MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

NASA Science – “Something unexpected is happening on the sun. 2013 is supposed to be the year of Solar Max, the peak of the 11-year sunspot cycle. Yet 2013 has arrived and solar activity is relatively low. Sunspot numbers are well below their values in 2011, and strong solar flares have been infrequent for many months.

The quiet has led some observers to wonder if forecasters missed the mark. Solar physicist Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center has a different explanation:

‘This is solar maximum,’ he suggests. ‘But it looks different from what we expected because it is double peaked.’

Conventional wisdom holds that solar activity swings back and forth like a simple pendulum. At one end of the cycle, there is a quiet time with few sunspots and flares. At the other end, Solar Max brings high sunspot numbers and solar storms. It’s a regular rhythm that repeats every 11 years.

Reality, however, is more complicated. Astronomers have been counting sunspots for centuries, and they have seen that the solar cycle is not perfectly regular. For one thing, the back-and-forth swing in sunspot counts can take anywhere from 10 to 13 years to complete; also, the amplitude of the cycle varies. Some solar maxima are very weak, others very strong.

Pesnell notes yet another complication: ‘The last two solar maxima, around 1989 and 2001, had not one but two peaks.’ Solar activity went up, dipped, then resumed, performing a mini-cycle that lasted about two years.

The same thing could be happening now. Sunspot counts jumped in 2011, dipped in 2012, and Pesnell expects them to rebound again in 2013: ‘I am comfortable in saying that another peak will happen in 2013 and possibly last into 2014,’ he predicts.

Another curiosity of the solar cycle is that the sun’s hemispheres do not always peak at the same time. In the current cycle, the south has been lagging behind the north. The second peak, if it occurs, will likely feature the southern hemisphere playing catch-up, with a surge in activity south of the sun’s equator.” Read more.

SpaceWeather.com – “Comet Pan-STARRS (C/2011 L4) is now inside the orbit of Mercury, brightening as it plunges toward the sun. Observers in the southern hemisphere report say they can see Pan-STARRS with the unaided eye in the evening sunset sky. Carl Gruber photographed the comet on March 2nd over the city lights of Melbourne, Australia:

‘Despite bad light and smog pollution, the comet’s nucleus was clearly visible to the naked eye as well as a small part of the tail,’ says Gruber. Light curves show the comet is approaching 2nd magnitude, about as bright as the stars of the Big Dipper.

Several important dates are approaching. On March 5th, Comet Pan-STARRS makes its closest approach to Earth (1.09 AU), followed on March 10th by its closest approach to the sun (0.3 AU). As Comet Pan-STARRS passes the sun, solar glare will make it difficult to see even as the nucleus vaporizes and brightens. By March 12th and 13th, the comet will reappear in the sunset skies of the northern hemisphere not far from the crescent Moon; think photo-op! Check the realtime comet gallery for the latest images.” Source – SpaceWeather.com.

By NANCY ATKINSON, Universe Today – “A newly found asteroid will pass just inside the orbit of the Moon, with its closest approach on March 4, 2013 at 07:35 UTC. Named 2013 EC, the asteroid is about the size of the space rock that exploded over Russia two and a half weeks ago, somewhere between 10-17 meters wide (the Russian meteorite is estimated to be about 15 meters wide when it entered Earth’s atmosphere). 2013 EC was discovered by the Mt. Lemmon Observatory in Arizona on March 2. . There is no chance this asteroid will hit Earth.

2013 EC will come within 396,000 kilometers from Earth, (246,000 miles, or around 1.0 lunar distances, 0.0026 AU.

The Moon’s distance from the Earth varies between 363,104 km (225,622 miles) at perigee (closest) and 406,696 km (252,088 miles) at apogee (most distant point).

Gianluca Masi from the Virtual Telescope Project had a live view of the asteroid when it was about twice the distance of the Moon, and a replay of that webcast is available below.

‘That we are finding all these asteroids recently does not mean that we are being visited by more asteroids,’ Masi said during the webcast, ‘just that our ability to detect them has gotten so much better. Our technology has improved a lot over the past decades.’

More info about 2013 EC on the JPL Small Body Database.” Source – Universe Today.

Just in time for the Feast of Tabernacles 2014 and less than one year after another comet is scheduled to swing by in late 2013 during Hannukah that may, according to reports, blaze brighter than the full moon, becoming one of the greatest in history …

By Nancy Atkinson, Universe Today – “There is an outside chance that a newly discovered comet might be on a collision course with Mars. Astronomers are still determining the trajectory of the comet, named C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring), but at the very least, it is going to come fairly close to the Red Planet in October of 2014. ‘Even if it doesn’t impact it will look pretty good from Earth, and spectacular from Mars,’ wrote Australian amateur astronomer Ian Musgrave, ‘probably a magnitude -4 comet as seen from Mars’s surface.’

The comet was discovered in the beginning of 2013 by comet-hunter Robert McNaught at the Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales, Australia. According to a discussion on the IceInSpace amateur astronomy forum when the discovery was initially made, astronomers at the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona looked back over their observations to find ‘prerecovery’ images of the comet dating back to Dec. 8, 2012. These observations placed the orbital trajectory of comet C/2013 A1 right through Mars orbit on Oct. 19, 2014. However, now after 74 days of observations, comet specialist Leonid Elenin notes that current calculations put the closest approach of the comet at a distance of 109,200 km, or 0.00073 AU from Mars in October 2014. That close pass has many wondering if any of the Mars orbiters might be able to acquire high-resolution images of the comet as [it] passes by.

But as Ian O’Neill from Discovery Space points out, since the comet has only been observed for 74 days (so far), so it’s difficult for astronomers to forecast the comet’s precise location in 20 months time. ‘Comet C/2013 A1 may fly past at a very safe distance of 0.008 AU (650,000 miles),’ Ian wrote, ‘but to the other extreme, its orbital pass could put Mars directly in its path. At time of Mars close approach (or impact), the comet will be barreling along at a breakneck speed of 35 miles per second (126,000 miles per hour).’

Elenin said that since C/2013 A1 is a hyperbolic comet and moves in a retrograde orbit, its velocity with respect to the planet will be very high, approximately 56 km/s. ‘With the current estimate of the absolute magnitude of the nucleus M2 = 10.3, which might indicate the diameter up to 50 km, the energy of impact might reach the equivalent of staggering 2×10¹º megatons!’ An impact of this magnitude would leave a crater 500 km across and 2 km deep, Elenin said.” Read more.