Monday, August 11, 2008

Lots more exotic views and images of the 2008 total solar eclipse ...

... have come in over the past seven days, so here's a new collection of links, as big as the initial one. The most unusual view is certainly this video from the edge of the totality zone, shot near Hami in China. We also have new corona composites here and here and a video of the Moon shadow from GEO orbit.Additional material covers partiality in H-Alpha, impressions from Svalbard, strange physics and collections of further stories & links, esp. this one (German version).

In other news the Perseids peak tomorrow, making the coming night and the one from Aug. 12/13 the best to watch - after midnight, when the Moon has set. It's not quite clear what to expect: The CBAT Electronic Telegram No. 1464 contains some inconclusive thoughts about Swift-Tuttle's dust trail form 1479 which may - or may not - cause some action at 5:30 UTC on Aug. 12 and other possible rate enhancements. So: Watch the skies - or the visual data quicklook where the rate is already going up steadily. No part of the Perseids was a nice New Mexico fireball of Aug. 4, by the way.

• Comet-wise there are Boattini images of Aug. 10, Aug. 3 and Aug. 2, Lulin images of Aug. 2 (animation), July 29 and July 24 and D'Arrest images of Aug. 3 and July 25. • There is a call for observations of Eta Carinae which has started a new spectroscopic event which returns every 5½ years - a piece of evidence for a binary system.

• The famous Hanny's Voorwerp story, all over the news, has now even produced Yale and Oxford Press Releases - rarely do amateur astronomical chance discoveries have such an impact on pro astrophysics. • There are more ISS images of July 30, 27, 25 and 24 (more), Stardust@Home hasn't found an interstellar particle yet, and the HST celebrates 100,000 orbits.