CHANCE OF STORMS THIS WEEKEND: NOAA forecasters say there is a 60% chance of minor G1-class geomagnetic storms on July 9th when a high-speed solar wind stream is expected to hit Earth's magnetic field. The stream of gas is flowing from a large hole in the sun's atmosphere, now facing Earth. Unfortunately, bright moonlight will interfere with the visibility of auroras, which might otherwise be seen at high latitudes. Free: Aurora Alerts
SUNSPOT GROWING RAPIDLY: New sunspot AR2664, which appeared just yesterday, has already more than doubled in size. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory documented the sunspot's rapid development in this 36-hour time lapse movie:
So far the sunspot has not produced any strong solar flares, but this could change if the sunspot's breakneck growth destabilizes its magnetic field. Amateur astronomers are encouraged to monitor this expanding sunspot. With one dark core twice as wide as Earth and many more cores larger than the Moon, AR2665 is an easy target for backyard solar telescopes. Free: Aurora Alerts
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
SOLAR ECLIPSE SPACE PENDANTS: Would you like to support our Solar Eclipse Balloon Network? Here's one way: Buy a space pendant. This solar eclipse-themed necklace flew to the stratosphere on July 2, 2017, attached to the payload of an Earth to Sky Calculus space weather balloon:
The payload contained more just like it. If you buy one now for $79.95, we will fly it back to the stratosphere during the Great American Solar Eclipse on August 21, 2017, where it will be enveloped by the Moon's cool shadow above our launch site in Oregon. No additional charge! Just make a note in the COMMENTS BOX of the shopping cart: "Please fly my pendant into the eclipse!" Each pendant comes with a greeting card showing the jewelry in flight and telling the story of its journey to the stratosphere and back again.
More items from the edge of space may be found in the Earth to Sky Store. All proceeds support atmospheric radiation monitoring and hands-on STEM education.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All proceeds support hands-on STEM education
'TIGER ELVE' SIGHTED OVER ITALY: For years, Martin Popek of Czechia has been monitoring the skies above intense thunderstorms in Europe. His cameras frequently capture images of exotic 'space lightning'--strange forms that lance upward from the electrical tempest below. Most often he sees sprites; occasionally he catches an ELVE. On June 25th, for the first time, he spotted an elusive 'tiger ELVE':
"My cameras were trained on a distant storm, 700 km away in Italy, when the tiger ELVE briefly appeared," he explains. "It was gone again in a split second."
A tiger ELVE is ... you guessed it ... an ELVE with stripes.
Regular ELVEs appear when a pulse of electromagnetic radiation from cloud-to-ground lightning propagates up toward space and hits the base of Earth's ionosphere. A faint ring of deep-red light marks the broad 'spot' where the EMP hits.
Sometimes ELVEs light up a region of Earth's atmosphere corrugated by gravity waves, alternating bands of thin and thick air that fan out in the sky like ripples in a pond. These gravity waves can modulate the brightness of an ELVE giving it unusual stripes.
Realtime Noctilucent Cloud Photo Gallery