If my calculations are correct we will see a partial eclipse from 6.00 to 6.45 pm on Monday. Rather than burning out your retinas you might like to check out the rather elaborate animations at Shadow and Substance, all manner of astronomical excitement at the NASA eclipse site or an explanation as to why BD gardeners might want to take the day off…

Photograph: Anne-Maree

A beautiful portent of love & fortune as Venus, Jupiter and the waxing Moon tango in Capricorn.

Photograph: Anne-Maree Taranto 

Lightning in all directions electrified the skies last night! What a lightshow!

Click here for a film clip taken from the Chapel bridge of lightning striking the northern horizon. The footage is slowed down to a tenth of the actual speed.

Footage by Anne-Maree Taranto

The sun has broken a long spell in solar minimum this week with emergent activity ushering in sun cycle 24. Check out more excellent images of our favourite star.

Image: Detailed closeup of magnetic structures on the Sun’s surface, seen in the H-alpha wavelength on August 22, 2003. (Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope (SST) operated by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Oddbjorn Engvold, Jun Elin Wiik, Luc Rouppe van der Voort)

Copley skies never cease to amaze and here is another fascinating instance of Flinders Ranges magic, captured by Di. What do you think it is?

The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.
- Douglas Adams

One peek into a small part of the sky, one giant leap back in time. The Hubble telescope has provided mankind’s deepest, most detailed visible view of the universe.

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While we’re waiting for our Solar Telescope to arrive, you might like to try making your own solar viewer… and if you think this sounds like fun, have a look at the animations made out of Galileo’s sunspot drawings of 1613, pictured above.

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Solar activity is surging. Three large sunspots have materialized and at least one of them harbors energy for strong solar flares. An M2-class eruption on March 25th hurled a coronal mass ejection (CME) into space and emitted radio bursts audible in shortwave receivers on Earth. NOAA forecasters estimate a 50% chance of more M-flares during the next 24 hours.

Visit http://spaceweather.com to see pictures of the burgeoning
sunspots and to listen to yesterday’s radio flare, as well as other weather reports from the galactic neighbourhood.

Story submitted by Nigel