They came from outer space--and you can have one! Genuine meteorites are now on sale in the Space Weather Store. |
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SLIM CHANCE OF FLARES:
NOAA forecasters estimate a 10%
chance of M-class
solar flares and a mere 1% chance of X-flares
today. The probable source would be sunspot AR1660,
which is almost directly facing Earth. Solar
flare alerts: text,
voice.
FILAMENT ERUPTIONS:
Two long filaments of solar magnetism
have erupted on the sun today, Jan. 23rd, hurling
bright coronal mass ejections into space. This one
passed directly in front of Mercury:
A second CME sailed high over the
sun's north pole: image.
Earth was not in the line of fire of either eruption.
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory
recorded the eruption that hurled the CME in front
of Mercury. Click to set the scene in motion:
These events show that sunspots are
not required for solar activity. Neither of the
filaments that erupted on Jan. 23rd were rooted
in a sunspot's dark core. Solar
flare alerts: text,
voice.
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SOUTHERN CORONAL
HOLE: A hole in the sun's atmosphere--a
"coronal hole"--has opened up in the sun's
southern hemisphere, and it is spewing a stream
of solar wind into space. Extreme UV cameras onboard
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory photographed the
dark gap during the early hours of Jan. 23rd:
Coronal holes are places in the sun's
atmosphere where the sun's magnetic field opens
up and allows solar wind to escape. A stream of
solar wind flowing from this particular coronal
hole should reach Earth's orbit on Jan. 26-27. Whether
it will actually hit our planet is unknown. Because
of the coronal hole's high southern latitude, the
solar wind it emits might miss our planet, sailing
high over our own South Pole. High-latitude sky
watchers should nevertheless remain alert for auroras.
Aurora alerts:
text,
voice.
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AWASH IN JUPITER
RADIO BURSTS: The planet Jupiter
is a powerful source of shortwave radio bursts.
They come from natural radio lasers in the giant
planet's polar magnetosphere that sometimes sweep
past Earth as Jupiter rotates. On Jan. 21st, as
Jupiter and the Moon were converging
high in the midnight sky, a series of Jupiter's
radio laser beams hit Earth. Amateur astronomer
Thomas Ashcraft recorded the static-y sounds coming
from the loudspeaker of his shortwave radio telescope
in New Mexico:
Dynamic spectrum courtesy of Wes
Greenman, Radio Alachua Observatory
"Sometimes when people are outside
Jupiter-gazing they might also be awash in Jovian
radio beam sweeps and not know it," says Ashcraft.
"On Sunday, a Jovian radio storm produced a
few minutes of strong radio waves. As I was outside
my observatory looking up at Jupiter I was also
hearing the waves on my radio telescope speakers
and realized that my own body was, in that moment,
being bathed in electromagnetic beams from Jupiter.
What a nice feeling!"
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