They came from outer space--and you can have one! Genuine meteorites are now on sale in the Space Weather Store. |
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SOLAR
WIND: A medium-speed (500 km/s)
solar wind stream is gently buffeting Earth's magnetic
field. Polar sky watchers should be alert for Northern
Lights tonight. Aurora
alerts: text,
voice.
OBAMA
VISITS THE EDGE OF SPACE: After
winning re-election yesterday, President Obama is
on top of the world. Seriously. A group of high
school students in Bishop, California, has launched
a Barack Obama bobblehead to the edge of space using
a suborbital helium
balloon. Here is a picture of the president
on Nov. 5th approximately 120,000 feet above Earth's
surface:
This flight was conducted by the same
students who earlier this year launched NASA's
rubber chicken into a solar storm to sample
high protons from the sun. "Sending Obama into
the stratosphere was just for fun," says team
member Amelia Phillips. "But it was good practice
for more serious projects, such as our flights to
measure solar flares and photograph meteor showers."
The group, which calls itself "Earth
to Sky Calculus," has been flying suborbital
helium research balloons for two years; this is
the first time the President has gone for a ride.
Images and video from the flight are
still being processed. Here are some first looks:
Video: Obama
at 120,000 feet (8 MB); the
balloon pops (1.2 MB); The
President's wild ride (19 MB); Still
images: Fractured
balloon; Obama
over Mono Lake; Mitt
was there, too!
SO THIS
IS SOLAR MAXIMUM? Forecasters have
long expected the Solar Max of 2013 to be the weakest
of the Space Age. It might be even weaker than they
thought. As shown in this 20-year plot of sunspot
counts vs. time, the sun is underperforming:
Sunspot numbers are notoriously variable,
so the actual counts could rapidly rise to meet
or exceed the predicted curve. For now, however,
the face of the sun is devoid of large sunspots,
and there have been no strong flares in more than
a week. The threshold of Solar Max looks a lot like
Solar Min. NOAA forecasters estimate no more than
a 1% chance of X-class
solar flares in the next 24 hours.
Realtime
Space Weather Photo Gallery
TAURID
FIREBALLS: Sky watchers should
be alert for fireballs in the nights ahead. Forecasters
say Earth is entering a
swarm of gravelly debris from comet Encke. Meteoroids
the size of pebbles and small stones hitting Earth's
atmosphere at 25 km/s are producing a slow drizzle
of very bright fireballs flying out of the constellation
Taurus. The display is expected to peak with a few
fireballs every hour during the nights of Nov. 5-12.
On Nov. 2nd, Salvador Aguirre photographed
a Taurid fireball streaking over Hermosillo, Mexico.
Circled, the fireball was even brighter than the
nearby Moon:
"Este fue un Gran Fireball!"
says Aguirre, who estimates its astronomical magnitude
to be -18. This means the fireball was 100 times
brighter than a full Moon (magn. -13). To capture
the Taurid, he used an All Sky Sentinel camera on
loan from the Sandia National Laboratories.
"What always strikes me about
the Taurids," notes Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid
Environment Office, "is how deeply they penetrate
Earth's atmosphere. On average, they make it down
to an altitude of 44 miles. Contrast this to the
recent Orionids, which burn up at an average altitude
of 58 miles. Part of this is due to the speed difference:
Taurids are slow (27 km/s) while Orionids are fast
(66 km/s). In addition, many Taurids are made up
of stronger stuff than the Orionids."
Cooke encourages sky watchers to observe
the Taurids and report their fireball counts to
NASA using the Meteor
Counter app--now available for
Apple and for
Android devices.
Realtime
Meteor Photo Gallery
Realtime
Aurora Photo Gallery
Realtime
Noctilucent Cloud Photo Gallery
[previous years: 2003,
2004,
2005,
2006,
2007,
2008,
2009,
2011]
