~11~9~11 ~M1 CLASS SOLAR FLARE EARTH DIRECTED~ CME TO ARRIVE IN ALIGHNMENT WITH 11~11~11

AURORA WATCH: High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras on Nov. 10-11 when a coronal mass ejection could deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field. The source of the CME is a solar filament that erupted during the late hours of Nov. 7th. NOAA forecasters estimate a ~20% chance of polar geomagnetic storms. Auroras alerts: text, voice.

ASTEROID MOVIE: Scientists working with the 70-meter Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California, have generated a short movie clip of asteroid 2005 YU55, which passed through the Earth-Moon system on Nov. 8th. These are the highest-resolution radar images ever obtained for a near-Earth object:

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?collection_id=77341&media_id=119737731

"The images achieve a resolution as fine as 3.75 meters and reveal a number of features that may be boulders on the surface, craters, and possibly ridges," says radar astronomer Lance Benner of JPL, principal investigator for the 2005 YU55 observations.

Better data are in the offing. This first movie covers only a ~2 hour span on Nov. 7th. On Nov. 8th, the asteroid was even closer, and the giant Arecibo radar is now gathering data, too. "To date, we've seen less than one half of the surface, so we expect more surprises," says Benner. Stay tuned!

amateur images: from David Cortner of Rutherford College, NC; from Ernesto Guido et al. using a remote-controlled telescope in New Mexico; from Thomas J Balonek of Hamilton, NY; from Mike Renzi of Lakeville, Massachusetts; from Chris Cook of Cape Cod, Massachusetts; from Steve Riegel of Albuquerque, NM;