CHANCE OF MINOR STORMS: A CME might sideswipe Earth on July 1st. New modeling of the storm cloud's trajectory suggests a 30% chance of impact. The hit, if it occurs, won't be head on. The CME is traveling mostly away from our planet, so any contact will be with the CME's flank. We expect, at most, minor geomagnetic storming. Aurora alerts: SMS Text.
NOCTILUCENT CLOUDS IN MOTION: Noctilucent clouds ripple like no other clouds on Earth. Of course not; they're barely on Earth. On June 26th, Harlan Thomas captured this video just outside Calgary, Alberta:
Made of water vapor and meteor smoke, noctilucent clouds (NLCs) float near the edge of space. Their average altitude: 83 km. Way up there, gravity waves crash into noctilucent clouds, creating fine ripples that move almost hypnotically.
"I was literally mesmerized by the display," says Thomas.
Thomas's video captures some ordinary clouds too. Note the dark forms scudding beneath the glowing NLCs. Those are probably rain clouds hugging the ground no more than 5 to 10 km high. Lacking the glow and fine structure of NLCs, they have their own kind of beauty--no gravity waves required.
Realtime Noctilucent Cloud Photo Gallery
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INSIDE A RAINBOW: The next time you see a rainbow, look carefully at the colors. There's red on the outside, then orange, yellow, green, blue and, finally, on the inside, violet. That's how a rainbow stops, on violet. Except this rainbow kept going--violet, green, violet, green, violet, green:
"I had never seen a rainbow this colorful and the vivid colors kept repeating," says Suzy Heffernan, who took the picture on June 24th from East Matunuck State Beach in Wakefield, Rhode Island.
Atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley explains what happened: "The extra colors inside the primary rainbow are called 'supernumeraries.' They were so named because 17th century theories of the rainbow could not explain them -- they were thought of as extras and not supposed to exist. Now we know that supernumeraries are produced by the interference between light waves and unusually small raindrops."
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RARE SCOTTY MUG (COLLECTOR'S ITEM): There's nothing like morning coffee in a cup from space. On June 3, 2021, this rare ceramic Montgomery Scott mug flew to the stratosphere onboard an Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray research balloon. At the apex of the flight, it floated 101,243 feet above the Sierra Nevada mountains of central California:
You can have it for $170.10. That's the serial number of the Enterprise divided by 10. The students are selling Star Trek mugs to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each one holds 16 oz. of steaming hot Raktajino (Klingon coffee) and comes with a greeting card showing the collector's item in flight.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
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