TYB
MASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
March 20, 2026
Spring Equinox at Teide Observatory
The defining astronomical moment of the equinox today is at 14:46 UTC (March 20). That's when the Sun crosses the celestial equator moving north in its yearly journey through planet Earth's sky, marking the beginning of spring for our fair planet in the northern hemisphere and fall in the southern hemisphere. Then, day and night are nearly equal around the globe. In fact, both day and nighttime exposures from a spring equinox at the Observatorio del Teide in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, are used in this composited skyscape. Over 1,000 images were taken with a fisheye lens and merged in the ambitious equinox project. The apparent motion of the Sun setting along the celestial equator on the equinox date follows the bright linear, diagonal track from the sequence of daytime exposures taken over 6 hours. After sunset, nighttime exposures recorded startrails, with the celestial equator as a linear track and concentric arcs circling the north celestial pole near Polaris at upper right and the south celestial pole beyond the lower left edge (and below the Teide horizon). The foreground includes the distant Teide volcano peak and the observatory's pyramid-shaped solar laboratory building.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m54qf5Q6xbw
heaven just got a lot more bad ass
1 Impact, 3 More Coming - Solar Storm Forecast | S0 News and finally Friday frens
Mar.20.2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gz7YrB2Gw9w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e_emhOiGjU (Virtual Telescope Project: Northern Lights (Aurorae): a time lapse from the Lofoten Islands)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWnD4mFXD3I (MrMBB333: What Was THAT! Blazing Bright Object Impacts Earth!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiTNWc1G4Ys (On the Pulse with Silki: Something Is Making The Earth Pulse Every 26 Seconds and Nobody knows WHY !!!!!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53TWjSWqGy0 (Dobsonian Power: CANNIBAL PLASMA IS COMING FROM THE SUN!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs2sgM_cMLI (TheEarthMaster: Heads up! Large 7.0 Earthquake Drakes Passage region just now. Thursday)
https://x.com/StefanBurnsGeo/status/2034919694340071848
https://x.com/StefanBurnsGeo/status/2034905751253057937
https://x.com/MrMBB333/status/2034677566133719312
https://x.com/schumannbot/status/2034993390887039274
https://www.space.com/stargazing/auroras/spring-equinox-could-supercharge-northern-lights-march-20-21-heres-why
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/aurora-viewline-tonight-and-tomorrow-night-experimental
https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/earthquakes-volcanoes/news/297284/Volcano-earthquake-report-for-Wednesday-11-Mar-2026.html
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/
https://spaceweather.com/
https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/latest-news-on-kreutz-sungrazing-comet-c-2026-a1-maps/
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/ae5220
https://astrobiology.com/2026/03/post-perihelion-coma-composition-of-the-interstellar-comet-3i-atlas-from-optical-spectroscopy.html
https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.07718
https://www.tomorrowsworldtoday.com/space/interstellar-object-3i-atlas-makes-a-close-approach-to-jupiter/
https://news.ssbcrack.com/3i-atlas-where-it-is-now-and-when-it-will-leave-our-solar-system/
https://www.mixvale.com.br/2026/03/19/space-agencies-track-unprecedented-radio-signals-emitted-by-interstellar-comet-3i-atlas-en/amp/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVAJqbzcedg (Ray's Astro: Comet 3I ATLAS Did Something We Never Expected — I Took a Picture)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsZxWtGrgz0 (Chuck's Astro: Live: Let's Capture Some Galaxies)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO1cAyIElKk (John Michael Godier: Quasi-Stars, the Little Red Dots and the James Webb Telescope)
Latest News on the Kreutz Sungrazing Comet C/2026 A1 MAPS and Other Comets
March 18, 2026
As the comet prepares for its perilous perihelion passage, we look at what to expect.
We're all wondering the same thing. How bright will Comet C/2026 A1 MAPS get?
Will it become a splendid sight like some of its sungrazing siblings of the past or will it fracture and fade?
With perihelion less than three weeks away, a definitive answer is lacking, but we can still speculate. First, let's examine its recent behavior.
Between March 6th and March 9th, C/2026 A1 quickly brightened by almost 1.5 magnitudes, from 12 to 10.5.
At the same time, its coma (the comet's gaseous envelope) expanded 50% from 6′ to 9′, and its core became more compact. Exciting news!
Then from March 11–17, in a seeming setback, the comet's brightness plateaued and its well-condensed coma shrank back to 6′.
Regardless, these swift changes made it possible to finally catch a brief glimpse of this fickle fuzzy through my telescope. Comet MAPS has been notoriously difficult to spot due to its very low altitude (less than 10°) in the western sky at the end of evening twilight.
I pinned it down in the trees just a few degrees above the horizon on March 13th. Through my 15-inch Dobsonian reflector, I saw a moderately condensed coma that spanned about 4′ with an overall magnitude of 10.0.
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Gazing into the Crystal Ball
French optical engineer and amateur photographer Nicolas Lefaudeux has kept abreast of the comet's evolution and created tail simulations based on four possible scenarios:
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Pre-perihelion breakup — Comet C/2026 A1's nucleus crumbles, destroyed by intense solar heating and gravitational tides. Comet ISON experienced a similar fate during its 2013 apparition. In this scenario, only a faint remnant of C/2026 A1 remains. Rating: A fizzler.
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"Headless" comet (post-perihelion breakup) — The comet's nucleus survives perihelion but breaks apart shortly after, producing a ghostly head with a bright tail perhaps as long as 15°. Rating: Great object for amateur astronomers, much less so for the public.
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Medium-sized Kreutz comet — Comet survives perihelion intact to become a bright object somewhere between Comet Lovejoy (C/2011 W3), which reached peak brightness between magnitude –3 and –4, and Comet Ikeya-Seki (C/1965 S1) at magnitude –10. Rating: Primarily an object for amateur observers but gathering some public attention.
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Ikeya-Seki-sized Kreutz comet — C/2026 A1 would emerge from the solar glare on April 7th at magnitude –10 with a 10° tail that would grow to 30° by mid-month. Rating: Knock your socks off.
Of course, always take comet forecasts with a grain of sodium chloride. Lefaudeux's simulations are based on reasonable expectations tied to current observational trends.
"Nothing will be certain until a few days after perihelion, as it is the dust released between ~6 hours and 3–4 days after perihelion that mostly determines the tail’s length and brightness," said Lefaudeux.
Assuming that C/2026 A1 survives, we would expect to see a narrow but bright tail because Earth will be in line with the comet's orbital plane. We'll see MAPS "edge-on," similar to viewing Saturn's rings at the planet's equinoxes.
In the just-published paper, Preliminary Nucleus Size Estimate for Kreutz Sungrazer C/2026 A1 (MAPS), Qicheng Zhang and his team used the James Webb Space Telescope to nail down the size of the nucleus to approximately 0.4 kilometer, or ¼ mile — similar to Comet Lovejoy's.
"That suggests C/2026 A1 could still survive perihelion," writes Zhang. Lovejoy pulled through and briefly became a bright, fetching object with a long tail.
But given MAPS's high level of outgassing (ice vaporization due to solar heating), Zhang offers a second possibility.
Thruster-like torques from comet jets could literally spin the nucleus apart "before it even enters the fields of coronagraphs." Then it would become another ISON.
Fortunately, we'll be able to watch C/2026 A1 make a hairpin turn around the Sun in SOHO's wide-field LASCO C3 and narrow-field LASCO C2 coronagraphs.
It will enter the former's field of view from the lower left early on April 2nd and pass through perihelion some 160,000 km (100,000 miles) above the Sun's farside surface on April 4th at 9:13 a.m. EDT.
The comet swiftly swings around to the solar nearside and departs the C2 field around 1 a.m. EDT April 6th.
Amateur astronomer and comet discoverer Michael Jäger, whose superb images have graced the pages of Sky & Telescope for decades, is curious why MAPS is producing so little dust. Dust adds pizzazz to comets because it's a good reflector of sunlight.
"Is the nucleus so dust-free from its last passage near the Sun that it has developed a hard crust?" he asks. "Or is it a small, gas-rich comet that’s on its last legs?"
He hopes his first assumption is correct, in which case "we'll have a show." There's only one way to know for sure. You guessed it — keep your eyes on the comet!
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First finds are in: Meteorites discovered in Medina County
Updated: Mar. 19, 2026, 8:02 p.m.|Published: Mar. 19, 2026, 4:13 p.m.
CLEVELAND, Ohio – The hunt for meteorites from Tuesday’s exploding asteroid over Cleveland is just beginning, but already Mike Hankey of the American Meteor Society is reporting that several have been found.
One in particular, discovered by fellow meteorite hunter Roberto Vargas of Connecticut, is not like the typical specimens. It has tiny spikes called “flow lines” protruding from one end that would have formed when the crust of the streaking space rock melted under astronomical heat.
“When you see these flow lines that’s just like a slam dunk,” said Hankey, who drove up from Baltimore, Maryland, Tuesday night to be on hand.
The most common meteorites are called chondrites and have iron, nickel and spherical grains of other metals, Hankey said, but those that are being found south of Cleveland are achondrites, which means they lack those same minerals.
Hankey said he expects a flood of meteorite hunters to converge on the area this weekend. The base of activity appears to be around Sharon Center.
NASA mapped the likely “strewn field” — where fragments may have landed — from roughly northern Medina County stretching south-southwest toward Rittman and parts of Wayne County.
“The game is to just walk around a lot in places you can see the ground,” Hankey said, adding that a metal detector may not be of much help because of the contents of the meteorites.
He recommends looking for black objects and then filtering out those that are bits of asphalt or perhaps slag, a steel-making residue that gets mixed in with construction material. A black rock with bubbles or holes is likely slag.
He said Thursday afternoon that there are several out-of-town hunters in the area from places such as Connecticut, Arizona, Michigan and Washington.
“I heard a guy from Germany came in,” he said.
https://www.cleveland.com/news/2026/03/first-finds-are-in-meteorites-discovered-in-medina-county.html
Tennessee Congressman Claims NASA Is ‘Lying’ About UFOs, Is Hiding Classified Files
Last Updated Mar 20, 2026 10:11 am
Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett claims that NASA is “lying” about what it knows about UFOs. He also claims the American space agency is hiding classified files on the subject.
Burchett, a member of the House Oversight Committee that is investigating UFO reports, claims to believe this because he has attended meetings with NASA to discuss alien aircraft.
“The lying that goes on in these departments,” he said during an appearance on One America News this week. “NASA saying, ‘We don’t have any of this’ or ‘We haven’t studied any of this.’
“I have been in meetings with them, or they’ve told me they studied it and that they have stuff that is classified that they can’t share with the public.”
When asked why there aren’t more whistleblowers willing to come forward with what they know about UFOs, Tim Burchett responded that he thinks it is because “they’re afraid someone will disappear them.”
“I think being murdered is what they’re afraid of,” he said. “I think some of them truly are because of things they’ve seen.”
When contacted by DailyMail.com to comment on Burchett’s statements about NASA hiding information about UFOs, the space agency replied with a link to an X post from its press secretary, Bethany Stevens.
It reads: “We continue to make all NASA data publicly available and welcome public participation using our data.
As the NASA Administrator has said, there are certainly things he’s come across in the job that he can’t explain… but they relate more to unnecessarily costly programs than they do to extraterrestrial life.”
Previous claims and current coincidences
Congressman Burchett’s claims come in the same week that the United States government mysteriously purchased two new domain names: alien.gov and aliens.gov.
His statements also come shortly after Donald Trump announced plans to declassify federal information on unexplained aerial phenomena (UAPs, or what the government now calls UFOs) and alien life.
They also coincide with the mysterious disappearance of retired U.S. Air Force Major General William Neil McCasland.
Burchett is no stranger to making outlandish UFO claims, however. In 2023, he accused the government of not being honest with the public about UFOs and aliens.
He has also claimed the United States government has alien tech in its possession that it is currently reverse-engineering which could “turn us into a charcoal briquette.”
In 2025, the Congressman claimed that the United States government has knowledge about underwater alien bases. As a part of his claims, Burchett said there are “entities” located at five or six deep-water sites on Earth.
https://brobible.com/culture/article/tennessee-congressman-nasa-lying-ufos-classified-files/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdEEpxeXyng (Air Force General Vanishes After UFO Secrets: What Did He Know?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cayhdcTqTRw (The Hannibal TV: NASA Just Released Footage of Something We Can't Explain)