The end of the end of the world, beautiful photos of the Indian launch and the launch date of the heavy "Angara"

Discovered today interesting news:

NASA warns that from December 16 to 22 darkness will come on our planet. According to the researchers, almost 90 percent of the sunlight will be blocked, and the inhabitants of the planet Earth will be able to view the Northern Lights from any point, as different colors will appear in the sky. <...> It is worth noting that the researchers dubbed this spot AR2192

They say that she walked on news sites and social services. networks in November. If you have seen this in your tapes, it's time to ask those who thoughtlessly like it and the repost: "where are my northern lights and other fun illumination?".

I was amazed at this news with my arrogance - to attribute my assertions to such a serious organization like NASA in the blue eye.

It is difficult to say what exactly was the source of the apocalyptic news. Someone blames religious groups for this, but it seems to me that the matter is somewhat simpler. The search for “AR2192” gives a really large group of sunspots that were shown on the NASA website or on the Astronomy Picture of the Day resource. The area is really big and curious, someone could misunderstand the explanations, get scared, and further this meme has already developed along the beaten track rumors:

- Oh, what is going on! Yesterday they dug trench
So dug two cognac jets.
- They say spies poisoned the water.
Moonshine. Well, and bread, now from fish scales.

V.S. Vysotsky, "Song of the rumors."
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Speaking briefly about sunny weather, one can try to predict the magnetic storm by solar activity for a day or two with not very high accuracy, and, directly fixing the disturbances of the solar wind by special satellites, about an hour before these disturbances cover the Earth.

The current “space weather” can be viewed on special sites ( for example, a good resource ), and the accuracy of predictions of magnetic storms for the month ahead is very low.

If you see a strange news, then do not be afraid, reflexively pressing the "Like" and "Tell friends" buttons. Check the source of the news - is he competent enough in the subject area? If the source is not credible, try searching the news in the search engines - maybe it has already been refuted? Look, does the news fit into your knowledge of the world, or are they telling you about how “The Earth will fly on the heavenly axis”? If you do not know the subject area, take at least a couple of minutes to figure it out - often even Wikipedia is enough to weed out the obvious nonsense and fake.

Beautiful Indian Launch Photos

As you know, on December 18, India successfully tested the GSLV Mk.III missile and the descent vehicle of the future manned spacecraft. The news passed by GeekTimes, not least because beautiful illustrations did not appear immediately.

Startup video, if anyone missed:



And after about a day, the Indian space agency published a photo in good quality :

Rocket launch:



The descent vehicle after landing:

Date of launch "Angara"

The information quietly and quietly passed that the heavy "Angara" will be allowed already tomorrow - December 23, at 8:57 Moscow time. There will not be online broadcasts, but correspondents will most likely be at the spaceport and share with us the news. About ten minutes after the start, the Breeze-M upper stage with the payload layout will have to be in a low near-earth orbit, and after about nine hours it will take the layout to a geostationary orbit. After the removal, as expected, the upper stage will not reset the layout of the payload, but will go into burial orbit with it.

Photos of the second export in the network unnoticed, sentries at the post:



Perhaps, only this photo from the second takeout to the launch complex:



At 9 Moscow time, I will work, maybe someone with a freer schedule organizes an online report with aggregation of news, photos and videos. If not, the latest news on the Astronautics News forum .

Now the last hours are expiring, when it still makes sense to engage in predictions. You can fix them in the comments to make it more interesting to watch tomorrow.