Yesterday was the weekly live video Space Roundup, run by Fraser Cain from Universe Today. This week we had Pamela Gay, Alan Boyle, Nicole Gugliucci, and Ian O’Neill. We talked about the solar storm, black holes, arsenic life, Newt Gingrich, Phobos-Grunt, and answered some questions from the listeners. Here’s the video:

We do these every week on Google+ at 18:00 UTC on Thursday. Come join us!

I have nothing to add to this, except to say it’s great, and I saw it because Brian Cox mentioned it on Twitter.

Oh yeah: one more thing; watch it in HD and full screen. Coooool.

In 2007, the European Space Agency probe passed by Mars on its way to visit a comet. It used Mars for a gravity assist to help it on its way, and got close enough to take some very detailed pictures (it also passed by the asteroid Lutetia and returned amazing shots; see the gallery at the bottom of this post). That data wasn’t initially released by the mission leader (that’s fairly common in some missions), but they were finally made available late last year. My pal Emily Lakdawalla from the Planetary Society Blog grabbed a bunch of them and put together some simply amazing pictures from them, including this jaw-dropper:

Yeah. You really want to click that to Barsoomenate it. Holy dry ice polar caps!

In fact, you should go over to her blog where she gives all the details and has more incredibly cool pictures of the Red Planet as well. I don’t want to spoil her fun by giving it all away here. Go!

Credit: ESA / MPS / UPD / LAM / IAA / RSSD / INTA / UPM / DASP / IDA / processed by Emily Lakdawalla

- Rosetta’s cometary goal now in sight
- Lutetia may have witnessed the birth of the Earth
- Curiosity on its way to Mars!

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The first supernova of the year was spotted a couple of weeks ago: Supernova 2012A, in the galaxy NGC 3239 in the constellation of Leo. Adam Block of the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter took a phenomenal image of it:

[Click to corecollapsenate.]

Funny, the supernova isn’t what you’d expect; it’s not that really bright star (which is probably a star in our own galaxy that happens to be superposed on the galaxy) but instead the fainter one indicated. Images taken years ago show no sign of the new star.

The galaxy is called NGC 3239 (or Arp 263), and is a weird galaxy technically classified as irregular. Its distance isn’t well known, but it’s something like 25 million light years away or so. I imagine we’ll get a better distance determination very soon, since that’s important in understanding how much energy a supernova puts out.

The shape of the galaxy is probably the result of the collision of two separate galaxies which are still in the process of merging. The odd shape is a consequence of that. The pinkish glow is from gas clouds actively forming stars, and the overall blue tinge is from massive, hot, young stars, again probably triggered by the galaxy collisions. In fact, SN 2012A is the type of supernova formed when a massive star explodes, and these are short-lived stars.

The supernova is bright enough to be spotted in amateur-astronomy sized telescopes, so it’s getting some attention, like here and here and here. Adam Block has access to a telescope nearly a meter across which is equipped with an excellent camera, so his image is spectacular. I love all the background galaxies as well; we’re looking well away from the obscuring dust and junk floating around in our own galaxy, as well as toward a part of the Universe littered with distant galaxies.

It used to be that only a few dozen supernovae were discovered in a year, so the first one of a new year may not have been found for some time. Supernova 1987A — which I studied for my PhD — was the first one in 1987 and it was seen in the third week of February! Now, with robotic telescopes sweeping the skies with exquisite sensitivity, it’s rare to go a whole week in the new year without discovering one. And this is a numbers game: the more supernovae we find, the better we can understand them.

Image credit: Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona, used with permission.

I was interviewed by Patt Morrison on NPR’s KPCC radio in Los Angeles today about the solar storm. It’s online for your listening pleasure, or you can grab the MP3 directly.

We talked about the event itself, how it was not nearly as strong as it was thought it would be (though still producing some aurorae and a bit of ground current in Sweden), what impacts it might have had, and what we can learn from things like this to protect ourselves in the future.

I really enjoyed this interview; Patt is knowledgeable and easy to talk to, and I hope I can be on the show in the future to talk about more astronomical events!

The solar storm that erupted from the Sun yesterday reached the Earth today at about 15:00 UTC (10:00 a.m. Eastern US time). The wave of subatomic particles has been impacting the Earth’s magnetic field, and we’re starting to see some auroral activity:

Isn’t that lovely? That was taken at 18:00 UTC today from a webcam in Abisko, Sweden. Can you see the handle of the Big Dipper right below the green curtain? [More aurora webcam sites are listed below.]

The two biggest questions I’m getting on Twitter and Google+ are 1) is there any danger to this storm, and b) can I see the aurora from [my location]?

First, no, we’re not in any danger from this event. Even though it sounds terrifying — an explosion the equivalent of billions of nuclear weapons launching hundreds of millions of tons of subatomic particles Earthward at speeds of million of kilometers per hour! — we’re pretty well protected down here on the surface. The Earth’s magnetic field catches the particles, and most of those get dumped harmlessly in our upper atmosphere. That can create the aurora displays, but won’t dose everyone with radiation and give them superpowers.

Sorry. [UPDATE (19:00 UTC): a ground current surge was reported in Sweden, but so far that's the only physical impact I've heard of.]

But the aurorae are pretty cool, and that brings us to the second question. The answer depends on where you are, and when it’s dark out. As I write this, activity is on the rise. Here are some live webcams for aurorae, some of which are showing spectacular activity! Note they only show views when it’s nighttime locally:

Lapland

Fairbanks, Alaska

Yellowknife, Canada

Tromso, Norway

As for seeing them wherever you are, that’s tough to say. The Geophysical Institute has a map showing predicted activity for North America, for example, and NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center has a continuously updated map showing auroral activity for both hemispheres. Universe Today has a guide on how to see the aurorae, and Astronomy magazine has a discussion of aurorae, too.

I’m getting conflicting info on potential aurorae tonight; the webcams in Scandinavia listed above are showing strong (and gorgeous) activity, but the prediction for Canada and the US appear moderate at best. But don’t let that discourage you! If you have clear skies, go outside once it’s good and dark and take a look. Even if there’s no aurora, you can see Venus and the thin crescent Moon to the west right after sunset, and that’s always a plus. And if things perk up, you might get a nice light show to the north, too!

Around 04:00 UTC on Monday morning, January 23, 2012, the Sun let loose a pretty big flare and coronal mass ejection. Although there have been bigger events in recent months, this one happened to line up in such a way that the blast of subatomic particles unleashed headed straight for Earth. It’s causing what may be the biggest space weather event in the past several years for Earth: people at high latitudes can expect lots of bright and beautiful aurorae.

I’ll explain what all that is in a second, but first here’s a video of what this looked like from NASA’s SOHO satellite.

Wow! Make sure you set it to high def.

So what happened here? The sunspot cluster called Active Region 11402 happened.

Sunspots are regions where the magnetic field lines of the Sun get tangled up. A vast amount of energy is stored in these lines, and if they get squeezed too much, they can release that energy all at once. When this happens, we call it a solar flare, and it can be mind-numbing: yesterday’s flare exploded with the energy of hundreds of millions of nuclear bombs!

In the image above, the sunspots are caught in mid-flare, seen in the far ultraviolet by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (it’s colored green to make it easier to see what’s what). We think of sunspots as being dark (see the image of AR 11402 below), but that’s only in visible light, the kind we see. In more energetic ultraviolet light, they are brilliant bright due to their magnetic activity.

A huge blast of subatomic particles was accelerated by the explosion. The first wave arrived within a few of hours of the light itself… meaning they were traveling at a significant fraction of the speed of light!

But shortly after the flare there was a coronal mass ejection: a larger scale but somewhat less intense event. This also launches particles into space, and these are aimed right at us. The bulk of the particles are traveling at slower speeds — a mere 2200 km/sec, or 5 million miles per hour — and is expected to hit us at 14:00 UTC Tuesday morning or so. That’s basically now as I write this! Those particles interact with Earth’s magnetic field in a complicated process that sends them sleeting down into our atmosphere. We’re in no real danger from this, but the particles can strip the electrons off of atoms high in the air, and when the electrons recombine the atoms glow excite the electrons in atoms high in the air, and when the electrons give up that energy the atoms glow. That’s what causes the aurorae — the northern and southern lights.

If you live in high latitudes you might be able to see quite the display when it’s dark — people in eastern Europe and Asia are favored for this, since this happens after sunset there. But the storm is big enough and will probably last long enough that everyone should check after dark: look north if you live in the northern hemisphere and south if you’re south of the Equator. There’s no way in advance to know just how big this will be; it might fizzle, or it might be possible to see it farther away from the poles than usual. Can’t hurt to look! Also, Universe Today has been collecting pictures of aurorae from the solar blast earlier this week. No doubt they’ll have more from this one as well.

Although big, this flare was classified by NASA as being about M9 class — powerful, but not as energetic as an X class flare. One of those popped off last September, and shortly after that a smaller M flare erupted, which also triggered a gorgeous plasma fountain called a filament on the Sun’s surface.

As I said, we’re in no real danger here on Earth, and Universe Today has a good article describing why the astronauts are probably not in danger on the space station, either. Even if this were larger storm, the astronauts can take shelter in more well-protected parts of the station, too. Bigger storms can hurt us even on Earth by inducing huge currents in power lines which can overload the grid. That does happen — it happened in Quebec in March of 1989 — and it may very well happen again as the Sun gets more active over the next few years. [UPDATE: a ground current surge from today's event was reported in Norway.]

But we should be OK from this one. If you can, get outside and look for the aurorae! I’ve never seen a good one, and I’m still hoping this solar cycle will let me see my first.

Image credit: NASA/SOHO; NASA/SDO