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FAU Astronomical Observatory -- Front Page

Welcome to the Observatory's Front Page. Included here are some of the latest news and articles that may be of interest to our visitors. General observatory information can be found on the "About the Observatory" page. We are currently covering:

General Sky Conditions

The Current Moon Phase image is provided by the U.S. Naval Observatory's Time Service Department:

Solar conditions, atmospheric phenomena and news are reported by Spaceweather.com.

The current sky conditions of Boca Raton are found via the Clear Sky Clock: Shortened timeblock gif of sky conditions.

Our current cloud cover can be found at www.wunderground.com for Boca Raton.

Can You Identify This Image? Lights at night -- courtesy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

The image at the right is a map of locations of:

  1. southeast U.S. cities seen at night in composite satellite images
  2. inefficiently used energy resources and tax dollars continuously squandered by local city planners
  3. local populations which are losing their humbling sense of wonder and awe of the night sky's majesty
  4. increased, widespread disruptions to the local natural environment
  5. increased incidences of breast cancer in women of the local populations
  6. increased incidences of prostate cancer in men of the local populations
  7. all of the above


Image Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Scientific Visualization Studio

Sept 1st, 1859 is the 150th Anniversary of the Carrington Event! Image of Carrington flare on the Sun -- MNRAS

On Sept. 1st, 1859, the British solar astronomer Richard Carrington was at his private observatory recording the day's sunspots. Like always, he projected the Sun's image to 11 inches in diameter on to a sheet of paper and then, with a pencil, he traced out what he saw. He just finished the drawing to the right, when suddenly two patches of intensely bright and white light broke out. Thinking that he had two new holes in his solar filter, he adjusted the telescope and then realized that these visible patches were part of the Sun itself! He recorded their positions as the white bean-like shapes labeled A and B. Carrington wrote in his report that he then "hastily ran to call someone to witness the exhibition with me. On returning within 60 seconds, I was mortified to find that it was already much changed and enfeebled." He and his witness watched the white spots contract to mere pinpoints and disappear to labeled spots C and D.

This brighter-than-the-Sun flare had released a Coronal Mass Ejection plasma cloud that reached the Earth, 150 million kilometers (93 million miles) away, in 17 hours 40 minutes! After midnight, Sept. 2nd, auroras or the northern lights, erupted all over the world and were not just seen in the far hinterlands of Canada or Alaska, but as far south as Rome, Cuba, the Bahamas, Jamaica, El Salvador and Hawaii! Telegraph wires suddenly shorted out across the U.S. and Europe! Spark discharges shocked telegraph operators and ignited widespread fires. Some operators were quick enough to disconnect their wires' batteries, only to find that they could still send messages without power!

While there have been other solar storms that have hit the Earth since then, such as 1921 and 1989, none have reach the same magnitude. If a Carrington scale storm hit today, scientists estimate that it would take us 7 to 10 years to repair the damage to our electrical and communications grid. First, because we do not have backup equipment, transformers, wires and generating turbines ready to replace what would be lost. Second, because there would be no power to run the factories needed to make the replacement equipment.

You can read more about this report from the National Academies Press in its left column link.

2009 is The International Year of Astronomy!

We are excited to be part of the IAU's International Year of Astronomy 2009 events and we had a great success in participating in the worldwide 100 Hours of Astronomy event between April 2nd and the 5th! The event celebrated 400 years since Galileo used his telescope to view the skies and Kepler wrote his first two planetary laws of motion! Our own 100 hour MARATHON event is listed on their website. We had a staff of just myself and some very able, undergraduate assistants. We found 29 additional volunteers for the event and had 270 visitors to attend all hours of the day! Three am was the least popular timeslot for vistors, though 42 people did show up at 2 am on Saturday morning!