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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. 2002 October 15 Aurora's Ring Credit & Copyright: Trygve Lindersen Explanation: Gusting solar winds and blasts of charged particles from the Sun made the early days of October rewarding ones for those anticipating auroras. While out enjoying the stormy space weather from Toemmeraas, Norway, Trygve Lindersen recorded this picturesque apparition of the northern lights with a digital camera on October 6. From this perspective, the curtains of green...

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. 2002 August 18 Earth's North Magnetic Pole Credit: NOAA Explanation: A magnetic compass does not point toward the true North Pole of the Earth. Rather, it more closely points toward the North Magnetic Pole of the Earth. The North Magnetic Pole is currently located in northern Canada. It wanders in an elliptical path each day, and moves, on the average, more than forty meters northward each day. Evidence...

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. 2002 August 1 Sunspots and Solar Active Regions Credit & Copyright: Fred Espenak (courtesy of www.MrEclipse.com) Explanation: July was a good month for sunspots ... really big sunspots. In fact, the full disk and inset pictures above show three large groups of spots, photographed only a few days ago on July 28. Together the sunspots span a region about thirty times the diameter of planet Earth. Now rotating...

Mounties could use wood to combat G8 cyber-terror Japanese magnetic wood blocks radio signalsBy Tony Dennis, 27/06/2002 12:24:52 BST AS THE INQ recently reported, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police monitoring the G8 summit had to be granted special permission to jam the airwaves thereby preventing terrorists from using radio signals to remotely explode devices. That's because radio jammers are illegal in certain countries including North America, Britain and Australia. However, a Japanese scientist, Hideo Oka and his team from Iwate University in Morioka, Japan, has developed a special magnetic wood that can effectively block common radio signals. According to a...

Vostok: The Lake of ShadowsCover Story FATE Magazine 2002-06-01 00:00:00 by Scott Corrales “Doubt of the real facts, as I must reveal them, is inevitable; yet if I suppressed what will seem extravagant and incredible there would be nothing left.” —H. P. Lovecraft, “At the Mountains of Madness” The inspiration for this article began in the summer of 1996, when a series of email messages began to appear suggesting the possibility that “someone” or “something” was surreptitiously removing all recent maps of Antarctica. The notion was so outrageous that even die-hard conspiracy theorists found themselves having to clarify the...

Date: Posted 6/7/2002 100,000-Year Climate Pattern Linked To Sun's Magnetic Cycles HANOVER, N.H. – Thanks to new calculations by a Dartmouth geochemist, scientists are now looking at the earth's climate history in a new light. Mukul Sharma, Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences at Dartmouth, examined existing sets of geophysical data and noticed something remarkable: the sun's magnetic activity is varying in 100,000-year cycles, a much longer time span than previously thought, and this solar activity, in turn, may likely cause the 100,000-year climate cycles on earth. This research helps scientists understand past climate trends and prepare for future ones. Published...

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. 2002 May 16 Double Trouble Solar Bubbles Credit: SOHO Consortium, LASCO, EIT ESA, NASA Explanation: During April and May, attention has been focused on the western evening sky, presenting its spectacle of bright planets and crescent moons shortly after sunset. Meanwhile, the Sun itself has not been just sinking quietly below the horizon. For example on May 2nd, two enormous clouds of energetic particles blasted away from the...

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. 2002 March 21 S is for Sun Credit: SOHO - EIT Consortium, ESA, NASA Explanation: Taken yesterday from the SOHO spacecraft, this false-color image shows the active Sun near the March Equinox, the beginning of Fall in the south and Spring in the northern hemisphere. Recorded in a band of extreme ultraviolet light emitted by highly ionized iron atoms, the Sun's upper atmosphere or solar corona shines with...

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. 2002 March 20 Aurora Over Antarctica Credit & Copyright: Robert Schwarz (U. Wisconsin) Explanation: Looking out from the bottom of the world, strange and spectacular sights are sometimes observed. Such was the case during the long Antarctic night of 1998, as awesome aurora sub-storms were photographed above scientific outposts. Visible in the left foreground of the above photograph is the Martin A. Pomerantz Observatory while the now defunct...

Wandering pole: Scientists predict Mag North will leave our territory by 2005 When Scene in the Northwest, a painting by the explorer and artist Paul Kane, was sold to an unnamed Canadian buyer in Toronto for more than $5-million on Feb. 25, Canada reclaimed a work of art commemorating an important event in her history: the 19th-century quest for the North Magnetic Pole. But new data suggests the Magnetic Pole will soon be leaving Canadian territory and heading for Russia. Estimates say that the pole, known as Mag North, has been in what is now Canada for at least four...