Space Weather

[Aelin]

Maybe volcanoes in Auvergne (middle of France, litterally) will wake up if that continues 

[sidherose]

You never know what's gonna wake up!! 

[Jherrith]

MOON-VENUS CONJUNCTION: When the sun goes down tonight, step outside and look west. The crescent Moon is passing by Venus, forming a tight conjunction in the sunset sky. Try to catch them before the sky fades to black. A Venus-Moon conjunction framed by twilight blue is extra-beautiful.

[Jherrith]

GREEN FLASH ON THE SUN: For seaside photographers, nothing beats a green flash--that sudden pulse of verdant light at sunset as the sun vanishes beneath the ocean waves. James Young was on a beach in Oregon on July 11th when captured a green flash. But it didn't come from the ocean waves. It came from the top of a cloud:



This is a rare cloud-top green flash, sometimes seen as the sun's rays graze a distant cloud bank. They are not well understood. Ordinary green flashes require a temperature inversion layer near the sea surface. Similar inversions may sometimes occur at the top of marine stratus clouds, giving rise to the type of ragged cloudy flash Young witnessed.

"It was very bright--a beautiful mystery to end the day," he says.

[Jherrith]

MARS IN A SKILLET: As Mars approaches Earth for a 15-year close encounter on July 27th, it is brightening to a luminosity rarely seen from the Red Planet. How bright is it? Mars is almost 3 times brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. It is 30% brighter than Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system. Mars is so bright, you can see it in a skillet:



"I was cleaning up my outdoor gas grill last night after having a barbeque when I noticed a bright reflection in my skillet. I then looked up, and it was Mars," says Frankie Lucena of Puerto Rico.

"I went inside to get my camera and took this photo," he adds. "It is the best photo of Mars that I have been able to take so far this season. Maybe the vegetable oil in the skillet helped to bring out its colors."

Readers, if you have not yet seen Mars with your own eyes this month, please do. You can't miss it shining brightly in the southern sky at midnight. The planet's color, accurately shown in Lucena's skillet, is amazing

[thelufias]

A day of Science and cool stuff indeed.

Ray put a link to view a vid from "The Watchers News" and I traveled over to see what the place was about...and it's pretty damn cool.....Thanks Ray...didn't even know the place existed.

They also have this Place:  Space Weather Station

[sidherose]

MOON-VENUS CONJUNCTION: When the sun goes down tonight, step outside and look west. The crescent Moon is passing by Venus, forming a tight conjunction in the sunset sky. Try to catch them before the sky fades to black. A Venus-Moon conjunction framed by twilight blue is extra-beautiful.

Just finished having a look at them. They make a lovely pair.

Hmmm, someone told me that was Jupiter over there, but obviously it's not.

[Jherrith]

THREE WEEKS WITHOUT SUNSPOTS: As July 17th comes to a close, the sun has been blank for 21 straight days--a remarkable 3 weeks without sunspots. To find an equal stretch of spotless suns in the historical record, you have to go back to July-August 2009 when the sun was emerging from a century-class solar minimum. We are now entering a new solar minimum, possibly as deep as the last one.
Solar minimum is a normal part of the solar cycle. Every 11 years or so, sunspot production sputters. Dark cores that produce solar flares and CMEs vanish from the solar disk, leaving the sun blank for long stretches of time. These quiet spells have been coming with regularity since the sunspot cycle was discovered in 1859.

However, not all solar minima are alike. The last one in 2008-2009 surprised observers with its depth and side-effects. Sunspot counts dropped to a 100-year low; the sun dimmed by 0.1%; Earth's upper atmosphere collapsed, allowing space junk to accumulate; and the pressure of the solar wind flagged while cosmic rays (normally repelled by solar wind) surged to Space Age highs. These events upended the orthodox picture of solar minimum as "uneventful."



Space weather forecasters have long wondered, will the next solar minimum (2018-2020) be as deep as the previous one (2008-2009)? Twenty-one days without sunspots is not enough to answer that question. During the solar minimum of 2008-2009, the longest unbroken interval of spotlessness was ~52 days, adding to a total of 813 intermittent spotless days observed throughout the multi-year minimum. The corresponding totals now are only 21 days and 244 days, respectively. If this solar minimum is like the last one, we still have a long way to go.

How does this affect us on Earth? Contrary to popular belief, auroras do not vanish during solar minimum. Instead, they retreat to polar regions and may change color. Arctic sky watchers can still count on good displays this autumn and winter as streams of solar wind buffet Earth's magnetic field. The biggest change brought by solar minimum may be cosmic rays. High energy particles from deep space penetrate the inner solar system with greater ease during periods of low solar activity. NASA spacecraft and space weather balloons are already detecting an increase in radiation. Cosmic rays alter the flow of electricity through Earth's atmosphere, trigger lightning, potentially alter cloud cover, and dose commercial air travelers with extra "rads on a plane."

At the moment there are no nascent sunspots on the solar disk, so the spotless days counter is likely to keep ticking. Stay tuned for more blank suns and … welcome to solar minimum.

[thelufias]

When I read that in the Newsletter I hit some of the other links they had in there about the Subject.....Interesting stuff....

[M-Callahan]

Looks like 53 days of extra gravitational pull on the earth with all the planet on the same side of the sun.