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LUNAR OCCULTATION OF SATURN: The full Moon is about to swallow Saturn. On Aug. 21st, observers from South America to Europe (animated map) can watch a lunar occultation of the ringed planet. Saturn will dip in and out of the mountainous lunar limb before disappearing for ~45 minutes. Here's what it will look like. This rare event is a great photo-op for amateur astronomers with backyard telescopes. [more]
AURORAS SHOULD NOT BE ORANGE (BUT THEY ARE): During last week's severe (G4-class) geomagnetic storm, Tony Bendele of Pennsylvania saw something rare and a little mysterious. "Orange auroras!" he says. "Yes, Orange. I had never seen this color in auroras before." Note the boxed hue in Bendele's Aug 12th photo:
"At first, I thought something was wrong, so I checked this image numerous times. The color orange is really there," he says.
What's so mysterious? There's no element in Earth's atmosphere capable of making bright orange. It's simple chemistry. Every aurora color has a matching atom or molecule. For instance, oxygen atoms produce red and green. Nitrogen molecules give us purple and, sometimes, pink. Theoretically, N2, N2+, and O2+ can produce emissions at orange wavelengths. However, these emissions are very weak compared to other colors produced by the same molecules. Auroras should not be orange.
Yet look at this picture taken during the same storm by Friedrich Deters just North of Minneapolis, Minnesota:
Orange was all over the sky--a phenomenon observed not only by Deters in Minnesota and Bendele by Pennsylvania, but also by many others across North America and Europe.
Aurora physicist Kjellmar Oksavik of the University of Bergen in Norway has given the phenomenon a lot of thought, and he believes he has the answer: "It's not a mystery molecule. It's a mixing of different colors."
During typical geomagnetic storms, red auroras and green auroras are well separated; red on top, green on the bottom. However, when geomagnetic storms become intense, as happened on Aug. 12th, red and green can overlap in a zone 150 km to 200 km high. "The mixture fools the camera and the eye to believe that it is orange. In reality, it is both red and green at the same time," he says.
Mystery solved? Probably. It should be easy to check as Solar Cycle 25 intensifies. Photographers, be alert for orange, and submit your pictures here.
more orange: from Caroline Haldeman near Flagstaff, AZ; from Joel Ryan of Southland, New Zealand; from Noeleen Lowndes near Skagway, AK;
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AMBER BUMBLEBEE SPACE PENDANT: Bumblebees don't usually fly so high. The students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched this one to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon. Here it is floating 115,158 feet above California's Sierra Nevada:
You can have it for $179.95. This bee is made of genuine Baltic Amber with a sterling silver exoskeleton. The rich Cognac-colored pendant measures 3/4 inch and comes with a matching 18-inch sterling silver chain.
The students are selling space pendants to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the bumblebee in flight and telling the story of its trip to the stratosphere and back again.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
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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 Aug 20, 2024, the network reported 13 fireballs.
(12 sporadics, 1 Perseid)
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 August 20, 2024 there were 2349 potentially hazardous asteroids.
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Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: | Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
| 2024 PZ3 | 2024-Aug-15 | 0.7 LD | 12.2 | 30 |
| 2021 GY1 | 2024-Aug-16 | 17.7 LD | 6.3 | 59 |
| 2024 OY2 | 2024-Aug-17 | 4.3 LD | 5.7 | 33 |
| 2022 BF2 | 2024-Aug-17 | 13.3 LD | 17.1 | 91 |
| 2024 QA | 2024-Aug-19 | 1.8 LD | 21.7 | 25 |
| 2024 JV33 | 2024-Aug-19 | 12 LD | 11.1 | 192 |
| 2024 PQ5 | 2024-Aug-20 | 13.5 LD | 12.6 | 44 |
| 2020 RL | 2024-Aug-27 | 12.2 LD | 8.2 | 34 |
| 2021 RA10 | 2024-Aug-28 | 6.8 LD | 4.9 | 29 |
| 2012 SX49 | 2024-Aug-29 | 11.2 LD | 4.3 | 20 |
| 2016 RJ20 | 2024-Aug-30 | 18.3 LD | 14.8 | 68 |
| 2021 JT | 2024-Sep-01 | 16.4 LD | 8.2 | 12 |
| 2021 RB16 | 2024-Sep-02 | 12.3 LD | 8.4 | 15 |
| 2007 RX8 | 2024-Sep-02 | 18.5 LD | 7 | 44 |
| 2022 SR | 2024-Sep-07 | 9.1 LD | 6.3 | 42 |
| 2023 SP2 | 2024-Sep-09 | 15.3 LD | 4.2 | 8 |
| 2024 PM6 | 2024-Sep-09 | 14 LD | 9 | 49 |
| 2016 TU19 | 2024-Sep-11 | 13.2 LD | 10.1 | 47 |
| 2019 DJ1 | 2024-Sep-15 | 10.4 LD | 4.9 | 15 |
| 2024 ON | 2024-Sep-17 | 2.6 LD | 8.9 | 302 |
| 2013 FW13 | 2024-Sep-18 | 8.5 LD | 15.6 | 162 |
| 2022 SW3 | 2024-Sep-19 | 6.8 LD | 9.2 | 37 |
| 2015 SH | 2024-Sep-19 | 11.6 LD | 5.9 | 9 |
| 2023 RX1 | 2024-Sep-20 | 10.1 LD | 1.1 | 3 |
| 2018 VG | 2024-Sep-20 | 13.4 LD | 7.3 | 12 |
| 2020 GE | 2024-Sep-24 | 1.7 LD | 2.2 | 8 |
| 2011 ST12 | 2024-Sep-27 | 17.6 LD | 7.4 | 19 |
| 2023 GM1 | 2024-Oct-05 | 15.4 LD | 5.2 | 13 |
| 2014 VA | 2024-Oct-05 | 18.1 LD | 6.3 | 46 |
| 2022 SU21 | 2024-Oct-06 | 17.5 LD | 21.1 | 45 |
| 671076 | 2024-Oct-07 | 12.8 LD | 8.6 | 120 |
| 2016 JG38 | 2024-Oct-08 | 13.2 LD | 12 | 56 |
| 2018 QE | 2024-Oct-09 | 1.7 LD | 4.4 | 10 |
| 363027 | 2024-Oct-12 | 9.3 LD | 16.6 | 419 |
| 2020 GE1 | 2024-Oct-12 | 20.1 LD | 4.3 | 14 |
| 2022 UX1 | 2024-Oct-12 | 19.9 LD | 9.9 | 9 |
| 2008 UU95 | 2024-Oct-12 | 13.5 LD | 15.6 | 66 |
| 2021 TK11 | 2024-Oct-14 | 8 LD | 10.6 | 7 |
| 2022 TB41 | 2024-Oct-15 | 10 LD | 6 | 4 |
| 2019 UH14 | 2024-Oct-17 | 8.3 LD | 10.4 | 62 |
Notes: LD means "Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance between Earth and the Moon. 1 LD also equals 0.00256 AU. | | Cosmic Rays in the Atmosphere |
SPACE WEATHER BALLOON DATA: Almost 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 sensors that detect secondary cosmic rays, a form of radiation from space that can penetrate all the way down to Earth's surface. Our monitoring program has been underway without interruption for 7 years, resulting in a unique dataset of in situ atmospheric measurements.
Latest results (July 2022): Atmospheric radiation is decreasing in 2022. Our latest measurements in July 2022 registered a 6-year low:
What's going on? Ironically, the radiation drop is caused by increasing solar activity. Solar Cycle 25 has roared to life faster than forecasters expected. The sun's strengthening and increasingly tangled magnetic field repels cosmic rays from deep space. In addition, solar coronal mass ejections (CMEs) sweep aside cosmic rays, causing sharp reductions called "Forbush Decreases." The two effects blend together to bring daily radiation levels down.
.Who cares? Cosmic rays are a surprisingly "down to Earth" form of space weather. They can alter the chemistry of the atmosphere, trigger lightning, and penetrate commercial airplanes. According to a study from the Harvard T.H. Chan school of public health, crews of aircraft have higher rates of cancer than the general population. The researchers listed cosmic rays, irregular sleep habits, and chemical contaminants as leading risk factors. A number of controversial studies (#1, #2, #3, #4) go even further, linking cosmic rays with cardiac arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death.
Technical notes: 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.
Data points in the graph labeled "Stratospheric Radiation" correspond to the peak of the Regener-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 Regener and Georg Pfotzer discovered the maximum using balloons in the 1930s and it is what we are measuring today.
| | The official U.S. government space weather bureau |
| | The first place to look for information about sundogs, pillars, rainbows and related phenomena. |
| | Researchers call it a "Hubble for the sun." SDO is the most advanced solar observatory ever. |
| | 3D views of the sun from NASA's Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory |
| | Realtime and archival images of the Sun from SOHO. |
| | information about sunspots based on the latest NOAA/USAF Active Region Summary |
| | current counts of failed and deployed Starlink satellites from Jonathan's Space Page. See also, all satellite statistics. |
| | Authoritative predictions of space junk and satellite re-entries |
| | from the NOAA Space Environment Center |
| | fun to read, but should be taken with a grain of salt! Forecasts looking ahead more than a few days are often wrong. |
| | from the NOAA Space Environment Center |
| | the underlying science of space weather |
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