Space Weather

[Jherrith]

And continual cloud cover for me, so saw naught

[thelufias]

Haven't seen anything that was deemed "Spectacular" in the sky this year due to weather...and falling asleep and not getting up in time

[Jherrith]

Great ... naught but cloud cover for the last two nights

[thelufias]

And once again we have Rain in the forecast...so no night view tonight.  Not sure what tomorrow will bring.  Haven't see ANY of our sky delights this year due to weather.

[Jherrith]

PERSEID METEOR SHOWER: Earth has entered a stream of debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle, source of the annual Perseid meteor shower. We're only in the outskirts of the stream now, but already Perseid fireballs are streaking across the night sky. The shower will peak in bright moonlight on Aug. 12-13 when Earth touches the densest part of the debris zone

[thelufias]

COMET K2 ENTERS THE INNER SOLAR SYSTEM: For the past 3 million years, Comet C/2017 K2 (PanSTARRS) has been falling toward the sun--a long, slow journey from the Oort cloud. Finally, it's here. Austrian astrophotographer Michael Jaeger photographed "Comet K2" entering the inner solar system on June 25th:


Read More About it HERE:  https://spaceweather.com/

[thelufias]

SpaceX Mystery, Solved

The mystery of SpaceX's "rocket powered auroras" has been solved. On Sunday morning, June 19th, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral. Photographers accustomed to seeing these launches were surprised when something unusual appeared. A red glow stretched across the Milky Way. It looked like the aurora borealis, as shown in this photo from Christopher Hoffman in Saint Mary's County, Maryland:



Read More HERE

[Jherrith]

X-CLASS SOLAR FLARE: An active sunspot is emerging over the sun's southeastern limb. It announced itself today with an X1.1-class solar flare (May 3rd @ 1325 UTUT). NASA's Solar Dynamocs Observatory (SDO) recorded the extreme ultraviolet flash:



Radiation from the flare ionized the top of Earth's atmosphere, causing a strong shortwave radio blackout over the Atlantic Ocean and Europe: map. Signals below 30 MHz were attentuated for more than an hour.

In Argentina, photographer Eduardo Schaberger Poupeau was already pointing his solar telescope at the sun when the flare occured. "At that very moment I was trying to photograph new sunspot AR3004," says Poupeau. "Suddenly I received an X-flare alert on my smartphone. I quickly switched to the sun's southeastern limb where debris thrown up by the flare was still very bright."



The sunspot responsible for today's blast has been visible for less than a day. Already it has unleashed has unleashed 8+ solar flares (more than six Cs, one M and one X). Future flares will become increasingly geoeffective as the active region turns toward Earth.

[Jherrith]

Getting up at the ass-crack of dawn is a cinch and fortunately for me I have had clear skies for some little time and have been watching this conjunction as it has progressed

[thelufias]

Getting up at dawn is ... but not if you can't see the clear sky...which I won't be seeing...for a while I guess LOL