46th Week - auroras in Lofted

In the week 22 ranged Manfred Kiau up an Adwa on Sun. "The sun is something going on," it said. Now he has, Ulrich Teschke, Frank Gasparini and Elisabeth Kollner taken a Northern Lights excursion. In the period from 08 to 21.10.2012, the trip went to the Lofted Islands. This archipelago lies in the far north of the Norwegian Atlantic coast, beyond the 68th Latitude. The aim of the observer group was there to document the effects of solar activity in the terrestrial atmosphere: auroras as photogenic, best with reflections in the water.

Six seconds comet collision

The 192 light years distant star 49 Cetin is surrounded by a huge ring of comets, which occurs about every six seconds in a collision. With these circumstances, two American astronomers solve an unsolved problem for 17 years: the star is surrounded by a cloud of unusual carbon monoxide. The comet collisions release the gas, the researchers said in the journal "Astrophysical Journal."

Stars young and old?

This colorful view of the globular cluster NGC 6362 has been with the Wide Field Imager on the ESO / MPG 2.2-meter telescope was added to the ESO La Silla Observatory in Chile. Together with a new recording of the central region of the cluster, which has delivered the Hubble Space Telescope by NASA and ESA, this picture conveys the best to date view of this little-known globular cluster. The majority of stars in globular clusters is very old. In this bunch there are also some stars that act unusually young.