
At this low
ebb of the solar cycle, the only big spots on the sun are
seagulls, airplanes and clouds. That doesn't mean, however,
that solar activity is nil. Amateur astronomers using H-alpha
telescopes have been monitoring some beautiful prominences
dancing along the sun's limb, such as this
one photographed on March 17th by Didier Favre of
Brétigny sur Orge, France. "The sun is not so quiet!" says
Favre.