THE LIGHT SHOW CONTINUES: Geomagnetic storms are circling Earth's poles for the 2nd day in a row as a solar wind stream continues to buffet Earth's magnetic field. Today, the solar wind speed has quickened to more than 700 km/s, re-energizing storms that began on March 27th when Earth made first contact with the stream. High-latitude sky watchers should remain alert for auroras. Free: Aurora Alerts
Last night outside Fairbanks, Alaska, aurora tour guide Marketa Murray photographed a remarkable outburst of Northern Lights:
"Each of these photos is separated by only three seconds," says Murray, who also found time for a rare self-portrait.
The Alaska outburst occured during a G2-class geomagnetic storm on March 27th. At the same time, people were seeing Northern Lights in the USA as far south as Michigan, Wyoming and Minnesota. Browse the realtime aurora gallery for more sightings:
THE SUN WAKES UP: For much of the past month, the sun has been blank--no sunspots at all. This week is different. Two new spots are growing on the Earthside of the sun and they are crackling with C-class solar flares:
Big sunspot AR2644 has multiple dark cores as large as Earth and a 'beta-gamma' magnetic field that harbors latent energy for strong M-class explosions. So far the smaller sunspot, AR2645, is the more active of the two, producing C-flares at a 5x greater rate.
Is the sun really waking up--or just turning in its sleep? Stay tuned for updates.
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
TOUCHING THE EDGE OF SPACE: On March 10, 2017, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched a space weather balloon from the frozen surface of Lake Tornetrask 250 km inside the Arctic Circle. A payload-full of reindeer pendants hitched a ride to the Edge of Space:
You can have one for $129.95. Each glittering pendant comes with a greeting card showing the jewelry in flight and telling the story of its journey 97,000 feet above the Lapland of Northern Sweden. They make great Birthday and Mother's Day gifts.
More far-out gifts may be found in the Earth to Sky store. All proceeds support STEM education and our atmospheric cosmic ray monitoring program.