Comet Lulin this week is at its brightest and closest to Earth — right when the sky is conveniently moonless. Use binoculars or a telescope to look for it once it's well up in late evening. The comet is glowing at about magnitude 5.6 as it moves rapidly westward across Virgo.
In recent days the comet's dust-spike antitail has grown longer and stronger, completely outclassing its "true" tail, which points properly away from the Sun like a comet's tail should.
On Monday night, February 23rd, the comet passes 2° south-southwest of Saturn.
Lulin’s closest approach to Earth, 0.41 a.u. (61 million km), occurs on February 24th.
On the night of February 25th the comet goes through opposition, nearly 180° from the Sun in our sky. Will there be an "opposition effect" brightening of its dusty coma and dust tail? 
TAKE BACK THE NIGHT!
JOIN THE GLOBE AT NIGHT CAMPAIGN, 16-28 MARCH!
At least 2 out of 5 Americans, 1 out of 6 Europeans and 1 out of 10
people worldwide have never seen 90% of the stars in our night sky.
With half the world's population now living in cities, this problem is
only getting worse. Yet you can easily be part of a local solution to
a global problem.
Take back the night! Take a few minutes to monitor your local night
sky brightness, place your measurement on-line noting your location,
date and time and within a few weeks see a map of light pollution
levels worldwide.
Be part of the "GLOBE at Night" citizen-science campaign and make a
world of difference! The GLOBE at Night campaign runs March 16-28,
2009. Help preserve our natural heritage for generations to come. Find
out more information at www.globe.gov/globeatnight . GLOBE at Night is
an official International Year of Astronomy Dark Skies Awareness
cornerstone project.
100 hours of Astronomy is a 100-hour (from the 2nd to the 5th of April 2009), round-the-clock, round-the-globe event inside the International Year of Astronomy.
It consists of a wide range of public outreach activities, live science center, research observatory webcasts and sidewalk astronomy events. Events are mainly focused on the wonders of the starry night, but there are also events all around the world to observe the crescent Moon for early observer, and of course daytime observations of the Sun.
This Solar TG collaborates with 100 Hours, supporting any activity related to the Sun, and providing instructions, ideas and recommendations for safe solar observations.
And Sunday might perfectly be the best day for a solar event. Star parties on Sunday are difficult since everyone has to get up early for school or work. Let´s enjoy the Sunday, when everyone has free time and kids and adults can all enjoy the near but forgotten Sun and its wonders. Either get up early to start with a nice sunrise, go for a walk on the afternoon or enjoy a wonderful sunset. On the meantime you can participate on a 100 hours solar event. Ask your local astronomy center for more information. If you are an astronomy center, let´s organize one event!. There is no need to restrict it to the Sun, you can event start at sunset and continue with some star gazing…
Let the last day of 100 Hours be the Sun day, not just a Sunday.
For that reason, this page, and on the 100 hours website, we will be encouraging and helping everyone to organize their solar events this day. Here you can find, ideas, resources, experiments. Leave us our comments or ask us any question you might have.
Create your event! The perfect venue is outside, sunshine permitting.
* Always when observing the Sun, follow and educate everyone with safety instructions.
* Set up a telescope with a Solar filter, withe white light of H-Alpha.
* Create a pinhole camera to image the Sun, or better make a workshop to build your own pinhole camera.
* Talk, talk, talk. There are many many topics to talk about our Sun. Speaking about any of them, keeping the live shining reference above us, greatly helps to put closer the wonders and distant worlds of Astronomy. See below for a tentative lists of topics.
* There are many experiments to carry on, like
Measuring the Sun size, and others.
* Make a solar system play with kids (to talk about distances, speeds, sizes, space missions, …
* Construct an spectrometer with a CD.
* Show the photoelectric effect, use sun panels, talk about Solar energy.
* Make coordinated pairs of observations around the world to measure the Sun-Earth distance, or the Earth radius.
Take a look on our resources sections, there you can find links th more activities and experiments, as well as links with even more activities.
Indoors or outdoors, a thematic talk can be a very instructive idea. You can decide to do it just with your voice, or use media materials, like photos or videos (see below for references)
Thematics ( Brainstorming )
* Scales of the Sun, its dimensions, distances, inner parts, …
* Safety and the Sun. Observing the Sun, UV light, …
* Living on the Sun´s atmosphere, influences and safety and dangers due to the heliosphere.
* Space Weather: How the Sun can greatly influence the Earth. Magnetic storms, effects on technology, past solar maxima, dangers and protecting of the Earth´s magnetosphere.
* Current research efforts, satellites observing and serving live image of the Sun from many viewpoints.
* Current biggest misteries of the Sun, like the coronal heat.
* Use the Sun to talk about the life of a star.
* Talk about anecdotes related to the Sun, like the Carringtongs flare, the nuclear false positive, the little-ice age, Vancouver black out, telegraphy on the Sun batteries, proof of Einstein theories during an eclipse, the discovery of the Helium, …
* The Sun in history (from nature, life, to mythology, astrology, … )
* What if? cases: How would humans look like, or exists, if the Sun, were a bit bigger, closer, fainter, more active, calm, emitting more in X-rays or infrareds than on “Visible”, had a companion, Jupiter as a Sun…
* The brother Sun: The Sun and us, we all come from the same dust of a previous father Star.
* Ask an astronomer: Open tables to talk about the skies
Play some on the zillion on movies or documentals about the Sun, eclipses, …
Show the Live view from the Sun, like from Stereo, Hinode, Soho. Use videos of the Sun (Best of Soho, Hinode, Stereo, Trace), from the National Geographic, … (take a look to the resources pages for more links or send us your links!)
Ask your planetarium or science museum to prepare an astronomical event on that day.