SPACEWEATHER PHOTO GALLERY OUTAGE: Our realtime photo gallery server has experienced a catastrophic hardware failure. The gallery contains years of unique photos, preserving a record of noctilucent clouds, auroras, and many other phenomena. The good news: Most if not all of those images have been preserved. The bad news: Fixing the problem will take some days as we carefully migrate the gallery to a more capable platform, modernizing code in the process. In the meantime, if you have an image to share with readers of Spaceweather.com, please email it directly to Dr. Tony Phillips. Don't forget to include the time and location of the image + commentary about what you saw.
A HOLE IN THE SUN'S ATMOSPHERE: A hole has opened in the sun's atmosphere, and it is spewing a stream of solar wind toward Earth. Estimated time of arrival: July 15th or 16th. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) photographed the opening on July 14th:
This is a "coronal hole"--a place where the sun's magnetic field opens up and allows solar wind to escape. It looks dark in extreme ultraviolet SDO images because the glowing-hot plasma normally contained there is missing--in this case, en route to Earth. Minor geomagnetic storms and high-latitude auroras are possible when the gaseous material arrives. Aurora alerts: SMS Text.
Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
Note: The photo gallery is temporarily unavailable
PARTIAL LUNAR ECLIPSE: On July 16th, the full Moon will pass through the shadow of Earth, off center, producing a partial lunar eclipse. This movie created by space artist Larry Koehn shows how 65% of the lunar disk will fall into darkness during the 3 hour eclipse:
Best seen from Africa, the eclipse is maximum at 21:32 UT. Observers in Europe, Asia, South America, and Australia will also witness at least part of the eclipse. North Americans will see none of it--only a normal bright full Moon. Check NASA's visibility map to find out if you are in the eclipse zone.
Realtime Eclipse Photo Gallery
Note: The photo gallery is temporarily unavailable
"ONE SMALL STEP"--ORIGINAL SPACE PAINTING: This artwork has touched space. Hand-painted by artist Dana Wilcher, a student member of Earth to Sky Calculus, "One Small Step" flew to the stratosphere on June 23, 2019, onboard a cosmic ray balloon. It shows Neil Armstrong's iconic footprint on the Moon made during the Apollo 11 mission 50 years ago:
You can have it for $99.95. The students are selling these commemorative Apollo 11 paintings to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing and to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each signed 4x4inch canvas panel comes with a greeting card showing the painting in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space and back. This makes a great gift for any enthusiast of space exploration.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
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