I live in a hollow in the mountains, so I only view a swath of sky.

Lately, since I'm an old duck, I've been disturbed because things aren't where they used to be: Solaris, Orion and the Milky Way seem to have "moved over," thattaway.

There are hundreds of photos on-line of solar anomalies; and everybody has his pet theory what's going on; but what's in the news is Mars, at the other end of the sky. The sun doesn't get mentioned. This does not bode well.

The Yellowstone caldera is like a big pimple, ready to pop. But nobody's making any plans.

This is all disquieting. At the same time, the people who tell me, "Nothing ever changes. Don't worry," are sounding sillier and sillier.

What's your collective "take" on this?

The only thing permanent is change.

snowflake

I promise you, none of the constellations have moved relative to each other. Keep in mind that the overall sky shifts each night as the Earth goes around the Sun. That's why we see some constellations in the summer, like the Summer triangle, and then other constellations in the winter, like Orion.

The individual stars are actually moving in the sky but very very slowly from our perspective. It would take thousands of years for you to notice things looking differently.

I'm not sure what photos of solar anomolies you're talking about, but I scan all of the observatory/space agency news several times a day and I haven't heard a peep that anything strange is going on.

Can you give me more information what you're talking about?

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Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today - Free space news delivered by email every weekday.

What does THIS mean?

http://www.abidemiracles.com/images/lastim...090403_1840.gif

[since it won't post after three tries]

Still won't post. HERE, the original, but it's time-stamped and will change:

http://lasco-www.nrl.navy.mil/java/lastC3.html

The link doesn't work, but when I visited the original abidemiracles.com website, I think I saw the image you're talking about.

Those are lens flares. When a camera is pointed at an extremely bright object, such as the Sun, the light bounces around inside the camera before falling on the "film" (or CCD in a digital camera). When you're pointing it at the Sun, it can create false images, that look like rogue planets, etc.

If you take a look at the SOHO archives, which are continuous images taken by the Sun by an observatory in space, you'll see that they don't mention any kind of anomolies with the Sun.

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/

I suspect you're concerned about the silly Planet X - an imaginary rogue planet that people were predicting would sweep past the Earth in May 2003 and cause immense damage and loss of life. Well, it didn't, but Nancy's predictions freaked a lot of people out.

If you're interested in reading a detailed analysis of Nancy's baseless predictions, check out this article at Bad Astronomy. They've also got a lively discussion forum about this very subject here where you can ask your question to many people who are very experienced about this debate.

__________________
Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today - Free space news delivered by email every weekday.

...It's ALL NOTHING BUT lens flares and stuff like that, eh?

...There's nothing going on; nothing to notice; no changes.

...I'll buy a share in the Brooklyn Bridge before I'll believe THAT.

...Sheesh.