Space Weather

[thelufias]

https://www.noradsanta.org/

[Wizzard]

Pay no attentiom to the high atmosphere explosions.... THey missed anyways..
Cheers

[thelufias]

Keep in mind....Coal is flammable..... :xmas2:

[Jherrith]

'RING OF FIRE' SOLAR ECLIPSE: It's about to begin. On Dec. 26th--just hours from now--millions of people on the Indian-Asian side of Earth will witness a "ring of fire" solar eclipse.

This is an annular solar eclipse, not a total one. The Moon is in a distant part of its orbit that makes it just a little too small to cover the entire solar disk. At maximum, only 97% of the sun's surface will be eclipsed, leaving a bright annulus visible around the edge of the Moon--that is, the ring of fire.

The action begins at 02:30 UT on Dec. 26th (09:30 pm EST on Dec. 25th). Stay tuned for photos from the eclipse zone. Live webcasts: #1, #2, #3.

[Jherrith]

MOON-VENUS CONJUNCTION TONIGHT: When the sun goes down tonight, step outside and look southwest. Venus and the slender crescent Moon will be beautifully close together--less than 2 degrees apart over the Americas. Try to catch them before the sky fades to black. The sight of a Venus-Moon conjunction framed by twilight blue is out of this world.

[thelufias]

And another one I'll be missing.....  Snow, Rain, Rain, Snow, plus a little snow and rain all day...all night....MaryAnn....

[Jherrith]

"ONCE IN A LIFETIME" STRATOSPHERIC CLOUDS: A spectacular outbreak of polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) is underway around the Arctic Circle. "This is a once in a lifetime event," says Chad Blakley, who runs the Lights over Lapland aurora tour service in Abisko, Sweden. "No question, this is the best that any of us have ever seen." Tour guide Paige Ellis took this video showing the clouds' aurora-like colors on Dec. 29th:



"They were so intense that lots of the tourists on the ground thought they were looking at daytime auroras. I had to explain that they were actually clouds in the stratosphere," says Blakley.

Polar stratospheric clouds are newsworthy because normally the stratosphere has no clouds at all. Home to the ozone layer, the stratosphere is arid and almost always transparent. Only when the temperature drops to a staggeringly cold -85C can sparse water molecules assemble themselves into icy stratospheric clouds. PSCs are far more rare than auroras.
"Local villagers in both Abisko and Kiruna who are more than 70 years old confirmed they have never seen anything of the size, scale, or intensity," reports Blakley. "At one point I would say that close to 25% of the sky was filled with the clouds. PSCs in previous winters have been closer to 1% or 2%."

The outbreak has continued on Dec. 30th. "Today I got to see some of the brightest PSCs I've ever seen during all of my years watching the sky," reports Göran Strand, who sends this picture from Jämtland, Sweden:



"They were so bright, they even lit up the surrounding landscape," he marveled.

PSCs are intensely colorful because they are made of a special type of ice. High-altitude sunlight shining through microscopic crystals only ~10µm across produce a bright iridescent glow unlike the lesser iridescence of ordinary tropospheric clouds.

[thelufias]

Coooool.....or is that COOOOOLD.....   :sno2:

[Jherrith]

Since it is Sweden I am going to go with :sno2:

[Jherrith]

QUADRANTID METEOR SHOWER: Earth is approaching a stream of debris from shattered comet 2003 EH1, source of the annual Quadrantid meteor shower. Forecasters expect the shower to peak at 8:20 UT (3:20 a.m. EST) on Saturday, Jan. 4th. The timing favors observers in North America, who could see dozens of meteors streaking out of the obsolete constellation Quadrans Muralis, not far from the Big Dipper: sky map.