A COMET IS DIVING INTO THE SUN: Coronagraphs onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) are watching a comet dive into the sun today. The sungrazer is disintegrating rapidly and may be only a few hours away from complete obliteration. This appears to be a Kreutz sungrazer--a fragment from the breakup of a single giant comet many centuries ago. Watch: movie (finder chart), latest image.
RED SPRITES IN HIGH DEFINITION: According to NASA, cosmic rays are intensifying. Last week, on Aug. 6th, Roger Spinner of Montsevelier, Switzerland, witnessed a likely side-effect. "Red sprites were flashing above a thunderstorm in northern Italy about 215 km away," says Spinner. "I recorded an HD video of the display using my Sony A7s."
As the storm raged over Italy's Lombardy region, Spinner's camera recorded three magnificent clusters of sprites in rare detail. Shaped like jellyfish, the sprites were more than 40 km tall, with purple tentacles dangling toward the thunderstorm below and red bushy heads touching the edge of space. Balls of red light only a few hundred meters in diameter dot the jellyfish's waist and tentacles.
"For me, personally, these shots are special," says Spinner, who has been monitoring sprites in Europe for more than 7 years. "Although three jellyfish sprites in one evening is nothing unusual for a strong thunderstorm, color videos of sprites in HD or 4K quality haven't been possible for very long. The Sony A7s came on the market only a few years ago."
Cosmic rays may be helping Spinner capture such images. Radiation from deep space is intensifying because of Solar Minimum. During this phase of the solar cycle, cosmic rays penetrate the sun's weakening magnetic defenses and enter Earth's atmosphere more than usual. Some researchers believe that extra cosmic rays provide the ionizing "spark" that triggers sprites.
Above: In this lightning map from Blitzortung.org, the yellow star marks Spinner's camera, and the black arrow shows where it was pointing.
Spinner knows where to point his cameras thanks, in part, to live lightning maps published by Blitzortung.org. Mesoscale convective systems with strong lightning tend to produce the best sprites. Distant storms, ironically, can be the most photogenic. A spacing of hundred kilometers or more allows Spinner's camera to see over the top of the thunderhead.
"Even if you know exactly where the thunderstorms are and where the sprites might occur, it is always a surprise what kind of spectacle nature actually offers you," says Spinner. See the complete HD video on Youtube.
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APOLLO 11 PROOF SILVER DOLLARS: The students of Earth to Sky Calculus weren't even born when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon in 1969 years ago. Nevertheless, they "get it." On July 20th, the students launched 50 Apollo 11 silver dollars to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray balloon. The coins touched the edge of space 50 years to the day after Neil and Buzz made footprints in the Sea of Tranquillity:
You can have one for $197.95. The students are selling these coins to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. Quantities are limited and more than half have already been sold. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the item in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space.
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