Higgs discovery would open supersymmetry mystery. Side by side" by Tommy Eliassen. ESP_025985_2160.jpg (Image JPEG, 789x1282 pixels) - Redimensionnée (56%) Cold and Spellbinding: An Alignment of Planets in the Sunset Sky. Cold and Spellbinding: An Alignment of Planets in the Sunset Sky Feb. 17, 2012: Note to sky watchers: Put on your winter coats. What you’re about to read might make you feel an uncontrollable urge to dash outside. The brightest planets in the solar system are lining up in the evening sky, and you can see the formation—some of it at least—tonight. Go out at sunset and look west. Venus and Jupiter pop out of the twilight even before the sky fades completely black. If you go out at the same time tomorrow, the view improves, because Venus and Jupiter are converging.
A special night to look is Saturday, Feb. 25th, when the crescent Moon moves in to form a slender heavenly triangle with Venus, Jupiter and the Moon as vertices (sky map). After hopping from Venus to Jupiter in late February, the Moon exits stage left, but the show is far from over. There’s something mesmerizing about stars and planets bunched together in this way—and, no, you’re not imagining things when it happens to you. SOLARHAM.com / SOLARCYCLE 24.com / Solar Cycle 24 / Spaceweather / Amateur Radio VHF Aurora Website / Sunspots / Solar Flares. 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. 2016 April 15 Mercury and Crescent Moon Set Image Credit & Copyright: Miguel Claro (TWAN, Dark Sky Alqueva) Explanation: Innermost planet Mercury and a thin crescent Moon are never found far from the Sun in planet Earth's skies. Taken near dusk on April 8, this colorful evening skyscape shows them both setting toward the western horizon just after the Sun. Tomorrow's picture: Heliopause Electrostatic Rapid Transit System Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.NASA Web Privacy Policy and Important NoticesA service of:ASD at NASA / GSFC& Michigan Tech.
Dark Matter Found Lurking at Edges of Galaxies. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey is the gift that keeps on giving.
This ambitious project to map the night sky has been collecting data since 2000 and making it available to researchers all over the world. Now, Japanese scientists have used the data on 24 million galaxies to conduct a new computer simulation revealing how the mysterious dark matter might be distributed around those galaxies — even stretching into interstellar space. ANALYSIS: Milky Way Humming with Microwave Mystery. Multimedia - Video Gallery. Photopic Sky Survey. Starry Night (interactive animation)
Cold Snap Across Europe. Rare snowstorms in Rome and Tripoli and mounting death tolls from exposure were among the consequences of a severe cold snap in Europe in late January and early February 2012.
Meteorologist Jeff Masters described it as Europe’s worst stretch of cold weather since February 1991. This map above shows temperature anomalies for Europe and western Russia from January 25 to February 1, 2012, compared to temperatures for the same dates from 2001 to 2011. The anomalies are based on land surface temperatures observed by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. Areas with above-average temperatures appear in red and orange, and areas with below-average temperatures appear in shades of blue. Oceans and lakes appear in gray. Blue dominates this image, with most regions experiencing temperatures well below normal. Masters explains that the unusual cold is a product of the jet stream. ReferencesDr. Instrument(s): Terra - MODIS.