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SUNSET SKY SHOW, CONTINUED: The crescent Moon and Jupiter are converging for a sunset sky show. When the sun goes down tonight, step outside and look for them beaming through the western twilight. The two bright bodies are less than 10o apart--very pretty. [photo gallery]
NOCTILUCENT CLOUDS: The Arctic Circle is beginning to glow--not with auroras, but with noctilucent clouds (NLCs). Seeded by meteor smoke, electric-blue NLCs appear every year in late spring, and grow in intensity as summer unfolds. Last night they descended to central Europe. Chris Kranich sends this picture from Kiel, Germany:
"Our first noctilucent clouds of 2014 were clearly visible to the naked eye," says Kranich. "They were visible all night long, though occasionally hiding behind low dark tropospheric clouds."
NASA's AIM spacecraft is orbiting Earth on a mission to study noctilucent clouds. When the spacecraft launched in 2007, the origin of the clouds was a mystery. Since then AIM has revealed not only the role of meteoroids in seeding NLCs but also how methane, a potent greenhouse gas, can boost the production of the clouds. This makes NLCs a potentially sensitive probe of climate change as well as long-distance teleconnections in Earth's atmosphere.
High above the Arctic Circle, AIM saw the first NLCs of the 2014 northern summer season on May 24th, 6 days before they appeared over Germany. More ground-level sightings may be expected in the nights ahead as the intensity of the clouds increases.
Observing tips: NLCs favor high latitudes, but they are not confined there. In recent years the clouds have been sighted as far south as Colorado and Virginia. Look west 30 to 60 minutes after sunset when the Sun has dipped 6o to 16o below the horizon. If you see luminous blue-white tendrils spreading across the sky, you may have spotted a noctilucent cloud. Noctilucent cloud alerts: text, voice
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CLOUDTOP PHENOMENON: For years, researchers have been studying red sprites and blue jets--strange forms of lightning that come out of the tops of clouds. On May 27th, a new form appeared. Pilot Cherdphong Visarathanonth was in the cockpit of an A320 at the airport in Bangkok, Thailand, when he saw a white tornado-like beam dancing atop this cumulonimbus cloud:
"We could see the same phenomenon through both windshields even after the aircraft has pushing back in a different direction," says Visarathanonth. "I made a 4 minute video in which we can see the phenomenon quickly moving and disappearing from time to time."
Brian Whittaker, another pilot with extensive sky watching experience, says, "I have seen Blue Jets and Sprites, but this is something totally different. Good luck figuring out what it is."
One reader suggests that it is a "jumping sundog." Lightning discharges in thunderclouds can temporarily change the electric field above the clouds where charged ice crystals were reflecting sunlight. The new electric field quickly re-orients the geometric crystals to a new orientation that reflects sunlight differently. Videos of the phenomenon show that it might be related to what Visarathanonth saw.
Other ideas are welcomed. If you have one, post it in the comments section of Visarathanonth's Space Weather Gallery page.
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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 May. 31, 2014, the network reported 6 fireballs.
( 6 sporadics)
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 May 31, 2014 there were potentially hazardous asteroids.
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. | 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 |
| the underlying science of space weather |