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WHEN AURORAS COLLIDE:
A continent-wide network of all-sky cameras
has photographed a never before seen phenomenon: colliding
auroras that produce explosions of light. The must-see images
have solved a long-standing mystery of Northern Lights. Get
the full
story from Science@NASA.
GREAT SUNSPOT:
Sunspot 1035 is putting on a good show. There are two planet-sized
cores connected by sinuous magnetic filaments more than 100,000
km long, all surrounded by a seething froth of hot plasma.
"It's great," says Paul Haese, who sends this picture
from his backyard observatory in Blackwood, Australia:
"This is the best spot of the new solar cycle so far,"
he says. "I photographed it this morning using a Coronado
Solarmax 60."
On Dec. 16th, magnetic fields around the sunspot erupted
and hurled a coronal mass ejection toward Earth. The billion-ton
cloud is still en route. High-latitude sky watchers should
be alert for auroras
when it arrives on Dec. 18th or 19th.
more images: from
Matt Wastell of Paddington, Brisbane, Australia; from
Pete Lawrence of Selsey, West Sussex, UK; from
Fulvio Mete of Rome, Italy; from
Richard Best of Lewes, Sussex, England; from
A. Berry and J. Stetson of South Portland,Maine; from
John C McConnell of Maghaberry Northern Ireland; from
Karzaman Ahmad of Langkawi National Observatory, Malaysia;
CURIOUS EVENTS IN
NEBRASKA: Earthquakes don't rock Nebraska
very often. In fact, seismically speaking, it is one of the
quietest places in North America. Nevertheless, on Dec. 16th
at 8:54 pm CST, USGS seismographs detected a magnitude 3.5
temblor centered near Auburn, Nebraska:
Click to view earthquake
details and Nebraska seismic
probabilities
"It sounded like those loud grain haulers that drive
by, but about five times louder," reports Laurie Riley,
who lives near the epicenter. "The whole house shook.
My kids came running down stairs – they were scared. It even
moved my car, [which was parked outside on icy ground]."
And then the really curious thing happened.
Minutes after the quake, around 9 pm CST, lightning-like
flashes lit up the skies around the area of the quake. Telephones
in police departments and TV stations rang with reports of
bright lights, loud rumbles and shaking ground. Sky watchers,
not only in southeastern Nebraska, but also in neighboring
Oklahoma, Missouri and Kansas, saw a "bright fireball"
with "green streamers" moving from northwest to
southeast.
Could these events be connected? Nebraska State Trooper Jerry
Chab, an experienced amateur astronomer who witnessed the
lights and was one of the first to report them, says no. "I
think we have the most cosmic of coincidences: A bright [meteoritic]
fireball around the same time as an earthquake." Indeed,
eyewitness descriptions of the fireball are consistent with
a meteoroid disintegrating in the atmosphere. On the other
hand, several readers have pointed out scientific studies
that associate lightning-like phenomena (including ball lightning)
with earthquakes: #1,
#2,
#3.
The fireball, they suggest, might have been a rare manifestation
of "earthquake lightning."
More reports could help sort out the possibilities. Readers
with photos or eyewitness accounts are encouraged to submit
their observations.
Eyewitness
Fireball-Quake Reports
2009
Geminid Meteor Gallery
[sky
map] [meteor radar]
[Geminid counts]
December
Northern Lights Gallery
[previous Decembers: 2008,
2007, 2006,
2005, 2001,
2000]
Explore
the Sunspot Cycle |
