SOLAR CYCLE #24 BEGINS!

Emerald Comet Tuttle has a close encounter with spiral galaxy M33!

Is an asteroid heading toward Mars?  See JPL’s site.

Saturn’s rings may be old-timers!  See current JPL photo from Cassini spacecraft!

Saturn may not have ears, but Tethys certainly looks like it has a frozen eyeball. GG

Farewell to Fading Sunspot and Geminid Meteors!

METEOR WATCH! The annual Geminid meteor shower is underway!

AURORA WATCH: A solar wind stream is buffeting Earth’s magnetosphere and causing high-latitude geomagnetic storms– and some ghostly apparitions.

Blood red and saffron orange vapors often rise from the earth and reflect the light of the sun. Occasionally in the middle of the night they light up the sky so much that more light is shed on the earth than at twilight. I have seen this many times in Venice, when the air so much brighter to the North. This produces a marvelous effect where the northerly roads are illumined on both sides, while houses were not even casting shadows on the ground. This great light comes from nearly a quarter part of the heaven.  GG

Large sunspot continues to grow to six times the width of the earth!

(Eppur si muove!  Can you imagine a massive black blemish which changes its shape and size as it moves across the incorruptible sun?  Heaven forbid!!  What are the Aristotelians to think?)

A GIANT SUNSPOT– five times the width of our earth is now observable (with proper filters) near the eastern limb of the sun!

(They who depend upon manifest observations will philosophize better than those who persist in opinions repugnant to the senses. One should not be surprised to see the Peripatetics put a forth some grand effort to maintain the immutability of the heavens!)

COMET HOLMES NOW LOOKS LIKE A JELLYFISH!  And to think they made fun of me for saying that Saturn has ears!  (Actually, it was the Pope who said that–they merely appeared to me as handle-like appendages on wine jug.)