Today’s (very) partial eclipse begins today at 12:50. It will peak at 1:45, end at 2:38.
There are details here: https://montrealgazette.com/news/partial-solar-eclipse-montreal-wednesday-perseids-shower/
Also, the Perseid meteor shower peaks tonight. Best seen under a dark country sky, the shower will be at its best since it is also new moon. The weather is not promising, but the shower eases off gradually, so you might catch a few later in the week.
EXPLODING COMET MCNAUGHT: There’s an exploding comet in the morning sky. Comet 220P/McNaught was a nondescript speck of 17th magnitude in late May when it suddenly multiplied in brightness 7000-fold. It was fading back toward obscurity when, on Aug. 5th, it exploded again. The second outburst (650x) propelled the comet to 7th magnitude, an easy target for binoculars and small telescopes.
This is what it looks like now:
“We observed the comet in outburst on August 8th,” say photographers Gerald Rhemann and Michael Jäger, who used a 12-inch robotic telescope in Namibia. “It has a shock wave front.”
The comet is in the constellation Cetus near the star Mu Ceti, best seen around 4 AM local time. Its expanding atmosphere is already wider than 7 arcminutes–a quarter the size of a full Moon–with a short tail pointing away from the sun.
Some observers are comparing 220P to Comet 17P/Holmes, which famously exploded in 2007. Holmes brightened a million times, becoming a naked-eye object that you could watch expand from night to night without a telescope. “Mini-Holmes” might be a better name for 220P, although the resemblance is undeniable.
After the first outburst in May, telescopes monitoring 220P’s debris found it rich in gas. Some astronomers suspect a fragment broke off the nucleus, exposing fresh ice to sunlight. If so, more explosions may be in the offing. The comet is near its minimum distance from the sun (a 1.64 AU perihelion on June 14th) and still being exposed to disruptive solar heat.
If only one more fragment falls off, you won’t even need binoculars.
more images: from Ismael Civera of Villatoya, Spain; from Mike Olason of Tucson, Arizona; from Rafael Etges of Huntsville, ON Canada
Space Weather News for Aug. 5, 2026
Free Space Weather Newsletter
THE SUN’S SURFACE IS WEIRDER THAN YOU THOUGHT: A giant telescope in Hawaii just saw something unprecedented on the sun. The surface of our star, it turns out, is covered with tiny ripples and whirlpools that previous telescopes could not see. The images were published Aug. 5th in the journal Nature:
Solar physicists have long suspected these swirls exist, but they were simply too small to see. The Inouye Solar Telescope, the world’s largest with a 4-meter mirror atop Haleakalā on Maui, finally has the resolution to catch them.
The Maui-sized whirlpools are caused by Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities. Van Gogh famously painted them in Starry Night.
Here on Earth, Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities make ocean waves curl when wind blows across water. On the sun, the “wind” is plasma. Where magnetized plasma and non-magnetized plasma slide past one another at different speeds, the boundary between them rolls up into vortices.
This could help solve the long-standing puzzle of where solar flares get their power. These explosions are driven by magnetic energy. The newfound whirlpools build up that energy, creating little reservoirs of power for flares and CMEs.
Even if you don’t believe it or understand it you will love the movies. Watch them here.
Potential target for binoculars or small telescopes–CPL
Space Weather News for July 28, 2026
A SPACEX ROCKET IS ABOUT TO HIT THE MOON: On Aug. 5th, a dead SpaceX rocket will slam into the Moon near Einstein crater. The explosion itself will be hidden in lunar daylight, but a new study says the debris plume could rise above the Moon’s edge, visible from Earth for as much as 10 minutes. https://spaceweather.com/
This past weekend at Westercon 78 (combined with BayCon 42) in Santa Clara, its Business Meeting ratified the motion from last year which dissolves the convention. This means this year’s was the last Westercon to host a Business Meeting, but the convention itself will persist for two more years.
Westercon 79 will be combined with BayCon 43. No bids had been filed for Westercon 80 as of two weeks ago, but two were presented at the meeting: one to combine it with BayCon one more time, and one to combine it with Loscon, the Los Angeles science fiction convention run by LASFS, the organization that created Westercon.
The Loscon bid was accepted, meaning that Westercon 80 will be held Thanksgiving weekend in 2028.
As the official announcment says:
The first three Westercons were held in Los Angeles in 1948-50, with Westercon 4 being held in San Francisco in 1951. These final two Westercons symbolically retrace the convention’s steps from the Bay Area to the Los Angeles area, and are a sort of “Retirement Tour” for the convention. Both BayCon and Loscon are expected to include programming about the history of Westercon.
Westercon has been held every year since except for 2020.
Only a few conventions can claim to be as old as Westercon or older. The UK’s national science fiction convention was also first held in 1948. Boskone in Boston, Philcon in the Philadelphia area, and the World Science Fiction Convention are the only other survivors from that era.
Space Weather News for July 7, 2026
Free Space Weather Newsletter
A POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS SUNSPOT: A big new sunspot emerged during the 4th of July weekend, announcing itself with an X-class solar flare. Today, it topped that by hurling a million-kilometer loop of plasma into space. Earth is entering the strike zone of this active sunspot, bringing a chance of geoeffective solar activity later this week. Full story @ Spaceweather.com.
Did you miss the 4th of July aurora outburst? Next time get a personalized real-time alert from our new Backyard Astronomy Alert Service.
Above: An eruption from sunspot 4482 on July 7th. Image credits: GOES-19 and Maximilian-Vlad Teodorescu
From Locus: https://locusmag.com/forthcomingbooks/
JULY 2026
Space Weather News for June 12, 2026
Free Space Weather Newsletter
A SPACEX ROCKET IS GOING TO HIT THE MOON: NASA says amateur astronomers might be able to observe the debris when a Falcon 9 upper stage crashes into the Moon on Aug. 5, 2026. Observers in the Americas will have the best view of the plume rising over the lunar limb.
Above: Approximate location of the Falcon 9 impact on Aug. 5, 2026
For the full story, visit https://spaceweather.com/
Space Weather News for June 8, 2026
VENUS IS ABOUT TO ‘KISS’ JUPITER: Look west after sunset. Venus and Jupiter are converging for a beautiful conjunction, only 1.6 degrees apart on June 9th. Later this week, Mercury and the crescent Moon will join the show, too. Full story and night-by-night sky maps @ Spaceweather.com.
Above: Venus and Jupiter converging over France. Photo credit: Valerie Liard
VENUS-JUPITER CONJUNCTION: When the sun goes down tonight, step outside and look west. The two brightest planets in the Solar System are converging for a beautiful conjunction. Last night in Austria, Michael Jaeger watched them set together in a blizzard of Starlink satellites:
“What a beautiful pair in the sky,” says Jaeger. “Venus and Jupiter are the stars of the night as darkness falls.”
At closest approach on June 9th, Venus and Jupiter will be just 1.6 degrees apart–similar to the Great Conjunction of 2002. And this is just the beginning. During the nights ahead, Mercury and the crescent Moon will join Venus and Jupiter to form a must-see quartet in the twilight sky. It’s a marvelous week-long sky show.
From Locus: https://locusmag.com/forthcomingbooks/
JUNE 2026