Monthly Archives: September 2005

As storms seem to be in the news a lot lately, I thought this image would be appropriate. It is an image of Jupiter's Great Red Spot, as seen by Voyager 1 when it flew by Jupiter in 1979. This storm has been observed from Earth for hundreds of years, and is big enough to fit three Earths inside of it!

This image of the Cat's Eye Nebula was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. It's a classic planetary nebula, and shows the final phase of a Sun-like star. Astronomers think that this is what could happen to our Sun... in about 5 billion years.

I stumbled across this link the other day - Working Model Roller Coasters - and just had to share it with everyone. This guy build model roller coasters, and has lots of construction pictures and videos of the coasters in action on his site. Very cool!

I've never personally seen the Northern Lights, but I'd love to someday. The Northern Lights - also called the Aurora Borealis - are caused by the interaction of solar flares from the the Sun with the Earth's magnetic field. They look like they are really close, but they actually occur 100 kilometers or more above the Earth's surface. September has been a great month for Northern Lights, because the Sun has been particularly active lately.

Of the four major moons of Jupiter, Io is the innermost. The most interesting thing about Io is that it is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. But these aren't Earth-type lava-spewing volcanoes. Volcanoes on Io emit sulfur dioxide and molten sulfur, which is what gives Io it's amazing coloration.