The partial halo CME, first seen in the SOHO LASCO C2 field of view at 20:48 UT on May 15, had angular width of about 180 degrees and projected plane of the sky speed of about 600 km/s. From the currently available data it seems that the source region of this CME was just behind the east solar limb and the CME will therefore not arrive at the Earth.
SIDC
Daily Archives: May 16, 2014
Opportunity’s Mars Analemma

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/ASU/TAMU
Staring up into the martian sky, the Opportunity rover captured an image at 11:02 AM local mean time nearly every 3rd sol, or martian day, for 1 martian year. Of course, the result is this martian analemma, a curve tracing the Sun’s motion through the sky in the course of a year (668 sols) on the Red Planet. Spanning Earth dates from July, 16, 2006 to June 2, 2008 the images are shown composited in this zenith-centered, fisheye projection. North is at the top surrounded by a panoramic sky and landscape made in late 2007 from inside Victoria crater. The tinted martian sky is blacked out around the analemma images to clearly show the Sun’s positions. Unlike Earth’s figure-8-shaped analemma, Mars’ analemma is pear-shaped, because of its similar axial tilt but more elliptical orbit. When Mars is farther from the Sun, the Sun progresses slowly in the martian sky creating the pointy top of the curve. When close to the Sun and moving quickly, the apparent solar motion is stretched into the rounded bottom. For several sols some of the frames are missing due to rover operations and dust storms.
NASA APOD 16-May-14
IC 1318 – Butterfly Nebula
Sadr, the central star of the Northern Cross, is surrounded by extensive regions of emission nebulosity. One such region is IC 1318, also known as the Bufferfly Nebula. The dark lane separating the two “wings” is a dark nebula known as LDN 889. Sadr shines at magnitude 2.2, and is about 1550 light-years from Earth. The name is Arabic for “The Hen’s Chest”.
Imaging telescopes or lenses: Meade Series 5000 80mm Apo
Imaging cameras: Canon 500D (Mod)
Mounts: Orion USA Atlas EQ-G Computerized GoTo Telescope Mount
Guiding telescopes or lenses: Orion USA 80mm Short-tube
Guiding cameras: Orion StarShoot AutoGuider
Software: Alignmaster, PHD guiding, BinaryRivers BackyardEOS, photoshop, Cartes du Ciel, Luc Coiffier’s DeepSkyStacker Live
Filters: Astronomik CLS Canon EOS Clip
Accessories: Astro-Tech 2″ Field Flattener
Dates: April 27, 2014
Frames: 18×300″
Integration: 1.5 hours
Author: Wellerson Lopes
AstroPhotography of the day by SPONLI 16 May 2014