From Sky & Telescope:

On May 24, 2014, Earth will plow through a dense stream of dust particles shed by Comet 209P/LINEAR. Dynamicists think the crossing could result in an intense meteor shower — maybe even a "storm" — and North Americans will have front-row seats.

Over the past two decades, celestial dynamicists have gotten very good at divining when meteoric activity will spike. Their computer models can track how dust ejected by a comet near each perihelion pass gets distributed into strands of particles over time. Their calculations show that dust tends to stay concentrated close to the nucleus, and that the strands themselves often converge in space close to the orbit's perihelion.

Now these number-crunchers are telling us make sure May 24, 2014, is circled on our skywatching calendars. On that date, we might experience the most dramatic display of "shooting stars" in more than a decade.

Click here to read the full article.

From Spaceweather.com:

For the third day in a row, geomagnetic storms are circling the poles. In North America, auroras have spilled across the Canadian border descending as far south as Utah, Colorado, Kansas, and Nebraska.

The best place to see the show, according to pilot Matt Melnyk, is from the window of an airplane:

"I photographed an unbelievable display from the cockpit at 21,000 feet while flying across Alberta Canada," says Melnyk. "Being the pilot we get a front row view of the amazing aurora and this display was nothing less than spectacular!"

The storms were instigated by a CME strike on Oct. 8th and they are about to be re-energized by a solar wind stream due to hit Earth's magnetic field on Oct. 10th. NOAA forecasters estimate a 40% chance of strong geomagnetic storms during the next 24 hours, so high-latitude sky watchers should remain alert for auroras.

From Spaceflight Now:

More than 35 years after launching from Earth and now at the frontier of the solar system, NASA's Voyager 1 probe may be tasting interstellar space for the first time, according to scientists analyzing fresh data from the distant explorer.

Launched in September 1977 to fly past Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 1 is now cruising 11.3 billion miles away and opening its distance by 300 million miles each year. It takes 17 hours for a radio signal to travel between Earth and Voyager 1. Its twin explorer - Voyager 2 - is lagging slightly behind at a distance of 9.2 billion miles from Earth. The nuclear-powered probe's computers have about 68 kilobytes of memory. An 8-gigabyte iPod Nano holds more than 100,000 times as much data. But particle-sniffing sensors aboard Voyager 1 are returning intriguing measurements showing the spacecraft is on the precipice of leaving the solar system. Researchers may be seeing the first signs that Voyager 1 is nearing - or may have already crossed - the heliopause, an enigmatic boundary between the sun's sphere of influence and the void beyond.

Read the full article here.

From Astronomy Now.

A new comet has been discovered that is predicted to blaze incredibly brilliantly in the skies during late 2013. With a perihelion passage of less than two million kilometres from the Sun on 28 November 2013, current predictions are of an object that will dazzle the eye at up to magnitude —16. That's far brighter than the full Moon. If predictions hold true then C/2012 S1 will certainly be one of the greatest comets in human history, far outshining the memorable Comet Hale-Bopp of 1997 and very likely to outdo the long-awaited Comet Pan-STARRS (C/2011 L4) which is set to stun in March 2013.

Read the rest of the article here.

From Spaceflight now:

A stunning new composite photograph from the Hubble Space Telescope, made up of more than 2,000 images shot by multiple cameras over the past 10 years and combined in what amounts to a 23-day time exposure, shows some 5,500 galaxies in tiny field of view, including some dating back to just 450 million years after the big bang birth of the universe, astronomers said Tuesday.

Read the rest of the article here.

The Kamloops Astronomical Society will be holding an open house at the Stake Lake Observatory on Saturday Saturday Sept 22nd starting at 6:00pm.

Join us for discussions, door prizes, refreshments and hopefully clear skies!

Click here for all the details, and hope to see you there!

Here's a snapshot of the aurora visible from Kamloops on the night of Sept. 4th.

You can stay tuned to predicted aurora activity by going to http://www.spaceweather.com

Meteors are surprisingly hard to photograph… seems every time I stopped taking an exposure is when they’d appear!

However here’s one Perseid I did manage to catch (the straight streak of light at upper left).

This view is looking South into the heart of our galaxy… you can see the ‘teapot’ of Sagittarius between the trees.

From Sky and Telescope:
Auroras Likely July 14-15 Strong auroras are likely this weekend at high latitudes and possible at middle latitudes.

The huge sunspot group AR 1520, currently visible with no optical aid except a solar filter, let loose an X-class flare on Thursday, July 12th. The blast hurled a coronal mass ejection directly toward Earth, and the material is expected to arrive anywhere between 3:30 and 17:00 UT on July 14th. (That's any time between late Friday night and midday Saturday in North America).

NASA / Zoltan KenwellWhen the material hits Earth's magnetic field, it's likely to cause strong auroras at northern latitudes, including all of Canada and parts of the Upper Midwest. There's also a fair chance of auroras well south of there — conceivably as far south as Alabama.

Auroras are likely to continue for at least 24 hours after the solar particles arrive, so keep watching throughout the weekend. The combination of a favorable Moon phase and falling on a weekend makes this a particularly propitious opportunity.

See Spaceweather.com and the Geophysical Institute website for further information and ongoing updates.

Within the past two weeks, astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to identify a fifth moon circling Pluto. Read the full article by clicking on this Sky & Telescope link.