Lights Over lapland is excited to announce that Autumn Aurora Adventures are available for immediate booking! Reserve your adventure of a lifetime in Abisko National Park, Sweden today! |
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ANIMATED SOLAR ECLIPSE MAPS: The Great American Solar Eclipse is less than one month away. How much of the sun will be covered over your home town? A great way to find out: Animated eclipse maps created by science-artist Larry Koehn. On his web site, there are individual maps for all 50 US states as well as little-known eclipse zones in Canada and Europe. Check it out! Free: Solar Flare Alerts
NOCTILUCENT OUTBURST: Nighttime sky watchers in northern Europe are reporting intensifying displays of noctilucent clouds (NLCs). "Last night, we saw the first bright and powerful NLC of the year," says Jüri Voit, who sends this picture from Estonia:
NLCs are, essentially, clouds of frosted meteor smoke. They form when wisps of summertime water vapor rise toward the top of Earth's atmosphere. Water molecules stick to the microscopic debris of disintegrated meteoroids, assembling themselves into tiny crystals of ice that glow electric-blue in sunlight at the edge of space.
Long ago, noctilucent clouds were confined to polar latitudes. In recent years, however, they have been sighted over a growing area, as far south in the USA as Kansas and Colorado. Some researchers believe this is a result of climate change.
Observing tips: Look west 30 to 60 minutes after sunset when the sun has dipped 10o below the horizon. If you see luminous blue-white tendrils spreading across the sky, you may have spotted a noctilucent cloud.
Realtime
Noctilucent Cloud Photo Gallery
GIGANTIC JETS OVER HAWAII: Every night, the Gemini cloudcam atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii monitor storms approaching some of the world's largest telescopes. It often captures bright bolts of lightning lancing down to the ground below the towering dormant volcano. On July 24th it captured something lancing up:
"This amazing lightning-like phenomenon is known as a Gigantic Jet," says Frankie Lucena of Puerto Rico, who processed the video. "They are related to sprites, but more powerful and easier to see with the naked eye. A special thanks to Steve Cullen for finding the Gigantic Jet at the beginning of the [original video]."
Cloudcam video caught at least three of these jets springing from the tops of a powerful growing thunderstorm. The tallest of them reached all the way to the ionosphere some 80 km overhead.
"Gigantic Jets are much more rare than sprites," says Oscar van der Velde, a member of the Lightning Research Group at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. "While sprites were discovered in 1989 and have since been photographed by the thousands, it was not until 2001-2002 that Gigantic Jets were first recorded from Puerto Rico and Taiwan." Only a few dozen Gigantic Jets have ever been seen, mostly over open ocean.
Sometimes called "space lightning," Gigantic Jets and their cousins the sprites are true space weather phenomena. They inhabit the upper atmosphere alongside auroras, meteors and noctilucent clouds. Some researchers believe they are linked to cosmic rays: subatomic particles from deep space striking the top of Earth's atmosphere produce secondary electrons that could, in turn, provide the spark for these upward bolts.
The link to cosmic rays is particularly interesting at this time. For the past two years, space weather balloons have observed a steady increase in deep space radiation penetrating our atmosphere. This increase is largely due to the decline in the solar cycle. Flagging solar wind pressure and weakening sunspot magnetic fields allow more cosmic rays into the inner solar system--a trend which is expected to continue for for years to come. These changes could add up to more Gigantic Jets in the future. Free: Solar Flare Alerts
Realtime
Sprite Photo Gallery
SOLAR ECLIPSE SPACE PENDANTS: Would you like to support our Solar Eclipse Balloon Network? Here's one way: Buy a space pendant. This solar eclipse-themed necklace flew to the stratosphere on July 2, 2017, attached to the payload of an Earth to Sky Calculus space weather balloon:
The payload contained more just like it. If you buy one now for $79.95, we will fly it back to the stratosphere during the Great American Solar Eclipse on August 21, 2017, where it will be enveloped by the Moon's cool shadow above our launch site in Oregon. No additional charge! Just make a note in the COMMENTS BOX of the shopping cart: "Please fly my pendant into the eclipse!" Each pendant comes with a greeting card showing the jewelry in flight and telling the story of its journey to the stratosphere and back again.
More items from the edge of space may be found in the Earth to Sky Store. All proceeds support atmospheric radiation monitoring and hands-on STEM education.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All proceeds support hands-on STEM education
Realtime
Space Weather Photo Gallery
Realtime
Aurora Photo Gallery
Every night, a network
of
NASA
all-sky cameras scans the skies above the United
States for meteoritic fireballs. Automated software
maintained by NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office
calculates their orbits, velocity, penetration depth
in Earth's atmosphere and many other characteristics.
Daily results are presented here on Spaceweather.com.
On Jul. 28, 2017, the network reported 27 fireballs.
(19 sporadics, 3 Perseids, 3 Southern delta Aquariids, 2 alpha Capricornids)
In this diagram of the inner solar system, all of the fireball orbits intersect at a single point--Earth. The orbits are color-coded by velocity, from slow (red) to fast (blue). [Larger image] [movies]
Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (
PHAs)
are space rocks larger than approximately 100m that
can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU. None of the
known PHAs is on a collision course with our planet,
although astronomers are finding
new
ones all the time.
On
July 28, 2017 there were 1803
potentially hazardous asteroids.
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Recent
& Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:
| Asteroid |
Date(UT) |
Miss Distance |
Velocity (km/s) |
Diameter (m) |
| 2017 OL1 |
2017-Jul-23 |
14.9 LD |
12.1 |
167 |
| 2017 BS5 |
2017-Jul-23 |
3.1 LD |
5.8 |
54 |
| 2017 OM1 |
2017-Jul-25 |
2.3 LD |
15.9 |
77 |
| 2017 OE1 |
2017-Jul-25 |
8.7 LD |
17.3 |
45 |
| 2011 CC22 |
2017-Aug-04 |
15.5 LD |
18.4 |
186 |
| 2014 OA339 |
2017-Aug-13 |
12.3 LD |
10 |
47 |
| 3122 |
2017-Sep-01 |
18.5 LD |
13.5 |
5376 |
| 2014 RC |
2017-Sep-11 |
15.1 LD |
8.9 |
16 |
Notes: LD means
"Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance
between Earth and the Moon. 1 LD also equals 0.00256
AU. MAG is the visual magnitude of the asteroid on
the date of closest approach.
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Cosmic Rays in the Atmosphere |
Readers, thank you for your patience while we continue to develop this new section of Spaceweather.com. We've been working to streamline our data reduction, allowing us to post results from balloon flights much more rapidly, and we have developed a new data product, shown here:
This plot displays radiation measurements not only in the stratosphere, but also at aviation altitudes. Dose rates are expessed as multiples of sea level. For instance, we see that boarding a plane that flies at 25,000 feet exposes passengers to dose rates ~10x higher than sea level. At 40,000 feet, the multiplier is closer to 50x. These measurements are made by our usual cosmic ray payload as it passes through aviation altitudes en route to the stratosphere over California.
What is this all about? Approximately once a week, Spaceweather.com and the students of Earth to Sky Calculus fly space weather balloons to the stratosphere over California. These balloons are equipped with radiation sensors that detect cosmic rays, a surprisingly "down to Earth" form of space weather. Cosmic rays can seed clouds, trigger lightning, and penetrate commercial airplanes. Furthermore, there are studies ( #1, #2, #3, #4) linking cosmic rays with cardiac arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death in the general population. Our latest measurements show that cosmic rays are intensifying, with an increase of more than 13% since 2015:
Why are cosmic rays intensifying? The main reason is the sun. Solar storm clouds such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) sweep aside cosmic rays when they pass by Earth. During Solar Maximum, CMEs are abundant and cosmic rays are held at bay. Now, however, the solar cycle is swinging toward Solar Minimum, allowing cosmic rays to return. Another reason could be the weakening of Earth's magnetic field, which helps protect us from deep-space radiation.
The radiation sensors onboard our helium balloons detect X-rays and gamma-rays in the energy range 10 keV to 20 MeV. These energies span the range of medical X-ray machines and airport security scanners.
The data points in the graph above correspond to the peak of the Reneger-Pfotzer maximum, which lies about 67,000 feet above central California. When cosmic rays crash into Earth's atmosphere, they produce a spray of secondary particles that is most intense at the entrance to the stratosphere. Physicists Eric Reneger and Georg Pfotzer discovered the maximum using balloons in the 1930s and it is what we are measuring today.
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The
official U.S. government space weather bureau |
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The
first place to look for information about sundogs,
pillars, rainbows and related phenomena. |
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Researchers
call it a "Hubble for the sun." SDO
is the most advanced solar observatory ever. |
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3D
views of the sun from NASA's Solar and Terrestrial
Relations Observatory |
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Realtime
and archival images of the Sun from SOHO. |
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from
the NOAA Space Environment Center |
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a proud supporter of science education and Spaceweather.com |
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fun to read, but should be taken with a grain of salt! Forecasts looking ahead more than a few days are often wrong. |
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from the NOAA Space Environment Center |
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the
underlying science of space weather |
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Beautyz for top beauty products reviews and their buying guides |
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Reviews here can help you to pick up best memory foam mattresses. |
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