NEW HORIZONS APPROACHES ULTIMA THULE: NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is less than 11 hours away from Ultima Thule, a mysterious elongated object in the distant Kuiper Belt. At 12:33 am EST on Jan. 1st, New Horizons will swoop past Ultima Thule three times closer than it buzzed Pluto in 2015. Because it takes ~6 hours for radio signals from the Kuiper Belt to reach Earth, first images will not be released to the public until Jan. 2nd. A timetable of flyby events and links to live coverage may be found here.
Read more: The Mystery of Ultima Thule; New Horizons home page
THE NEXT GEOMAGNETIC STORM: A large hole in the sun's atmosphere is turning to face Earth and spewing a stream of solar wind in our direction. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory photographed the structure on Dec. 31st:
Traveling faster than 600 km/s, the gaseous material is expected to arrive on Jan. 4, 2019, possibly sparking the first geomagnetic storm of the New Year.
We've seen this hole before. It has been spinning around with the rotating sun, lashing Earth with solar wind approximately once a month since it opened in August. The last time we felt its exhaust, on Dec. 7th and 8th, bright auroras were sighted around the Arctic Circle. A repeat performance is likely a few days from now. Free: Aurora Alerts.
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
GIFTS FROM THE EDGE OF SPACE: The students of Earth to Sky Calculus are about to kick off a new year of cosmic ray balloon launches, continuing a 5-year campaign to monitor increasing levels of radiation in Earth's atmosphere. You can help. Buy any gift item from the Earth to Sky Store and we'll give you 10% off to celebrate the New Year.
All items in the Earth to Sky Store have flown to the edge of space onboard cosmic ray balloons. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the item in flight and telling the story of its journey. All sales support the Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray ballooning program and hands-on STEM research.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education