Sensors at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant have detected a fresh leak of highly radioactive water to the sea, the plant’s operator, Tepco, announced Sunday, February 22 highlighting continued difficulties in decommissioning the crippled atomic station, The Japan Times writes.

The operator said the sensors, which were rigged to a gutter that drains rain and groundwater at the plant into a nearby bay, detected contamination levels up to 70 times greater than the already-high radioactive status seen on the plant grounds.

The higher-than-normal levels of contamination were detected at around 10 a.m. (local time), with sensors showing radiation levels 50 to 70 times greater than usual, Tepco said.

The levels of beta ray-emitting substances, such as strontium-90, measured 5 050 to 7 230 becquerels per liter of water between 10:20 a.m. and 10:50 a.m. 

The latest incident, one of several that have plagued the plant in recent months, reflects the difficulty in controlling...

An unusual comet named SOHO-2875 is skirting past the Sun since February 18, 2015 and is still visible on LASCO C3 imagery.

At first it appeared to be a small object about to be disintegrated by the Sun's heat, but surprisingly it emerged intact and is now brightening as it recedes from the Sun. 

Although most comets SOHO sees belong to the Kreutz family of comets (fragments from the breakup of a single giant comet many centuries ago), SOHO-2875 is not one of them.

"It's a 'non-group comet,' meaning that it does not appear to be related to any other comet or comet family that we have on record," explains Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab.

SOHO-2875 at first appears as a faint dot in the upper right, then eventually swoops just under the Sun. Towards the end of the video, as the comet begins to sport a tail, the Sun bursts out with a Coronal Mass Ejection to add something more to the scene.

Night-sky photographer Alan Dyer captured a surprising red aurora over Churchill, Manotoba, Canada on February 14, 2015.

The image below is his single, 25-second exposure at f/3.5 with the 180° fish-eye lens and Canon 6D at ISO 4000. It is part of a time-lapse sequence, taken at -30° C.

Taken by Alan Dyer (amazingsky.com) on February 14, 2015 @ Churchill, Manitoba (via SpaceWeather)

"The curtains appeared mainly red at the start," Dyer writes. "Then the green auroral curtains seen here off in the distance in the northeast, moved from east to west, from the horizon here to overhead over the next few minutes. The aurora then took on the more normal appearance with green curtains topped by fringes of red. Jupiter is at right."

Red auroras occur some 300 to 500 km above Earth's surface, much higher than ordinary green auroras and...

A huge solar filament is facing Earth today and, if it doesn't erupt, will continue to do so in the coming days. Stretched out, it would be more than 857 780 km or 533 000 miles long, which is more than 67 Earth diameters. 

Image below shows this filament as seen by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) on February 10, 2015. Since SDO shows colder material as dark and hotter material as light, this snaked visible line is, in fact, an enormous swatch of colder material hovering in the Sun's atmosphere, the corona. 

Filaments can float for days before disappearing, but sometimes they destabilize and erupt out in space, releasing solar material in a shower that either rains back down to the solar surface or escapes out into space, becoming a moving cloud which we know as a Coronal Mass Ejection, or CME.

The period of February through March is not known meteor activity, however, the fireball season starts this month and will last until April. The best fireball activity occurs during the early evening hours so watch out for those bright balls of fire.

There are only a couple of weak showers expected in Northern Hemisphere this month but Southern Hemisphere observers can enjoy Alpha Centaurids which will peak on February 8. Although meteors from this stream have been seen as early as February 2 and as late as February 25 it is difficult to detect it except on its peak night when they can produce hourly rates of 3 - 5.

Next major meteor shower is scheduled for the nights of April 22 and 23 when Lyrids are expected to peak.

Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) is performing better than expected and you should still be able to find it as it drifts northward into the stars of Andromeda.

• February 3 - Full Moon - 23:09 UTC. This full moon was known by early Native American tribes as the Full Snow Moon because the heaviest snows usually fell during this time of the year...