DRACONID METEOR OUTBURST: European sky watchers got a big surprise on the night of Oct. 8-9 when a flurry of faint meteors filled the northern sky. "It was an outburst of the annual Draconid meteor shower," reports Jure Atanackov, a member of the International Meteor Organization who witnessed the display over Dolenja vas, Slovenia. The Draconid peak is normally weak, numbering no more than ~5 meteors per hour. During the outburst, rates were at least 20 times greater than normal--boosted perhaps by the recent close approach of parent comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner. "All in all a rare and impressive event!" says Atanackov. Browse: Meteor Photo Gallery.
SPACE LIGHTNING OVER TEXAS: Northern Fall has arrived. But in West Texas thunderstorms are crackling like it's mid-summer. On October 6th, a powerful squall line swept across Texas, strafing the landscape with bolts of lightning and shooting jellyfish sprites up toward the edge of space. Paul Smith photographed these specimens 165 miles away from the storm in Minco, Oklahoma:
"The sprites were fantastic," says Smith. "I photographed quite a few through gaps in clouds before the sky became completely overcast."
Sprites are an exotic form of upward-directed lightning--sometimes called "space lightning" because their tendrils can extend to the very top of Earth's atmosphere. You have to be far away to see them over the edges of towering thunderclouds. Smith's distance of 165 miles was just right: map.
Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the storm, Thomas Ashcraft photographed the same sprites a similar distance away in New Mexico:
"In addition to the sprites, you can also see faint red ripples of light in the atmosphere behind them," points out Ashcraft. Those are "gravity waves"--literally, the ripple effect of the thunderstorm on the mesosphere some 80 km above Earth's surface. From space, these waves look like a giant atmospheric bull's eye. Gravity waves often appear in the backgrounds of sprite photos because both phenomena spring from the same source--powerful thunderstorms.
"Despite the coming of Fall, we are still seeing a lot of electrical activity in our part of the USA," says Ashcraft. "The past couple of weeks have produced some very dynamic conditions." Browse the sprite photo gallery for more examples.
CRYSTAL BALL IN THE STRATOSPHERE: The holidays are coming! To get ready for gift-giving, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched a Solar System crystal ball to the stratosphere. Watch the video as the orb travels onboard a giant helium balloon 93,000 feet above Earth's surface, stretching, focusing, and inverting the incredible landscape of the Sierra Nevada mountains behind it:
You can have it for $229. The students are selling these crystal balls to raise funds for their cosmic ray ballooning program. The 800 gram sphere contains an embedded model of the Solar System, including the sun, eight planets and their moons. It makes an incredible gift for anyone interested in space.
Each crystal ball comes with a unique gift card showing the item at the edge of space and telling the story of its flight. All proceeds support Earth to Sky Calculus and hands-on STEM research.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery