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Comet Pons-Brooks

8 March 2024
Astronomy, Electromagnetism

At https://spaceweather.com … see archive March 5th 2024. Here we are back to Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks. It is coming to life once again. The page has a link to a one hour animation by Michael Jaeger. This is the sixth eruption since December. It is approaching the Sun – the rendevous is in April, a month away. It will be a naked eye object before then, we are told. At the moment you need to look for it with binoculars. It may even be visible during the April 8th solar eclipse over North America. At that point in time it will be close to Jupiter – from the point of view of somebody on the surface of the earth.

A paradox for cosmologists – a black hole binary that refuses to merge. Go to https://phys.org/news/2024-03-saturday-citations-wont-black-hole.html … this is described as a gravitationally bound pair of supermassive black holes. They have been circling each other for 3 billion years, they claim – without merging.

At https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/weird-dent-in-earths-magnetic-field-is-messing-with-auroras-in-the-southern-hemisphere … a dent in earth’s magnetic field, we are told, over the South Atlantic Ocean, weakens the southern lights. The so called South Atlantic Anomaly – where earth’s magnetic field is at its weakest. It allows charged particles  to breach and enter the lower atmosphere, dipping closer to the surface of the earth. Therefore it affects satellites. See also Tall Bloke’s talk shop 3rd March 2024.

Meanwhile, back at https://spaceweather.com … archive for 6th March 2024. A Space X spiral. Fascinating  images of a spiral formation created by Elon Musk’s recent Space X launch – taking astronauts to the International Space Station.

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