Hang the Transit of Venus on your wall! Hubble-quality images from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory are now available as metallic posters in the Space Weather Store. |
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TOTAL
ECLIPSE OF THE SUN: Scientists
and sky watchers are converging on the northeast
coast of Australia, near the Great Barrier Reef,
for a total eclipse of the sun on Nov. 13/14. For
researchers, the brief minutes of totality open
a window into some of the deepest mysteries of solar
physics. [video]
[full
story]
M-CLASS
SOLAR FLARE: The week-long spell
of solar quiet was broken this morning, Nov. 8th,
when a new sunspot unleashed an M1.7-class flare.
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the extreme
UV flash:
Because of the blast site's location
on the sun's northeastern limb, Earth was not in
the line of fire. It will take about a week for
this new active region to turn squarely toward our
planet. Stay tuned for updates as the chance of
geoeffective flares increases in the days ahead.
Solar flare 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]
