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ALPHA MONOCEROTID METEOR UPDATE: As reports arrive from Europe, North and South America, a coherent picture of the 2019 alpha Monocerotid meteor shower is emerging. In short, an outburst happened near the predicted time. Visually, it was modest, with experienced sky watchers counting at most 20 to 30 meteors--a far cry from a "storm." Nevertheless, the timing was spot-on, showing that forecasters have a good bead on the location of the meteoroid stream, if not its contents.
Because the outburst was less intense than expected, photographers didn't record many meteors. Here's a rare one flying over the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming photographed by Kevin Palmer:
"I watched for alpha Monocerotid meteors for a couple hours on Thursday night and counted about 10 meteors," says Palmer. "Most of them were sporadic. Of the 3 meteors I photographed, only one seemed to line up with the radiant. Even though there was no meteor storm, it was still a beautiful night."
At radio wavelengths the outburst may have been more impressive. More than one amateur radio operator using forward scatter techniques noticed an increase in meteor "pings." These were likely caused by a profusion of alpha Monocerotids too faint to see with the unaided eye.
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VENUS AND JUPITER AT 30,000 FT: Air travelers, if you see someone staring out the window from underneath their jacket, don't call security. It's just Venus and Jupiter. "On the evening of Nov. 16th, we boarded a plane from Christchurch, New Zealand, to the Gold Coast in Australia," says Noeleen Lowndes. "What a wonderful surprise when I looked out my window at 30,000 feet and saw Venus and Jupiter."
"It was absolutely stunning," says Lowndes. "To capture the images I had to put a jacket over my head to block out all the lights from the interior of the plane…I got many strange looks from other passengers, but I just smiled and kept taking pictures :-)"
The view is about to get even better. Venus and Jupiter are converging in the sunset sky. At closest approach on Nov. 24th, they will be only 1.4 degrees apart--about the width of your index finger held at arm's length. On Nov. 27th and 28th, the crescent Moon will join the show, forming a celestial triangle that people in the USA will want to go outside and see after Thanksgiving dinner. Sky maps:Nov. 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28.
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THE SUNFLOWER SPACE PENDANT: Are you looking for a far-out gift? Consider the sunflower space pendant. On Oct. 18, 2019, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched a cosmic ray balloon to the stratosphere. This cheerful pendant went along for the ride, 109,923 feet high:
You can have it for $109.92 (its altitude divided by 1000). The students are selling these pendants to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each rose gold-plated pendant comes with a greeting card showing the flower in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space and back again. They make great birthday, anniversary and Christmas gifts.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
GREEN FRAGMENT BREAKS OFF THE SUN: Spoiler alert: The sun is still intact. On Nov. 19th, Mike Kelley was watching the sunset from a California sand dune when a green fragment broke away from the solar disk. He recorded the event with a 1/2500s exposure on his Nikon D90 camera:
"It was a gorgeous green flash," says Kelley. "I saw it from Mad River Beach in northern California."
Pacific beaches are great places to find a green flash. Warm breezes from inland flow out over the cold water, creating temperature gradients in the air above the waves. Those gradients can magnify tiny differences in the atmospheric refraction of red and green light, creating a verdant mirage. If you find yourself on the beach at sunset, take a look!
Realtime Green Flash Photo Gallery
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Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
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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 Nov. 22, 2019, the network reported 8 fireballs.
(6 sporadics, 1 alpha Monocerotid, 1 northern Taurid)
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 November 22, 2019 there were 2018 potentially hazardous asteroids.
|
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
2019 WC | 2019-Nov-17 | 9.2 LD | 7.6 | 18 |
2019 UR2 | 2019-Nov-18 | 18 LD | 13.4 | 131 |
2019 WH | 2019-Nov-19 | 0.2 LD | 11 | 21 |
2019 UK6 | 2019-Nov-20 | 15.4 LD | 7.7 | 67 |
2019 WN | 2019-Nov-20 | 16.7 LD | 10 | 34 |
2019 WF | 2019-Nov-20 | 1.6 LD | 11.6 | 14 |
2019 WE | 2019-Nov-20 | 3.3 LD | 8.5 | 16 |
481394 | 2019-Nov-21 | 11.3 LD | 7.9 | 372 |
2019 VK | 2019-Nov-21 | 5.8 LD | 7.6 | 42 |
2019 WM | 2019-Nov-21 | 7.8 LD | 12.4 | 18 |
2008 EA9 | 2019-Nov-23 | 10.5 LD | 2.2 | 10 |
2019 VF1 | 2019-Nov-25 | 13.3 LD | 17.2 | 88 |
2017 AP4 | 2019-Dec-03 | 8.5 LD | 7.5 | 15 |
2018 XW2 | 2019-Dec-07 | 17.4 LD | 13 | 28 |
2019 VH5 | 2019-Dec-08 | 18 LD | 9.8 | 71 |
216258 | 2019-Dec-20 | 15.3 LD | 11.8 | 324 |
2013 XY20 | 2019-Dec-21 | 18.4 LD | 1.9 | 28 |
2017 XQ60 | 2019-Dec-22 | 11 LD | 15.6 | 47 |
310442 | 2019-Dec-26 | 19 LD | 12.3 | 372 |
2019 AE3 | 2020-Jan-02 | 4.9 LD | 8.2 | 13 |
2019 UO | 2020-Jan-10 | 11.8 LD | 9.4 | 374 |
2011 EP51 | 2020-Jan-15 | 19.6 LD | 7.1 | 32 |
2017 RZ15 | 2020-Jan-15 | 12.1 LD | 7.4 | 14 |
2009 BH2 | 2020-Jan-18 | 14.6 LD | 17.9 | 118 |
2013 DU | 2020-Jan-20 | 15.3 LD | 6.4 | 59 |
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. | Cosmic Rays in the Atmosphere |
SOMETHING NEW! We have developed a new predictive model of aviation radiation. It's called E-RAD--short for Empirical RADiation model. We are constantly flying radiation sensors onboard airplanes over the US and and around the world, so far collecting more than 22,000 gps-tagged radiation measurements. Using this unique dataset, we can predict the dosage on any flight over the USA with an error no worse than 15%.
E-RAD lets us do something new: Every day we monitor approximately 1400 flights criss-crossing the 10 busiest routes in the continental USA. Typically, this includes more than 80,000 passengers per day. E-RAD calculates the radiation exposure for every single flight.
The Hot Flights Table is a daily summary of these calculations. It shows the 5 charter flights with the highest dose rates; the 5 commercial flights with the highest dose rates; 5 commercial flights with near-average dose rates; and the 5 commercial flights with the lowest dose rates. Passengers typically experience dose rates that are 20 to 70 times higher than natural radiation at sea level.
To measure radiation on airplanes, we use the same sensors we fly to the stratosphere onboard Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray balloons: neutron bubble chambers and X-ray/gamma-ray Geiger tubes sensitive to energies between 10 keV and 20 MeV. These energies span the range of medical X-ray machines and airport security scanners.
Column definitions: (1) The flight number; (2) The maximum dose rate during the flight, expressed in units of natural radiation at sea level; (3) The maximum altitude of the plane in feet above sea level; (4) Departure city; (5) Arrival city; (6) Duration of the flight.
SPACE WEATHER BALLOON DATA: 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 18% since 2015:
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.
En route to the stratosphere, our sensors also pass through aviation altitudes:
In this plot, 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.
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.
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 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. |
| 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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