Tonight due to powerful X-class solar flares earlier this week we may get to see the Aurora Borealis at latitudes where it usually is not visible.    The Northern Lights are the result of charged particles from the Sun interacting with Earth's magnetic field.  They ride the lines of magnetic force towards the north and south pole and release light as their acceleration changes.   



This is one of the most beautiful sights in nature. A view of the Aurora Australis from the international space station.

The minor controversy over whether the 38 foot wide gouge near Managua Nicaragua is a impact crater leads me to the question, how easy is it to tell by sight alone if something is an impact crater or not?  So let's play crater or not crater. 

To find the answer click the pictures and there will be a link to a source which shows that one image is a impact crater or not impact crater.  That is in cases where it's uncontroversially clear. 

The first candidate. 
1


2. Now the second one. 

2014RC is a 60 foot (or about 20 meter) wide asteroid detected at the last possible minute.  This small asteroid will not hit Earth.  What about the ones like it that eventually will?   I ask that question because it is a certainty the last time Earth was hit by an asteroid of this size wasn't the last time forever. If it was going to hit there are three things we could do about it. 

Some facts about 2014RC

My Kickstarter project has closed having raised  $220 out of the needed $2500 to help me either publish some scientific papers or to buy a telescope for astronomy students to use. Instead of money I got discounts on the publication fees from the journal Science Open Research, I was invited to publish for free in The Winnower, and the International Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics. So my Kickstarter got one of my papers published, and the other two closer to being published. In that sense my project was also a success.

14 days are left in my kickstarter and I have $55 in  pledges as of this writing.  However, I have discounts from the publishers.  This kickstarter may have influenced the prospective publishers of my papers to give me about $1000 in discounts.

If someone can use Kickstarter to raise $50,000 for making potato salad, perhaps, I can raise at least $2500 to pay publication fees on three papers.  It is a little known fact that formally publishing an article in a scientific journal cost money.