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The Orionid meteor shower is over, as Earth has finally left the wide stream of debris produced by Comet Halley. However, we are now encountering particles produced by Comet Encke, the second comet to be assigned a name (Halley was the first). This debris wake is much larger, lasting many weeks, causing the Taurid complex …
The colors of emitted light within an aurora depend on the initial energy of the charged particles (mostly electrons) cascading into Earth’s atmosphere. Electrons with higher initial energies are able to penetrate deeper into the atmosphere, whereas those with lower initial energies lose all their energy at higher altitudes. The blue aurora emitted from low-altitude …
MSFC’s all sky meteor camera recorded this bright meteor last night (November 1st) at 9:04 pm CDT. Blazing across the sky at 40 miles per second (144,000 mph), the 1 inch visitor from space took only 3.3 seconds to go 132 miles, starting at a point just northeast of Athens, Alabama and burning up west …
On Oct. 24, 2011, the Northern Lights glowed over North Alabama, visible even though the skies were bright from city lights. Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, are unusual so far south — the colorful, 20-minute display was a rare sighting caused by a recent solar storm. This video was captured by the color allsky camera at …
A meteor and the barred spiral galaxy NGC-2903 grace the top of this October 14 image of an area of space near the head of the constellation Leo. The meteor and the galaxy were purely coincidental, as it is what is not visible in the image that is important. Two telescopes operated by astronomers at …
On the night of Oct. 15-16, NASA’s All-sky camera network saw meteors from five different meteor showers! October is known to be a busy month in the world of meteor showers, but even five is an unusually high number. The last meteor seen in the early morning skies over Huntsville, Ala., on the night of …
A new color all-sky camera has opened its eyes at the ALaMO, or Automated Lunar and Meteor Observatory, at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Watch its inaugural video below, showing sunset fade into evening at the Marshall Center on Oct. 5, 2011. The time-lapse video spans about 2:28 hours, and the Moon is …
A wide field meteor camera at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center recorded this spectacular meteor breaking up in Earth’s atmosphere on Sept. 30, 2011, 8:37 p.m. EDT. Also visible is a star-like object moving slowly toward the upper middle of the field of view — the upper stage of the Zenit booster that launched the …
Our new telescope in New Mexico — we call it MUT, or Multi-Use Telescope. It can see the explosion flashes caused by meteoroids hitting the moon, measure dust coming off comets, see meteors in the atmosphere, and track satellites/space junk. MUT also takes nice pictures! Test image with the MUT telescope we just set up in …
