Clarkson Integrator

Issue date: 1/28/08 Section: Features

Media Credit: NASA This image shows the Aurora Australis, as seen from space. The image combines a photograph taken by NASA, for the purpose of studying the Magnetosphere, with a previous image of the earth. You can see Antarctica directly below the Aurora Australis, and Australia off in the distance.

This upcoming Friday, Venus and Jupiter, two of the brightest objects in the sky, will pass within 1° of each other. Unfortunately, the two will not rise until approximately 6:00 a.m. in the southeast. If you don't feel adventurous enough to get out of bed that early, you can catch Mars and Saturn. They will be high in the sky at 11:00 p.m., a much more reasonable hour.

The moon is now waning, abandoning its dominance of the sky. This will provide better visibility, allowing the fine details of the fainter objects in the night sky to make themselves apparent. The moon will rise before Venus and Jupiter. It'll remain in the sky until early afternoon..

Depending on how long you've been at Clarkson, you may or may not have caught a glimpse of the Northern Lights. It is time to rejoice if you have, like me, never seen the Northern Lights. Solar Cycle 23 has come to a close, marking the end of a sun spot dry spell. This cycle occurs every 11 years or so.

A new sunspot was discovered on the sun earlier this month. This definitively marks the beginning of Solar Cycle 24. There has been an increase in solar magnetic activity, which means increased solar storm activity. That means there'll be an increase in the visibility of the Northern Lights for those in the northern regions of the planet.

This new cycle is the first in which GPS technology has seen widespread use. An increase in solar activities may cause the reliability of this technology to suffer. We may need to check the news stations predictions in the mornings, for: wind speed, temperature, precipitation, and solar activity.

The aurora effect occurs when charged particles, such as those emitted from sun spots, collide with molecules and atoms in the Earth's atmosphere. The molecules in the Earth's atmosphere are channeled by the magnetic fields to the northern and southern poles of the planet.

In the north, these storms are called Aurora Borealis. Aurora is the god of the dawn in Roman myth, and Borealis is known as the North Wind to the Greeks. The southern pole refers to the phenomenon as Aurora Australis. Australis is Latin for "of the South."

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