TYB
Happy St Paddy's
After making Pluto great again, we should go there and find out.
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
March 17, 2026
The Tadpoles of IC 410
(Tadpoles? They talking to us on the 17th?)
This telescopic close-up shows off the central regions of otherwise faint emission nebula IC 410, captured under backyard skies. Presented in a Hubble color palette, the image combines visible broadband and narrowband data with data from the near-infrared. Below and right of center are two remarkable inhabitants of the interstellar pond of gas and dust. the Tadpoles of IC 410. Partly obscured by foreground dust, the nebula itself surrounds NGC 1893, a young galactic cluster of stars. Formed in the interstellar cloud a mere 4 million years ago, the intensely hot, bright cluster stars energize the glowing gas. But the cosmic tadpoles themselves are composed of denser cooler gas and dust. Around 10 light-years long they are likely sites of ongoing star formation. Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation their heads are outlined by bright ridges of ionized gas while their tails trail away from the cluster's central young stars. IC 410 lies some 10,000 light-years away, toward the nebula-rich constellation Auriga.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4neU1o3PS4
Solar Storm on the Way, Pre-Volcano Signal | S0 News and frens
Mar.17.2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P4-uC_k8ZY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbVQPD5t9A0 (Stefan Burns: Can't Believe This is About to Happen…)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHCGR20y5uY (Ray's Astro: Is the Sun Resetting Every 12,000 Years? What Miyake Events Reveal)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyoA3qFd1x0 (Moar Ray: If a Carrington Event Hits Today — Are We Ready? - What They Don’t Explain)
https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2026/03/Earth_s_magnetic_field_during_solar_flare_January_2026
https://www.miragenews.com/nasa-experts-monitor-sun-to-shield-artemis-ii-1637899/
https://watchers.news/2026/03/16/m2-7-solar-flare-erupts-from-region-4392-cme-produced/
https://www.toledoblade.com/a-e/culture/2026/03/16/bgsu-researchers-working-to-make-solar-panels-that-can-withstand-extreme/stories/20260315128
https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/earthquake/news/297819/World-Earthquake-Report-for-Tuesday-17-March-2026.html
https://x.com/StefanBurnsGeo/status/2033867659368870194
https://x.com/MrMBB333/status/2033636194622575053
https://x.com/schumannbot/status/2033906228649140434
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/aurora-viewline-tonight-and-tomorrow-night-experimental
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/g2-moderate-geomagnetic-storm-watch-issued-1
https://spaceweather.com/
Is the Newly Discovered Sun-Grazer C/2026 A1 (MAPS) Related to 3I/ATLAS?
March 16, 2026
The latest two puzzles about 3I/ATLAS stem from its large inferred size and mass (as reported here). First, its parent population cannot be supplied by the mass reservoir of planetary systems around old metal-poor stars (as I argued here).
Second — its mass of a billion metric tons is 5 orders of magnitude larger than the final mass of 1I/Oumuamua, implying that we should have discovered a hundred thousand interstellar objects on the mass scale of 1I/Oumuamua before seeing one giant object like 3I/ATLAS (as I argued here).
Altogether, the full list of 22 anomalies for 3I/ATLAS (summarized here) is particularly timely, as the mysterious object comes closest to Jupiter today on its way out of the Solar System.
If the passage near Jupiter will not reveal any new insight on 3I/ATLAS, we will be left with many questions about its nature and origin.
Can we hope to learn more about future interstellar visitors?
The best way to examine visitors to our cosmic back yard is to interrogate them under extreme heat. This opportunity is realized for Sun-grazing trajectories.
In 2019, I co-authored a paper (published here) with my then-postdoc, John Forbes, which explored the statistics of close encounters between interstellar objects and the Sun. Objects similar to 1I/`Oumuamua collide with the Sun once every 30 years.
A Sun-grazing passage would vaporize any solid surface, unraveling the composition and structure of the object’s interior by detailed observations from the Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) in Hawaii or the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) in space.
On April 4, 2026, we will have a unique opportunity to witness a rare Sun-grazing encounter by the large object, C/2026 A1 (MAPS), which was discovered on January 13, 2026 from the AMACS1 Observatory in Chile.
The object will pass within 161,000 kilometers (23.1% of the Solar radius) from the surface of the Sun. From the vantage point of Earth, the object will enter Solar conjunction behind the Sun on April 4, 2026 at 13:19 UTC and appear in front of the Sun at 15:34 UTC, in both case being separated by 0.04 degrees from the center of the Sun.
The unusual trajectory of C/2026 A1 (MAPS) suggests that it is a member of a yet unknown group of comets that are bound gravitationally to the Sun. Could it be a fragment that broke off 3I/ATLAS and was launched into a bound orbit around the Sun?
Probably no, because its inferred diameter of somewhat less than 2.4 kilometers is comparable to that of 3I/ATLAS, and the orbital inclination of C/2026 A1 (MAPS) is 144.5 degrees, about 30.6 degrees away from the 175.1 degrees inclination for 3I/ATLAS.
C/2026 A1 (MAPS) will pass through the solar corona and reach perihelion with a peak speed of 557 kilometers per second (0.2% of the speed of light) on 4 April 2026 at 14:21 UTC.
At that time, it will be separated from the center of the Sun by 0.57% of the Earth-Sun separation. It will then make closest approach to Earth on 5 April 2026 at 23:56 UTC when it will be at a distance of 143.8 million kilometers (96.1% of the Sun’s distance) from Earth.
Observing the fireworks as this object burns up and breaks close to the Sun will reveal new details about its composition and material strength.
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/is-the-newly-discovered-sun-grazer-c-2026-a1-maps-related-to-3i-atlas-cba41824c18c
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/a-warp-drive-could-shine-brighter-than-the-sun-in-the-earths-atmosphere-11ac7c6e3a6e
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/will-the-human-spirit-survive-for-billions-of-years-d576a59a0de9
https://www.cleveland19.com/video/2026/03/17/caught-camera-thousands-report-large-boom-fireball-tuesday-morning/
https://starlust.org/3-i-atlas-isnt-just-older-than-our-solar-systemit-may-be-almost-as-old-as-the-universe-itself/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auu0iHsPc7I (Dobsonian Power: LIVE TELESCOPE 3I/ATLAS ON JUPITER NOW!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5Ljby6OSsk (Angry Astronaut: 3I Atlas - The Final Chapter! Here's 24 reasons I think 3I Atlas is an Alien Asteroid Ship!)
https://x.com/Medievalhtybuff/status/2033660900775731373