Hilarious.  Here's a laugh for all you rocket scientists out there.

Video Credit: BBC

This week the sun will be continuing it's flurry of solar activity.  Initially fireing this on Thursday, March 8th, the same region on the sun is expected to produce another streak of solar flares.

This past week's flare was categorized as a M6.3-class flare, which is a mid-range size according to the Space Weather Prediction Center of the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)  Space weather scientists use five categories — A, B, C, M and X — to rank solar flares based on their strength and severity. A-class flares are the weakest types of sun storms, while X-class eruptions are the most powerful.

The M-class solar flare exploded from the same sunspot region, called AR1429, which has been particularly active all week. This dynamic region has already unleashed three strong X-class solar flares. On Tuesday (March 6), two powerful X-class eruptions  triggered the strongest solar storm in eight years, Bob Rutledge, head of NOAA's Space Weather Forecast Office, told reporters today (March 9).

"When you take overall intensity and length — how long it persisted — we're confident in saying by some measures, it was the strongest storm we've seen since November 2004," Rutledge said. "That doesn't mean that between November 2004 and today we haven't had brief periods that were more intense. If you look at the storm overall for length and strength, it was the strongest storm since November 2004." 

The Shenzhou 9 spacecraft is expected to launch later this summer, probably July or August.  It will carry three astronauts (referred to as taikonauts or yuhangyuans) to China's Tiangong 1 space labroatory.  The Shenzhou 9 craft will dock with Tiangon 1 for about a week.  

Speculation suggests that the crew will be men, and most likely members of the Shenzhou taikonauts who were selected back in 1998.

The strange patterns of confusing claims about Shenzhou 9 seem to have been clariefied with the release of the newest details.  The orgin of the previous ambiguity is still under debate, but some speculate it may have been due to internal tensions in the program.  Some have even suggested possible opposition from certain managers or even crew.

A great ananlysis of the ambiguity of the Shenzhou program has been discussed by Morris Jones and published on space daily.com.

Image Credit: aviationnews.eu

A bright meteor lit up the night sky over the United Kingdom last night.  The Irish Times reported that police stations across Britain were recieving numoerous calls about the fireball crossing the sky.  Eyewitnesses reported seeing a huge fireball travelling from northern Scotland to southern England at about 9:40pm on Saturday.

The Met Office tweeted: “Hi All, for anyone seeing something in the night sky, we believe it was a meteorite.”  

Adrian West, of Meteorwatch, said he spotted the meteor in Berkshire and believed it could have gone down in the English Channel or the Bay of Biscay.

The timing and location was somewhat perfect for maximizing the visibilty of the event.  As such, several people were able to photogrpah and video the meteor.  Some the best video and images have been posted on universetoday.com.

Photo Credit: Metro.co.uk

Video Credit: mralan1969uk on YouTube