Space Weather

[laurierobey]

From my daily Space Weather e-mail:

DAYTIME JUPITER: Jupiter is bright enough to see in broad daylight--if you
know where to look. Today you can find it using the moon as a "landmark."
The quarter moon and Jupiter are only a few degrees apart. Scan around the
moon with a pair of binoculars, and you might be surprised to see Jupiter
pop out of the bright blue background.

DUST ACTIVITY ON MARS: Mars has been receding from Earth and fading since
last August. This week, though, the red planet has gotten a smidgen
brighter. The reason: a dust storm is brewing. Bright dust clouds on Mars,
reflecting sunlight more than the underlying terrain have boosted the
planet's total brightness by about 0.17 magnitudes.

Amateur astronomers using 12 to 16 inch telescopes have been tracking the
dust clouds responsible for this change. You can see their pictures on
spaceweather.com. So far the dust storm is a regional one; it spans only a
fraction of a martian hemisphere. Sometimes such clouds grow to encircle
all of Mars, but that hasn't happened in this case--at least not yet.