Earth & Space Weather

~Space Weather Update~ Crackling with C Class Flares

Lia's picture

Submitted by Lia on

'METEOR SMOKE' LINKED TO NOCTILUCENT CLOUDS: A key ingredient of Earth's strangest clouds does not come from Earth. New data from NASA's AIM spacecraft shows that "meteor smoke" is essential to the formation of noctilucent clouds. [full story] [video]

 

FIRST AURORAS OF THE SEASON: After a long summer of midnight suns and starless nights, the Arctic Circle is glowing with its first auroras of the new season. Todd Salat photographed the kick-off in Fairbanks, Alaska, on August 6th:

 

"From 1 am to 1:30 am local time I took these photos of the northern lights dancing above the Fairbanks city lights," says Salat. "Although the nights still do not get completely dark in the far northern latitudes, the deep blue twilight skies proved dark enough to make the auroras stand out. And at a balmy 55° F, it was quite a treat to be watching the lights in t-shirt weather."

 

~Space Weather Update~ CHANCE OF STORMS:

Lia's picture

Submitted by Lia on

CHANCE OF STORMS: NOAA forecasters estimate a 25% chance of polar geomagnetic storms on August 7/8. That's when a coronal mass ejection (CME) hurled into space by a filament eruption on Aug. 4 could deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field. Aurora alerts: text, voice.

 

FIRST COLOR IMAGE FROM CURIOSITY: Curiosity's first color image of Mars has just been beamed back to Earth--and it's a little dusty. This murky view of the landscape to the north of the rover was captured by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on the afternoon of the first day after landing:

The image shows the north wall and rim of Gale Crater. The view is murky because MAHLI's removable dust cover is apparently coated with dust blown onto the camera during the rover's terminal descent. Another camera, the Descent Imager, photographed the roughly circular swirls of dust kicked up from the Martian surface by the rocket motor exhaust.

U.S. Drought 2012: Half Of Nation's Counties Now Considered Disaster Areas

Rain's picture

Submitted by Rain on

 

GFP Note: Extreme weather events are generally considered to be physical signs of Mother Earth's ascension process.

 

Huff Post
By JIM SUHR 08/01/12 10:16 PM ET AP

Us Drought

Grass begins to grown on the cracked bottom at Morse Reservoir in Noblesville, Ind., Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2012. The reservoir is six feet below normal levels. More than half of U.S. counties now are classified by the federal government as natural disaster areas mostly because of the drought. The U.S. Agriculture Department on Wednesday added 218 counties in a dozen states as disaster areas. That brings this year's total to 1,584 in 32 states, more than 90 percent of them because of the drought. (A
 

ST. LOUIS -- Nearly 220 counties in a dozen drought-stricken states were added Wednesday to the U.S. government's list of natural disaster areas as the nation's agriculture chief unveiled new help for frustrated, cash-strapped farmers and ranchers grappling with extreme dryness and heat.

~Space Weather UPdate~ ERUPTING MAGNETIC FILAMENT

Lia's picture

Submitted by Lia on

WATCH OUT FOR THE MARTIAN TRIANGLE: When the sun goes down tonight, step outside and look southwest. Mars, Saturn and the blue-giant star Spica have converged to form a 1st-magnitude triangle not far above the horizon. The eye-catching arangement makes it easy to find the Red Planet on the night of the Mars Landing. [full story] [video]

 

ERUPTING MAGNETIC FILAMENT: A filament of magnetism connecting sunspots AR1538 and AR1540 rose up and erupted on August 4th. Look for the extreme UV glow of hot plasma in this movie recorded by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory:

As the filament ripped through the sun's atmosphere, it propelled a massive CME into space: movie. The cloud is not heading directly toward Earth, but it could deliver a glancing blow to our planet's magnetic field on August 7/8. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras on those dates. Aurora alerts: text, voice.

 

~Space Weather Update~ RIPPING PERSEID

Lia's picture

Submitted by Lia on

CURIOSITY & SOLAR FLARES: Mars rover Curiosity has beeen hit by multiple solar flares en route to the Red Planet, giving NASA planners an idea of what faces human astronauts in the Earth-Mars expanse. [full story]

 

RIPPING PERSEID: As Earth enters a broad stream of debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle, more and more Perseid meteors are appearing in the night sky. "Last night, I captured a Perseid fireball ripping through the ionosphere over New Mexico," reports amateur astronomer Thomas Ashcraft. "It was traveling pretty fast - 133,000 miles per hour!" Click to see and hear the meteoroid disintegrate:

 

The movie's sound track comes from Ashcraft's dual-frequency meteor radar. It works like this: Radio signals from distant VHF transmitters bounce off the meteor's ion trail. Ashcraft's antennas can pick up those reflections, which sound like ghostly echoes in the loudspeaker of his VHF receiver.

~Space Weather Update~ Crackling Sunspot~

Lia's picture

Submitted by Lia on

CURIOSITY'S FIRST DAREDEVIL STUNT: When Curiosity enters the Martian atmosphere on August 6th, setting in motion "the seven minutes of terror" that people are buzzing about, the rover will actually be performing the mission's second daredevil stunt. The first, involving solar flares, was completed in July. [full story]

 

EARLY PERSEID METEORS: Earth is entering a broad stream of debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle, source of the annual Perseid meteor shower. Meteoroids in the outskirts of the stream are now hitting Earth's atmosphere, producing as many as 10-15 meteors per hour according to worldwide counts from the International Meteor Organization. NASA's network of all-sky meteor cameras captured 17 Perseid fireballs on the nights of July 28th through 30th. Here are their orbits:

 

The position of Earth is denoted by the red starburst; all of the meteoroid orbits intersect at that point. The purple line traces the orbit of the parent Comet Swift-Tuttle. Fortunately, the comet itself does not intersect Earth.

~Space Weather Update~ Subsiding Sunspot~

Lia's picture

Submitted by Lia on

STRANGE BUT TRUE: CURIOSITY'S SKY CRANE: How do you deposit a massive SUV-sized nuclear-powered rover to the surface of an alien planet without making an SUV-sized crater? NASA's solution for Curiosity will be attempted for the first time on August 5/6 when they gently lower the rover to the red sands of Mars using a Sky Crane. [full story]

 

EARLY PERSEID METEORS: Earth is entering a broad stream of debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle, source of the annual Perseid meteor shower. Meteoroids in the outskirts of the stream are now hitting Earth's atmosphere, producing as many as 10-15 meteors per hour according to worldwide counts from the International Meteor Organization. NASA's network of all-sky meteor cameras captured 17 Perseid fireballs on the nights of July 28th through 30th. Here are their orbits:

 

The position of Earth is denoted by the red starburst; all of the meteoroid orbits intersect at that point. The purple line traces the orbit of the parent Comet Swift-Tuttle. Fortunately, the comet itself does not intersect Earth.

 

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - Earth & Space Weather