This one's fake, of course, but a great one!
Houston?
On September 30, a spectacular bolide or fireball meteor surprised a group of amateur astronomers enjoying dark night skies over the Oklahoma panhandle's Black Mesa State Park in the Midwestern US. Flashing past familiar constellations Taurus (top) and Orion, the extremely bright meteor was captured by a hillside camera overlooking the 2008 Okie-Tex Star Party.
From: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap081011.html
The STEREO (Ahead) spacecraft observed this visually stunning prominence eruption on Sept. 29, 2008, in the 304 angstrom wavelength of extreme UV light. Prominences are relatively cool clouds of gas suspended above the sun and controlled by magnetic forces.
The prominence rose and cascaded to the right over several hours, appearing something like a flag unfurling, as it broke apart and headed into space. The prominence is composed of ionized Helium that is about 60,000 degrees Kelvin.
Evidence from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Magellan telescopes suggest a star was torn apart by an intermediate-mass black hole in a globular cluster. In this image, X-rays from Chandra are shown in blue and are overlaid on an optical image from the Hubble Space Telescope.
NEWSCOM
Comet McNaught 2009 R1 is pictured in the night sky over Jauerling, Austria, on June 9. The green shimmering comet can be seen with the naked eye under ideal conditions and might become as bright as Ursa Major within June.
Michael Jaeger/Newscom/FILE
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