Where's Saturn? Is that a UFO--or the ISS? What's the name of that
star? Get the answers from mySKY--a
fun new astronomy helper from Meade.
GIGANTIC JETS: Think of them
as sprites
on steroids: Gigantic Jets are lightning-like discharges that spring
from the top of thunderstorms, reaching all the way from the thunderhead
to the ionosphere
50+ miles overhead. They're enormous and powerful.
You've never seen one? "Gigantic
Jets are very rare," explains atmospheric scientist and
Jet-expert Oscar van der Velde of the Université Paul Sabatier's
Laboratoire d’Aérologie in Toulouse, France. "The first one
was discovered in 2001 by Dr. Victor Pasko in Puerto Rico. Since
then fewer than 30 jets have been recorded--mostly over open ocean
and on only two occasions over land."
That's why researchers are excited by the events of Aug. 20th.
On that night, amateur astronomer Richard
Smedley of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, was hunting for meteors using
a low light video camera when he caught two Gigantic Jets instead:
Click on the image to view the 4.5 MB video
"They were much brighter than a typical meteor--more like
a fireball," says Smedley. To appreciate the size of these
things, consider the following: "They came from a thunderstorm
more than 100 miles away in Missouri: map."
This means the Jets were about 48 miles tall measured upward from
the top of the thundercloud.
Because they connect thunderstorms directly to the ionosphere,
Gigantic Jets play some role in the global flow of electricity around
our planet, but how big is that role? "No one knows,"
says van der Velde. "This is cutting-edge research and these
photos from Oklahoma provide an exciting new case-study."
Amateur astronomers, you can contribute to this research. Check
your local weather radar map for storms just over the horizon, point
your meteor cameras in that direction, and click.
Gigantic Jets may not be as rare as we think.
NEW SUNSPOT: New sunspot
969 "looks good," says Cai-Uso
Wohler of Bispingen, Germany. His photo of the 'spot taken yesterday
through a Coronado SolarMax60
reveals a bushy magnetic filament emerging from the sunspot's dark
core:
The region may become even more photogenic as it turns toward
Earth in the days ahead--stay tuned!
more images: from
Ng Wee Nghee of Singapore; from
Howard Eskildsen of Ocala, Florida; from
Pavol Rapavy of Rimavska Sobota, Slovakia; from
Peter Paice of Belfast, Northern Ireland; from
Maxim Usatov of Dniepropetrovsk, Ukraine.
|
