COSMIC RAYS ARE INCREASING AT AVIATION ALTITUDES: New high-altitude balloon measurements inside the Arctic Circle show that cosmic rays are increasing at aviation altitudes. Commercial flight crews and passengers traveling over Earth's poles now experience as much as 12% more radiation than they did just a few years ago. Check out the data and get the full story right here.
WHY DOES THE SUN LOOK LIKE SHAG CARPET? Yesterday, amateur astronomer Martin Wise of Trenton, Florida, pointed his H-alpha telescope at the sun. There were no sunspots. Instead, this is what he saw:
It looks a bit like shag carpet. All along the edge are hundreds of little orange "fibers" reminiscent of 1970s flooring. The shaggy threads are called spicules, Texas-sized jets of gas shooting up from the sun's surface. Because spicules rise and fall in only a few minutes, each snapshot looks a little different.
The big wild thread near the middle is not a spicule but a prominence. Prominences are clouds of hydrogen held above the sun's surface by magnetic fields. They are larger than spicules, and much longer lasting.
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HOW CORONAVIRUS AFFECTS STARTRAILS: Something has changed in the night skies of Italy. For years, Paolo Bardelli has enjoyed photographing star trails from his home in Sumirago. "We're only about 15 km from the Milan Malpensa International Airport," he says. "Normally, my images are criss-crossed by many airplanes. When I took this photo on March 11th, however, there were only two."
What happened? "Unfortunately," says Bardelli, "the absence of planes in the sky is the result of the COVID-19 virus, which has forced us into isolation."
One of the world's most popular tourist destinations, Italy is under a strict lockdown in which people are only allowed to leave their homes when it is absolutely necessary. Any Italian who wants to travel has to get permission from authorities. Eerie photos of empty airports are circulating the Internet.
"Here is a comparison image from Jan. 29, 2020," he says. "It shows what the traffic was like before the lockdown began."
The difference is even more striking when you consider that the January image was only 35 minutes long vs. 120 minutes for the March exposure. "We are all staying at home waiting for an improvement in the situation," adds Bardelli, who is still able to walk out in his backyard. "Luckily we have the sky!"
Best wishes from Spaceweather.com to people around the world affected by COVID-19. Hopefully life and skies will soon return to normal.
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MR. SPOCK BOBBLEHEAD IN THE STRATOSPHERE: If you would like to support the Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray ballooning program, there's a logical way to do it. Puchase this Mr. Spock collector's item. Here is the green-blooded science officer floating 32.2 km (112,200 ft) above Death Valley National Park in central California:
You can have him for $170.10. The price, in case you're wondering, is the serial number of the Enterprise, NGC1701, divided by 10. The students are selling Spock to buy more helium! He comes with a greeting card showing the high-quality resin bobblehead in flight and telling the story of his journey to the stratosphere and back again.
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FRIDAY THE 13TH AURORAS: Friday the 13th was a lucky day for some Arctic sky watchers. A solar wind stream almost missed Earth, but didn't. Gaseous material flowing from a southern hole in the sun's atmosphere grazed our planet's magnetic field, sparkingauroras over Alaska, Canada and Finland. No more solar wind streams are due to arrive for at least a week. Aurora alerts: SMS Text.
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