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FARSIDE SUNSPOT: There is a sunspot on the farside of the sun so big it is changing the way the sun vibrates. Helioseismic maps reveal its acoustic echo not far behind the sun's southeastern limb. The sunspot will turn to face Earth a few days from now. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text.
BLUE JET LIGHTNING SIGHTED OVER TEXAS: Seeing one blue jet is rare. Photographer Matthew Griffiths just caught several of them over the Big Bend National Park in Texas. "This is by far the best," he says:
Above: A blue jet emerges from a thunderhead in Big Bend National Park, photographed by Matthew Griffiths in Marfa, Texas: more.
Griffiths is an amateur photographer, primarily interesting in wildlife and the Milky Way. "On July 28th, I was starting a five night West Texas road trip to capture the Milky Way," he says. "But with thunderstorms storms in the distance I decided to try for red sprites instead."
He ended up photographing the sprite's elusive blue cousin. First recorded by cameras on the space shuttle in 1989, blue jets are part of a growing menagerie of cloudtop "transient luminous events." Sprites, ELVES and green ghosts are other examples. They are all elusive, but blue jets may be the hardest to catch.
"We're not sure why ground-based observers see them so rarely," says Oscar van der Velde of the Lightning Research Group at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. "It might have something to do with their blue color. Earth's atmosphere naturally scatters blue light, which makes them harder to see. Blue jets might be more common than we think."
A rookie mistake might have helped Griffiths. "This is only my second time trying for sprites. I might have aimed my camera too close to the cloud tops where bright lightning washed out the sprites; in fact, I couldn't find any sprites in my photos. But I think my camera angle was just right for catching the bright blue jet."
Above: A zoomed-in view showing the jet's sharp lance-like core and a diffuse fan of electric-blue overhead.
Blue jets might look like lightning, but they are not the same. Normal lightning carves a scorching-hot path through the atmosphere, heating the air to 30,000 degrees Celsius. Blue jets are made of cold plasma akin to gas inside a flourescent light bulb. You could touch one with your hand and it might not hurt.
And, of course, they go up instead of down. Photos taken from the International Space Station (ISS) show that blue jets reach astonishing altitudes, as high as 170,000 feet. This is high enough to touch the ionosphere, possibly forming a new and poorly understood branch of Earth's global electrical circuit.
"Also," says van der Velde, "there can be considerable production of NOx and ozone by these discharges, potentially affecting the chemistry of the upper atmosphere."
Clearly, it is important to study blue jets. Photographers, now you know where to look.
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THE INFINITY PEARL: Nothing says "I love you forever" like the Infinity Pearl. The students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched this unique pendant to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon. For more than 2 hours it floated 101,378+ feet above the Sierra Nevada mountains of central California:
You can have it for $249.95. The students are selling space pearls to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. Measuring 9 mm in diameter, the Infinity Pearl is mounted on a sterling silver infinity twist and suspended from a matching 17 inch long sterling silver chain. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the pendant in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
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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 Aug 04, 2022, the network reported 88 fireballs.
(71 sporadics, 13 Perseids, 2 southern Delta Aquarids, 2 alpha Capricornids)
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 August 4, 2022 there were 2291 potentially hazardous asteroids.
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Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: | Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
| 2022 OE4 | 2022-Jul-30 | 5.3 LD | 4 | 6 |
| 531944 | 2022-Jul-30 | 18.2 LD | 5.9 | 173 |
| 2022 OD3 | 2022-Jul-31 | 19.6 LD | 6.9 | 18 |
| 2022 OU2 | 2022-Aug-01 | 3.6 LD | 8.4 | 38 |
| 2022 OW3 | 2022-Aug-01 | 5 LD | 8.3 | 18 |
| 2020 PP1 | 2022-Aug-01 | 13.1 LD | 3.7 | 17 |
| 2022 OJ5 | 2022-Aug-01 | 1.1 LD | 9.4 | 6 |
| 2022 OX3 | 2022-Aug-02 | 7.1 LD | 15.9 | 30 |
| 2022 OK5 | 2022-Aug-02 | 8.9 LD | 18 | 80 |
| 2022 PA | 2022-Aug-03 | 3.3 LD | 24.9 | 23 |
| 2020 PN1 | 2022-Aug-03 | 9.7 LD | 4.6 | 29 |
| 2022 OE2 | 2022-Aug-04 | 13.6 LD | 32.2 | 224 |
| 2022 OC3 | 2022-Aug-04 | 3.2 LD | 3.8 | 7 |
| 2022 OJ3 | 2022-Aug-04 | 5 LD | 12.5 | 39 |
| 2022 OE6 | 2022-Aug-05 | 7.5 LD | 11.2 | 13 |
| 2022 OB5 | 2022-Aug-05 | 2.7 LD | 2.1 | 6 |
| 2022 PE | 2022-Aug-06 | 2.5 LD | 3.9 | 7 |
| 2022 OH2 | 2022-Aug-07 | 4.4 LD | 4 | 12 |
| 2022 OC4 | 2022-Aug-09 | 4 LD | 7.5 | 11 |
| 2022 PF | 2022-Aug-09 | 4.5 LD | 9.6 | 14 |
| 2015 FF | 2022-Aug-12 | 11.2 LD | 9.2 | 17 |
| 2022 OT1 | 2022-Aug-13 | 12.4 LD | 5.8 | 36 |
| 2022 OA4 | 2022-Aug-14 | 18.2 LD | 7.9 | 23 |
| 2022 PC | 2022-Aug-18 | 16.5 LD | 4.1 | 61 |
| 2019 AV13 | 2022-Aug-22 | 19.1 LD | 8.8 | 135 |
| 2020 QW3 | 2022-Aug-22 | 14.1 LD | 18.1 | 30 |
| 2015 QH3 | 2022-Aug-22 | 5.6 LD | 7 | 14 |
| 2017 BU | 2022-Aug-29 | 15.8 LD | 7 | 32 |
| 2021 CQ5 | 2022-Sep-01 | 8.7 LD | 13.5 | 7 |
| 2020 PT4 | 2022-Sep-15 | 19.7 LD | 10.8 | 39 |
| 2016 HF2 | 2022-Sep-29 | 19.2 LD | 5.6 | 21 |
| 2018 ER1 | 2022-Oct-02 | 14.7 LD | 4 | 27 |
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. | | Cosmic Rays in the Atmosphere |
SPACE WEATHER BALLOON DATA: Almost once a week, Spaceweather.com and the students of Earth to Sky Calculus fly space weather balloons to the stratosphere over California. These balloons are equipped with sensors that detect secondary cosmic rays, a form of radiation from space that can penetrate all the way down to Earth's surface. Our monitoring program has been underway without interruption for 7 years, resulting in a unique dataset of in situ atmospheric measurements.
Latest results (July 2022): Atmospheric radiation is decreasing in 2022. Our latest measurements in July 2022 registered a 6-year low:
What's going on? Ironically, the radiation drop is caused by increasing solar activity. Solar Cycle 25 has roared to life faster than forecasters expected. The sun's strengthening and increasingly tangled magnetic field repels cosmic rays from deep space. In addition, solar coronal mass ejections (CMEs) sweep aside cosmic rays, causing sharp reductions called "Forbush Decreases." The two effects blend together to bring daily radiation levels down.
.Who cares? Cosmic rays are a surprisingly "down to Earth" form of space weather. They can alter the chemistry of the atmosphere, trigger lightning, and penetrate commercial airplanes. According to a study from the Harvard T.H. Chan school of public health, crews of aircraft have higher rates of cancer than the general population. The researchers listed cosmic rays, irregular sleep habits, and chemical contaminants as leading risk factors. A number of controversial studies (#1, #2, #3, #4) go even further, linking cosmic rays with cardiac arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death.
Technical notes: The radiation sensors onboard our helium balloons detect X-rays and gamma-rays in the energy range 10 keV to 20 MeV. These energies span the range of medical X-ray machines and airport security scanners.
Data points in the graph labeled "Stratospheric Radiation" correspond to the peak of the Regener-Pfotzer maximum, which lies about 67,000 feet above central California. When cosmic rays crash into Earth's atmosphere, they produce a spray of secondary particles that is most intense at the entrance to the stratosphere. Physicists Eric Regener and Georg Pfotzer discovered the maximum using balloons in the 1930s and it is what we are measuring today.
| | 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. |
| | information about sunspots based on the latest NOAA/USAF Active Region Summary |
| | Authoritative predictions of space junk and satellite re-entries |
| | from the NOAA Space Environment Center |
| | fun to read, but should be taken with a grain of salt! Forecasts looking ahead more than a few days are often wrong. |
| | from the NOAA Space Environment Center |
| | the underlying science of space weather |
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