GEOMAGNETIC STORMS UNDERWAY: Intermittent G1-class geomagnetic storms are underway on Aug. 23rd as Earth passes through a region of disturbed solar wind. These are minor storms, but they are producing occasional bright auroras below the Arctic Circle. NOAA forecasters say there is a 40% chance that these storms will continue for the next 12-24 hours. Free: Aurora Alerts
SOLAR ECLIPSE IN THE STRATOSPHERE: During the Great American Solar Eclipse on August 21st, Spaceweather.com and Earth to Sky Calculus launched 11 high-altitude balloons carrying more than 20 cameras from the path of totality. We hoped to catch the Moon's shadow sweeping across the landscape from a vantage point in the stratosphere--and we succeeded! This picture shows the inky-black shadow of the Moon darkening a 70 mile-wide patch of Wyoming/Nebraska:
Sponsored by the Southern Maine Community College, the balloon was launched from Ft. Laramie, Wyoming, by a joint team of Earth to Sky students from Maine and California. This is just a single frame of a much longer HD video still being processed by the launch crew. Stay tuned for footage of the shadow in motion.
THE GREAT AMERICAN SOLAR ECLIPSE: On Monday, Aug. 21st, the Moon passed directly in front of the sun, producing a total solar eclipse visible in the USA from coast to coast. "The sky darkened so rapidly it was almost impossible to believe," reports Mark Rosengarten, who photographed totality from Madras, Oregon:
"You could actually see darkness in the sky rushing in from the west before totality hit," he says. "As the Moon slid into place over the sun, the corona became visible. There was an inky black circle in the sky with a shimmery ring around it, from which emanated the silvery tendrils of the corona."
"After the eclipse, I fought five hours of absolutely horrifying traffic going home to Portland,"adds Rosengarten. "It was worth every minute."
Outside the path of totality, people witnessed a partial eclipse. The sun turned into a luminous crescent as the Moon passed by, off center. Charles Yeager of Birmingham, Alabama, photographed crescent-shaped sunbeams on an American flag:
"I shot an eclipse in 1984, so I knew to look for this kind of eclipse highlight," he says.
Note: Last week, NASA-supported researchers at Predictive Science Inc. used magnetohydrodynamic models of the sun's atmosphere to predict the appearance of this solar eclipse. Take a look at Rosengarten's photo one more time, then compare it to the prediction. Good match!
Realtime Eclipse Photo Gallery
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