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Planet Earth, Our Home Planet

The Birth of Our Sun

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Our Solar System

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African Continent
as seen from space

The impact of humanity on the Earth better seen than from space, and never is it more noticeable than at night. Scientists use satellite photographs of artificial lights to chart the spread of urbanizing, but such photographs also tell another story, that of energy wastage, bathing urban skies in a permanent twilight. that obscures our view of the wider Universe we inhabit. Light pollution, as it is termed, is a growing concern to environmentalists as well as astronomers. The photograph at the right, taken from the Space Shuttle, offers a closer view of the bright lights on the northeastern seaboard of the United States, looking obliquely from the north.

A Meteorite that struck in prehistoric times.

This meteorite struck near Hoba West, Namibia, in prehistoric times. Found in 1920, it weighs 60 tonnes, one of the largest objects to survive its impact.3. Found in the Atacama Desert, Chile, in the early19th century, this stony-iron meteorite was forged during the evolution of the Solar System. Larger meteorites, whether or not they are comets remnants, have had a steady, and often drastic, influence on the evolution of the planets -the Earth included. Some that enter the Earth's atmosphere never make it to the surface. Between1975 and 1992, American satellites recorded 136 explosions in the upper atmosphere, all probably small would-be meteorites.

Flare of the Sun (Solar Flare)

This prominence from Sunspots can measure as much as 50,000 kilometers (31,000 miles) across, July 1999 was particularly large. They are convenient indicators of the Sun's overall level of activity from the Sun. Erupting prominences, can affect and, therefore, of the influence the Sun will exert upon the Earth. For example, communications, navigation systems, radio signals from the Sun can be directly related to sunspots. In fact a graph even power grids, while also producing showing sunspot activity for a given period looks almost identical to a graph auroras visible in the night skies. that shows solar radio emission for the same period. Radio signals can tell us of the existence of an otherwise obscured sunspot, and the sunspot itself mayflower into a prominence or a flare that will disturb Earth's region of space. Both prominences and flares appear as violent displays of luminous solar debris and generally may be seen as clouds of ionized matter standing out from the Sun's limb or as characteristic markings on the disc itself. But there is a difference. Prominences linger much longer on the solar surface than flares. And prominences are seen as cascades of debris that may move downward along magnetic lines to the solar surface, sometimes in the form of arches that can span many tens of thousands of miles. Thus the material that forms a prominence is largely confined to the solar atmosphere. On the other hand , flares characteristically leap out from a single point of disturbance and form plasma blast. If it is in the path of this plasma tongue, the Earth will soon experience a magnetic storm with its attendant radio interference and aurora displays. It was also observed that aurora often followed a flare-up of explosions on the Sun's surface.