Thursday, April 24, 2008

Nova erupts in Sagittarius, now risen to 6.5 mag!

To celebrate the 100th post of this blog - in 3 months - a nova has erupted in Sgr: at first it had 8.4 mag. but has since risen in brightness, to 6.5 mag. some 24 hours ago (as reported in IAUC # 8937). • Nova Cyg 2008 #2 is much fainter. • A huge prominence on the Sun was filmed by STEREO on April 9.

In other news the bright storm on Saturn has become more obvious again and can be imaged with even small telescopes. • The good evening apparition of Mercury is about to begin. • Comet Holmes is now in eruption for 1/2 year! While Boattini could get interesting as well. • Detailed star maps can be downloaded for free. • Be careful with green lasers - they might be banned in Oz! • High-res images of the Earth are now being delivered from Genesis II. • More weird astronomy will be coming to TV.

• And in the bizarre Apophis affair there is now an attempt (note: this interview released by a school plays not well under IE, o.k. under Firefox) to blame it on the media. Unfortunately the organizers of the science contest that started it all refuse to release the actual 'paper' by the student to the media or disclose who the referees were, so it's hard to tell for sure how wrong it really was ...

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