?and funny things happening on the sun – Lots of new stuff is being discovered in space?right here in our own galaxy! One newly-discovered asteroid may have a somewhat mysterious origin. And a flurry of “fireballs” (the tiny meteors called Perseids that usually light up the sky in August) were seen in September?something that has only happened 3 times before in the last 100 years. And our SUN is making history!
On Sept. 9th, fireballs lit up the sky over the eastern US. This was a rare event that astronomers call “September Perseids.” Meanwhile, almost 50 new asteroids have been found on the outer edges of our solar system (that’s where WE are too!) One of these is an object that is only 30-60 miles wide and is headed our way?due to fly past either Uranus or Neptune within 180 million years. It will arrive from a strange part of our solar system that only one other object, an asteroid named Sedna that was discovered in 2003, has ever come from.
In BBC News, Chris Lintott quotes astronomer Andrew Becker as saying, “It will end up with the name of either a centaur, or a mythological name associated with the underworld or creation. I would certainly prefer the underworld scenario! Too much heavy metal music in my iPod!”
The sun is making history: a full month has gone by without a single sunspot?something that hasn’t happened in the past 100 years. Sunspot data has been collected since 1749 and according to NOAA, the last time the sun was this quiet was in 1913.
In a blog on earthboppin.net, Michael Asher writes, “In the past 1,000 years, three previous such events?the Dalton, Maunder, and Sp
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