MARS LANDER TO LAUNCH FROM CALIFORNIA: This weekend, NASA will attempt something it has never done before: to launch an interplanetary spacecraft from the West Coast of the USA. If all goes as planned, the InSight Mars lander will blast off from Vandenberg Air Force Base at 4:05 am Pacific Time on Saturday, May 5th. The Atlas 5 rocket plume and subsequent clouds of icy exhaust glittering in the dawn sky could be visible across southern California and beyond. Stay tuned for updates.
A HOLE IN THE SUN'S ATMOSPHERE: Cutting across half of the solar disk, a wide hole in the sun's atmosphere is turning toward Earth and spewing a stream of solar wind toward our planet. This extreme ultraviolet image from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the gaseous canyon:
This is a coronal hole--a region where the sun's magnetic field opens up and allows gaseous material to escape. It looks dark because the hot glowing gas previously contained there is missing.
NOAA forecasters say G1-class geomagnetic storms are possible when the solar wind arrives on May 6th or 7th. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras, especially in the southern hemisphere when deepening autumn darkness favors visibility of Southern Lights. Free: Aurora Alerts.
FAR-OUT MOTHER'S DAY GIFT: Nothing says "I Love You" like a heart-shaped pendant from the edge of space. On Dec. 31, 2017, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus flew an array of cosmic ray sensors to the stratosphere onboard a giant helium balloon. This Mother's Day gift went along for the ride:
You can have it for $119.95. The students are selling these pendants as a fund-raiser for their cosmic ray monitoring program. All proceeds support atmospheric radiation measurements and hands-on STEM education.
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. Mom-satisfaction guaranteed.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All proceeds support hands-on STEM education
SUNSPOTS VANISHING FASTER THAN EXPECTED: Sunspots are becoming scarce. Very scarce. So far in 2018 the sun has been blank almost 60% of the time, with whole weeks going by without sunspots. Today's sun, shown here in an image from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, is typical of the featureless solar disk:
The fact that sunspots are vanishing comes as no surprise. Forecasters have been saying for years that this would happen as the current solar cycle ("solar cycle 24") comes to an end. The surprise is how fast.
"Solar cycle 24 is declining more quickly than forecast," stated NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center on April 26th. This plot shows observed sunspot numbers in blue vs. the official forecast in red:
"The smoothed, predicted sunspot number for April-May 2018 is about 15," says NOAA. "However, the actual monthly values have been lower."
"Official" forecasts of the solar cycle come from NOAA's Solar Cycle Prediction Panel–a group of experts from NOAA, NASA, the US Air Force, universities and other research organizations. They have been convening at intervals since 1989 to predict the timing and intensity of Solar Max. The problem is, no one really knows how to predict the solar cycle. The most recent iteration of the panel in 2006-2008 compared 54 different methods ranging from empirical extrapolations of historical data to cutting-edge supercomputer models of the sun's magnetic dynamo. None fully described what is happening now.
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