VENUS-SATURN CONJUNCTION: When the sun goes down tonight, step outside and look southwest. Venus and Saturn are converging for a sunset conjunction. At closest approach on Dec. 11th, the two planets will be just under 2 degrees apart. Brilliant Venus pops out of the twilight first, followed ~15 minutes later by 1st-magnitude Saturn. Full story.
ONE WEEK FROM A SPACE AGE RECORD: 2019 is about to set a Space Age record. So far this year, the sun has been blank (no sunspots) for 262 days, including the last 25 days in a row. If the streak continues for only 7 more days, 2019 will break the Space Age record for spotless suns.
Above: The blank sun on Dec. 8, 2019. Credit: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory
The previous record-holder is the year 2008, when the sun was blank for 268 days, making the Solar Minimum of 2008-2009 the deepest of the Space Age. Next weekend, barring a sudden profusion of sunspots, 2019 will move into first place.
Solar Minimum is a normal part of the 11-year sunspot cycle. The past two (2008-2009 and 2018-2019) have been long and deep, making them "century-class" Minima. To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go back to 1913, which had 311 spotless days.
What are the side-effects of Solar Minimum? On one hand, solar flares and geomagnetic storms subside, making it harder to catch Northern Lights at mid-latitudes. Space weather grows "quiet." On the other hand, cosmic rays intensify. The sun's weakening magnetic field allows more particles from deep space into the solar system, boosting radiation levels in Earth's atmosphere. Indeed, this is happening right now with cosmic rays nearing a Space Age record.
Stay tuned for updates this week!
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THE NORTHERN LIGHTS PENDANT: On Dec. 6, 2019, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched a cosmic ray balloon to the stratosphere. This Northern Lights pendant went along for the ride, flying more than 107,612 feet above the rugged Sierra Nevada mountains of central California:
You can have it for $119.95. The students are selling these pendants to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the pendant in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space. It makes an out-of-this-world Christmas gift!
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IF YOU WANT TO SEE A CRAZY SUN HALO, GO SKIING... Many of us have seen a sun halo--a ring around the sun caused by ice crystals in clouds. The luminous rings are usually simple circles. On Dec. 1st, however, things got complicated. "I witnessed a very complex halo display," reports Cindy Bidois, who sends this picture from Val Thorens in the French Alps:
In Bidois's photo, we see a parhelic circle, a supralateral arc, a 22-degree halo, a circumzenithal arc, an upper tangent arc, a Parry arc, a sun pillar and a pair of sundogs. "It was crazy," she says.
Complex halos like this require not just one type of ice crystal, but many, with gem-like perfection and unusually precise crystal-to-crystal alignment. Clouds that contain such a rare ensemble of ice crystals are rare. In this case, the clouds had help--from snow-making machines.
Val Thorens, located at an altitude of 2300m, is the highest ski town in Europe. Snow-making machines at ski resorts produce a special type of ice. Crystals called "diamond dust" grow slowly downwind of ski-slope snow blowers. These man-made crystals tend to be more optically perfect than natural crystals in clouds, producing extra-bright, extra-sharp sun halos just like Bidois saw.
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