NASA PREPARES ARTIFICIAL CLOUD DISPLAY: Tonight, June 12th, between 9:04 to 9:19 p.m. Eastern Time, NASA plans to launch a sounding rocket from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. About 100 miles above Earth's surface, the payload will release a network of red and blue-green vapors. Tracking the motions of the colorful gases will help researchers study the dynamics of Earth's ionosphere. The vapor tracers may be visible from New York to North Carolina and westward to Charlottesville, Virginia. Free: Aurora Alerts
RADIO STORM ON JUPITER: On June 6th, amateur astronomer Thomas Ashcraft pointed his shortwave radio telescope at Jupiter, which was shining brightly high overhead in the New Mexico night sky. Soon, the loudspeakers began to roar with strange-sounding swooshes of static. A Jovian radio storm was underway. Click to listen to a sample of the audio:
"This is a one minute long audio recording captured on two short wave radios tuned at 29.0 MHz and 29.5 MHz," explains Ashcraft. "The storm produced sustained emissions that lasted over two and a half hours."
Jupiter is a powerful source of shortwave radio bursts. They come from natural radio lasers in the giant planet's magnetosphere. Electrical currents flowing between Jupiter's upper atmosphere and the volcanic moon Io can boost these emissions to power levels easily detected by ham radio antennas on Earth. To learn more about radio storms on Jupiter, and how you can observe them yourself, visit NASA's RadioJove web site.
CRESCENT SUPERMOON VS. FULL MINI-MOON: The Moon's orbit is an ellipse, with one side 50,000 km closer to Earth than the other. This has an effect on the apparent size of the Moon. The lunar disk grows larger when the Moon is nearby and smaller when far away. In the past two weeks we have witnessed two extremes--a crescent supermoon followed by a full 'mini-Moon.' Peter Lowenstein of Mutare, Zimbabwe, photographed them both:
"The size difference was so great, the crescent Moon of May 27th could hold the full Moon of June 9th with room to spare!" says Lowenstein. "I took these photographs from the same location in Mutare using the same optical zoom setting (x60) on the same Panasonic Lumix DMC TZ-60 camera within two hours of moonset."
Some people say that mini-Moons and supermoons all appear to be the same size. After all, there are no rulers floating in the sky to measure lunar diameters, and without reference points to provide a sense of scale, one Moon can indeed look much like any other. However, Lowenstein's photo shows there is a real difference.
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
SPACE BALLS FOR FATHER'S DAY: What do you give the Father who has everything? Space Balls! The students of Earth to Sky Calculus have flown a basket of space-helmeted golf balls to the edge of space, 36.3 km (119,000 feet) above Earth's surface on board a high altitude helium balloon:
After the balloon exploded, the balls parachuted back to Earth, landing in the volcanic tablelands north of Bishop CA. For $49.95 you can have one of these balls (space helmet included) along with a unique Father's Day card showing the balls floating at the top of Earth's atmosphere. The interior of the card tells the story of the flight and confirms that this gift has been to the edge of space and back again.
More edge of space Father's Day gifts may be found in the Earth to Sky Store.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All proceeds support hands-on STEM education