Today’s (very) partial eclipse begins today at 12:50. It will peak at 1:45, end at 2:38.
There are details here: https://montrealgazette.com/news/partial-solar-eclipse-montreal-wednesday-perseids-shower/
Also, the Perseid meteor shower peaks tonight. Best seen under a dark country sky, the shower will be at its best since it is also new moon. The weather is not promising, but the shower eases off gradually, so you might catch a few later in the week.
EXPLODING COMET MCNAUGHT: There’s an exploding comet in the morning sky. Comet 220P/McNaught was a nondescript speck of 17th magnitude in late May when it suddenly multiplied in brightness 7000-fold. It was fading back toward obscurity when, on Aug. 5th, it exploded again. The second outburst (650x) propelled the comet to 7th magnitude, an easy target for binoculars and small telescopes.
This is what it looks like now:
“We observed the comet in outburst on August 8th,” say photographers Gerald Rhemann and Michael Jäger, who used a 12-inch robotic telescope in Namibia. “It has a shock wave front.”
The comet is in the constellation Cetus near the star Mu Ceti, best seen around 4 AM local time. Its expanding atmosphere is already wider than 7 arcminutes–a quarter the size of a full Moon–with a short tail pointing away from the sun.
Some observers are comparing 220P to Comet 17P/Holmes, which famously exploded in 2007. Holmes brightened a million times, becoming a naked-eye object that you could watch expand from night to night without a telescope. “Mini-Holmes” might be a better name for 220P, although the resemblance is undeniable.
After the first outburst in May, telescopes monitoring 220P’s debris found it rich in gas. Some astronomers suspect a fragment broke off the nucleus, exposing fresh ice to sunlight. If so, more explosions may be in the offing. The comet is near its minimum distance from the sun (a 1.64 AU perihelion on June 14th) and still being exposed to disruptive solar heat.
If only one more fragment falls off, you won’t even need binoculars.
more images: from Ismael Civera of Villatoya, Spain; from Mike Olason of Tucson, Arizona; from Rafael Etges of Huntsville, ON Canada
Genre fans are often avid crafters; “fancrafting” is a term we’ve coined to describe the act of a SF/F fan creating a SF/F-themed craft! And that is what’s on our agenda in just one week’s time, on Saturday, August 15, as we return to our downtown meeting hall at the Nouvel Hotel for our August Fancrafting Workshops!
The afternoon will be dedicated to several, hands-on, how-to workshops on SF/F-themed craft projects, including the making of simple, construction-paper dinosaurs or sci-fi movie monsters, and the fashioning of genre-themed jewellery. See how it’s done, learn a new craft, and try your hand!
Also, MonSFFen are encouraged to bring in, for our display table, examples of their own fancraft, completed projects, those in progress, or both! Share your SF/F-themed creative undertakings with the group!
P.S.: MonSFFen will recall that the digital version of Warp 117 was released back in May, but print copies were not available at that time due to a printer-ink shortage. Update: after several months delay, we’ve finally received our back-order of printer ink, and so we expect to have a limited number of print copies of Warp 117 available at our August meeting!
Space Weather News for Aug. 5, 2026
Free Space Weather Newsletter
THE SUN’S SURFACE IS WEIRDER THAN YOU THOUGHT: A giant telescope in Hawaii just saw something unprecedented on the sun. The surface of our star, it turns out, is covered with tiny ripples and whirlpools that previous telescopes could not see. The images were published Aug. 5th in the journal Nature:
Solar physicists have long suspected these swirls exist, but they were simply too small to see. The Inouye Solar Telescope, the world’s largest with a 4-meter mirror atop Haleakalā on Maui, finally has the resolution to catch them.
The Maui-sized whirlpools are caused by Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities. Van Gogh famously painted them in Starry Night.
Here on Earth, Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities make ocean waves curl when wind blows across water. On the sun, the “wind” is plasma. Where magnetized plasma and non-magnetized plasma slide past one another at different speeds, the boundary between them rolls up into vortices.
This could help solve the long-standing puzzle of where solar flares get their power. These explosions are driven by magnetic energy. The newfound whirlpools build up that energy, creating little reservoirs of power for flares and CMEs.
Even if you don’t believe it or understand it you will love the movies. Watch them here.
Attention MonSFFA club members! The latest issue of our club news bulletin, Impulse (August 2026) is now available for viewing or download! Visit the “Impulse Page” of this Website, or just click here: ImpulseAugust2026(OnlineVersion)PDF
Past issues of Impulse can also be viewed or downloaded via our Website (www.MonSFFA.ca); visit the “Impulse Page.”
This August issue reviews the club’s 2026 summer activities, including our Field Trip to the Montreal Planetarium, and our Barbecue-in-the-Park!
Enjoy this issue of Impulse!
Genre fans are often avid crafters; “fancrafting” is a term we’ve coined to describe the act of a SF/F fan creating a SF/F-themed craft! And that is what’s on our agenda in two weeks’ time, on Saturday, August 15, as we return to our downtown meeting hall at the Nouvel Hotel for our August Fancrafting Workshops!
The afternoon will be dedicated to several, hands-on, how-to workshops on SF/F-themed craft projects, including the making of simple, construction-paper dinosaurs or sci-fi movie monsters, and the fashioning of genre-themed jewellery. See how it’s done, learn a new craft, and try your hand!
Also, MonSFFen are encouraged to bring in, for our display table, examples of their own fancraft, completed projects, those in progress, or both! Share your SF/F-themed creative undertakings with the group!
Potential target for binoculars or small telescopes–CPL
Space Weather News for July 28, 2026
A SPACEX ROCKET IS ABOUT TO HIT THE MOON: On Aug. 5th, a dead SpaceX rocket will slam into the Moon near Einstein crater. The explosion itself will be hidden in lunar daylight, but a new study says the debris plume could rise above the Moon’s edge, visible from Earth for as much as 10 minutes. https://spaceweather.com/
3) THANK YOU, CLOSINGWe thank all of you, our members, for joining us today; we hope you enjoyed the chat. Thanks, as well, to the usual culprits who helped to put this Virtual Picnic together!
The 2026 Virtual Picnic is now officially ended. Don’t forget to comment on today’s event (www.MonSFFA.ca).
Genre fans are often avid crafters; “fancrafting” is a term we’ve coined to describe the act of a SF/F fan creating a SF/F-themed craft! And that is what’s on our agenda in two weeks’ time, on Saturday, August 15, as we return to our downtown meeting hall at the Nouvel Hotel for our August Fancrafting Workshops!
The afternoon will be dedicated to several, hands-on, how-to workshops on SF/F-themed craft projects, including the making of simple, construction-paper dinosaurs or sci-fi movie monsters, and the fashioning of genre-themed jewellery. See how it’s done, learn a new craft, and try your hand!
Also, MonSFFen are encouraged to bring in, for our display table, examples of their own fancraft, completed projects, those in progress, or both! Share your SF/F-themed creative undertakings with the group!
Thank you all for taking part in our 2026 Virtual Picnic. We hope everyone enjoyed themselves this afternoon. As always, we appreciate the enthusiastic involvement of our members, and look forward to getting together again next month, both in person and online, for our Fancrafting Workshops! Until then, have a good evening and keep well.
1) MonSFFA’s 2026 Virtual Picnic!MonSFFA’s 2026 Virtual Picnic will officially begin momentarily! Welcome, one and all! This post has gone up 30 minutes before the official start of the Picnic to allow folk to settle in online.
A little background on the Virtual Picnic, which is held every year following the club’s Barbecue-in-the-Park:
During the pandemic lockdowns, MonSFFA was unable to safely hold its physical meetings and opted to move online, using ZOOM as a means of continuing with our meeting schedule. Post-pandemic, as we returned to our downtown meeting locale, we also chose to carry on with our online activities, offering out-of-town members in particular the opportunity to continue participating from afar.
Because our out-of-towners cannot attend the Barbecue, we host a Virtual Picnic online, via ZOOM. Folk are invited to prepare and enjoy their own picnic lunch at home while taking part in our ZOOM-Chat as a means of touching base with their many MonSFFriends! The conversation is casual, the topics varied, and the camaraderie congenial! We also take the opportunity to briefly update everyone on the latest club business and preview our upcoming meetings and events.
And so, we gather online this afternoon for this year’s Virtual Picnic.
To take part in Sunday this afternoon’s Virtual Picnic online, join our ZOOM video-chat, which will run throughout. Simply click here and follow the prompts: 2026 Virtual Picnic on ZOOM
If you’re not fully equipped to ZOOM, you can also take part by phone (voice only); in the Montreal area, the toll-free number to call is: 1-438-809-7799.
Also, have this information on hand as you may be asked to provide it:
Meeting ID: 868 4746 3035
Passcode: 715868