Meteor Turns Night Into Day Across Western US

A streaking meteor the size of an oven briefly illuminated parts of the Utah sky to daylight-level conditions early Wednesday, surveillance footage shows.

The video from outside security cameras at the University of Utah’s Milford observatory shows a blinding flash of light around 12:07 a.m., followed by clear images of the meteor streaking away.

“It looks like a shooting star on steroids,” said Seth Jarvis, director of the Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake City.

He estimated that the fireball was about the size of an oven and was traveling at about 80,000 mph. It broke through the Earth’s atmosphere and was probably around 100 miles above the ground when it became visible, he said.

It almost certainly broke up before it reached the ground, he said.

via Midnight meteor streaks across Western skies.

Hand of God Reaches Across Universe

Tiny and dying but still-powerful stars called pulsars spin like crazy and light up their surroundings, often with ghostly glows.

So it is with PSR B1509-58, which long ago collapsed into a sphere just 12 miles in diameter after running out of fuel.

And what a strange scene this one has created.

In a new image from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, high-energy X-rays emanating from the nebula around PSR B1509-58 have been colored blue to reveal a structure resembling a hand reaching for some eternal red cosmic light.

The star now spins around at the dizzying pace of seven times every second — as pulsars do — spewing energy into space that creates the scene.

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Venus and Jupiter To Form Triangle ‘Capstone’ With Moon

Venus and Jupiter, the two brightest planets, have been marching toward each other for more than a month in the southwestern sky at dusk. As they’ve drawn closer together, the sight has been catching more people’s eyes, and now the show is reaching its climax.

This evening, weather permitting, you will see Venus and Jupiter blazing about a finger’s width apart at arm’s length. Look early enough and, far to their lower right, you can find the crescent moon just above the horizon.

Tomorrow evening, the two planets will be slightly closer together, and the moon will be hanging higher and nearer them.

Monday night brings the peak of the show. The two planets will remain as close as ever, and the moon will form a compact, extraordinary triangle with them.

Then on subsequent evenings, things fall apart. The moon will move farther off to the upper left, and Jupiter starts pulling away to Venus’s right.

Although the three objects look close together, looks are deceiving. The moon is 252,000 miles away. Venus is currently 370 times farther than the moon, at 94 million miles. And Jupiter, at 540 million miles, is nearly six times as far away as Venus.

To put it another way: The moon is currently 1.4 light-seconds distant, Venus is 8.4 light-minutes distant, and Jupiter is 42 light-minutes away. That’s how long the light from each has been traveling through space before it hits your eye.

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