SOLAR MINIMUM CONDITIONS ARE IN EFFECT: The sun has been blank (no sunspots) for 29 of the past 31 days. This is a sign that Solar Minimum is underway. During this phase of the solar cycle, sunspots and solar flares are rare, but we get plenty of holes in the sun's atmosphere and lots of extra cosmic rays. Solar Minimum conditions are expected to continue uninterrupted for the remainder of 2019. Aurora alerts: SMS Text.
MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL VOLCANIC SUNSET: On Monday night, Oct. 7th, more than 50 thousand football fans in Levi's Stadium watched the San Francisco 49ers thump the Cleveland Browns (31-3). Fortunately, one of them looked up at the sky. "The sunset was full of volcanic colors," says Dave Weixelman, who took this picture from the upper deck:
"Fortunately we were facing west and had a great view of the sunset," says Weixelman. "I took the picture using my smartphone, and this is how it looked straight out of the camera--very purple."
Weixelman witnessed a "Raikoke sunset." On June 22nd, the Raikoke volcano in Russia's Kuril islands erupted with such power that tons of sulfurous gas reached the stratosphere. That gas has been swirling around the northern hemisphere ever since. Fine volcanic aerosols in the stratosphere scatter blue light which, when mixed with ordinary sunrise red, produces a purple hue.
Purple, however, isn't the only thing to look for. Volcanic skies are also marked by a yellow twilight arch with long diffuse rays and shadows. As Weixelman's photo shows, many of these features are visible even through the bright lights of an NFL game.
Realtime Volcanic Sunset Photo Gallery
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A DOUBLE GIGANTIC JET: Since sprites were discovered in the late 1980s, researchers have photographed thousands of the strange upward-reaching lightning bolts. Their oversized cousins, Gigantic Jets, are far more rare. Only dozens have been photographed. It is no wonder, then, that observers are still seeing new behaviors in this type of powerful "super sprite." On Oct. 2nd, photographer Frankie Lucena may have recorded the first example of a "double Gigantic Jet."
"In the past, I've captured Gigantic Jet events that split into two, but this is the first time I've seen a Gigantic Jet that fired a second time just as the first jet was beginning to fade out," explains Lucena. "They shared the same channel of ionization, so it is considered to be a single event."
Lucena photographed the repeating jet from his private observatory in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico. The instigating thunderstorm was about 100 km offshore. The arrow in this satellite image points from his camera to the source of the lightning:
Lucena is a leading photographer of Gigantic Jets. In a field where sightings number in the dozens, Lucena alone has photographed 39 Gigantic Jets from his Caribbean observatory since he began his work in 2010. So when he says a repeating Gigantic Jets is rare, it really is. View more examples of sprites and their cousins in the Realtime Sprite Photo Gallery.
Realtime Sprite Photo Gallery
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A STARSHIP IN THE STRATOSPHERE: Last month, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched the starship Enterprise to the stratosphere. Riding onboard a high-altitude cosmic ray balloon, the laser-etched crystal spaceship traveled 34.7 km (113,845 feet) above Earth's surface:
You can have it for $149.95. The students are selling the Enterprise to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each starship comes with a greeting card showing the item in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space. Also included is a multi-colored LED illuminated stand (shown in the picture above). This creates a colorful visual effect and allows the Enterprise to be used as a far-out night light.
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