Astro Bob

Gosh, what a busy week, and it's only Wednesday. Congratulations to the NASA team for a flawless sample capture yesterday at Bennu. The OSIRIS-REx space probe successfully touched the surface of the asteroid, disturbed its ancient soil and rocks with a blast of nitrogen gas and snatched bits and pieces to return to Earth in 2023.You can take a tour of the asteroid and get to know its boulders by name in the video above. The agency will release new images  of the sample acquisition at a news conference today beginning at 4 p.m. CDT (5 p.m. EDT).  The author watches the aurora on a chilly evening several years back. The arc — visible in this photo — is the aurora's most common form. As activity increases, faint, parallel rays will often appear within the arc. Bob King Tonight (Oct. 21) and tomorrow night we have a shot a seeing the northern lights. As the sun is now near the minimum of its 11-year cycle, coronal holes rather than solar flares are primarily responsible for sendin