May 12 - Top Stories This Week

May 12 Top Stories This Week by:

Hawaii's erupting Kilauea volcano Images from its ongoing eruption. Will Kilauea explode? Volcano scientists issued a second Orange Alert on Wednesday. "At this time, we cannot say with certainty that explosive activity will occur, how large the explosions could be, or how long such explosive activity could continue." Hear the Milky Way Blues The variation of musical pitches portrays the motion of gas as it orbits around the center of our galaxy. North Pole gets a heat wave Unseasonably, in recent days, the temperature at the North Pole has soared to the melting point of ice. That's about 30-35 degrees F (17-19 C) above normal. Snowball Earth due to plate tectonics? New study suggests that the shifting of Earth's great land plates turned our world into a Snowball Earth. What will happen when our sun dies? It won't happen soon, not for another 5 billion years. Our sun's fate, here. What’s a safe distance between us and a supernova? Our sun won't become one. But how many potentially exploding stars are within an unsafe distance? Look for the beautiful Northern Crown Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown, is an almost perfect semi-circle of stars. Look for it between 2 bright stars: Arcturus and Vega.

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Look for the beautiful Northern Crown The brightest star in Corona Borealis is Alphecca, aka Gemma, sometimes called the Pearl of the Crown. Photo by Fred Espenak of AstroPixels.com.

'Absolutely insane airglow' Those were the words of astrophotographer Yuri Beletsky, who captured this image on May 10 from Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. “Yes, what you see on this image are not clouds! That yellow/orangish light comes from the upper atmosphere.” Submit your photo to EarthSky here! Did a friend forward EarthSkyNews to you? Click here to get your own subscription!

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