The sun is definitely hitting its usual ‘rebellious’ phase on its 11 year sunspot cycle, where it flares up at literally everything. The biggest sunspot observed in 24 years has been releasing huge amounts of energy, in the form of X-class solar flares. In the past week this sunspot, designated AR 12192, has released 3 X-class flares, including a huge X-3.1 on Friday. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has been watching the light show. Okay so the Sun is blowing up, what does all this mean? Let’s start with Sunspots. A sunspot is a place on the sun where there...
I’m sure a lot of us remember the stratospheric skydive of Felix Baumgartner two years ago (I know, I can’t believe it’s been two years either). It gathered a lot of media attention and the live webcast put on by Red Bull made it an amazing event. He jumped from a height of 39km, accelerating to a speed of 1,357 km/hr, breaking the sound barrier and a world record in the process. Well they say nothing lasts forever, and this record only lasted about two years, because on Friday, Alan Eustace jumped from 7000 ft higher, an altitude of 41.4 km, to...
Yesterday’s post had me discuss the partial Solar Eclipse that occurred around sunset for most of North America. The one thing I neglected to mention was regarding safe viewing of it. In reality if you saw the sun with your bare eyes during a partial eclipse, it looks like the sun any other time of day – its bright. Don’t damage your eyes. I found a bit of time in the afternoon to build a pinhole camera, which basically consists of a tube or box with a pinhole in one end and a film or ‘viewing area’ at the other...
Tonight, right around sunset, there will be a partial eclipse of the sun, visible from most of North America. As the sun sets, skywatchers will get to see the moon gradually cover about half of the sun, before it disappears below the horizon. A map of the viewing area shows that the best spot to see it will be all the way up in the Canadian arctic. If you don’t live in the Arctic circle, you can certainly see the eclipse in the South-West near the horizon as it sets. The moon will start to cover the sun around 5:45 EDT,...
When comets breakup it can be an emotional time for Astronomers, amateur and professional alike. Though not like a breakup with a significant other, we get our hopes up that the next comet will be a comet of the century. We do this because comets are very unpredictable, and any given close approach to Earth could be spectacular….or terrible. Comet ISON is about to pass behind the sun on November 28th, and could potentially break into pieces from the sun’s incredible tidal forces. In honour of a new potential breakup, here are the top 5 comet breakups in history: #5...
The finale of the Rubik’s cube challenge was on Sunday, and yielded some interesting results. To confirm, I did not look at an actual cube or picture of one between the start of the challenge last Wednesday, and the finale on Sunday. All I did was read the book on the cube solution. Before I reveal the results let me give you a rundown of what I had to do. To make it work required memorizing a lot of steps, and learning the notation used by the book. In the above picture, the top side (T) is yellow, the Front...
I have never, not once, in my life, solved or seriously attempted to solve a Rubik’s cube. I had all kinds of puzzles and games growing up, so I wasn’t deprived at all, it just never happened. I feel I was just past the generation that was introduced to the cube, and maybe a quick look as a kid convinced me it wasn’t worth the time. I also think that never seeing one in a store as a child was a factor, or maybe I was just into video games. While training for my new part time job this week...
Alpha Centauri. Not only is it an alien in Dr.who, a strategy game released in 1999, and an album released by the German electronic band tangerine dream, but it’s the brightest star in our closest stellar system. Named for being the brightest star in the constellation Centaurus in the southern sky, its a little over 4 light years away from Earth, and is very similar to our sun in terms of size, age, mass, composition, and temperature. Here is a great infographic from Space.com. Scientists have recently discovered that Alpha Centauri shares yet another resemblance to our home star: It has a strange, cooler...
