It's called the Wolf Moon because of folklore: northern Native Americans named it
after packs of singing wolves they once heard during the winter month of January.
WOLF MOON RISING: Last night, Jan. 19th, as photographer Laurent Laveder was positioning his camera in front of the Tronoen Chapel in Brittany, France, he received a text message from his stepdaughter Manon. "Look at the Moon!
)" she typed. "She didn't know I already was!" says Laveder. Click on the bell tower to view the movie he recorded, entitled Wolf Moon Rising:PLASMA RAIN: A sheet of plasma more than 350,000 km wide is rising and falling along the sun's southwestern limb today. It's so big, it makes an easy target for backyard observatories. Amateur astronomer Michael Buxton sends this time lapse movie from Ocean Beach, California:
http://www.spaceweather.com/swpod2011/19jan11/plasmarain.m4v?PHPSESSID=plsdsdb4ggddme99oiunjfjg10
"I made the movie at 1 minute intervals from 1753-1934 UT on Jan. 18th," he explains. "It was a real jaw dropper. Even in my small telescope (a 4-inch Takahashi refractor with a H-alpha solar filter) you could clearly see blobs of plasma falling to the stellar surface."
Latest images from NASA's Dynamics Observatory show that the prominence is still present and active. Readers with solar telescopes are encouraged to monitor the plasma rain.
more images:
http://www.spaceweather.com/
