MINOR GEOMAGNETIC STORM WATCH: NOAA forecasters say there is a 40% chance of minor G1-class geomagnetic storms on Sept. 26th when a high-speed stream of solar wind is expected to hit Earth's magnetic field. The gaseous material is flowing from an equatorial hole in the sun's atmosphere. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras. Aurora alerts: SMS Text.
A GIGANTIC JET WITH FIREBALLS: Lightning on Earth is getting weirder and weirder. On the evening of Sept. 20th, Puerto Rican photographer Frankie Lucena pointed his Sony A7s camera at an offshore electrical storm. This is what he saw:
"This Gigantic Jet plasma event occurred over a very powerful thunderstorm near the Virgin Islands just ahead of Tropical Storm Peter," says Lucena. "I can't believe I was able to capture such amazing details."
Indeed, this is one of the best-ever photos of a Gigantic Jet. Sometimes called "Earth's tallest lightning," because they reach the ionosphere more than 50 miles high, the towering forms were discovered near Taiwan and Puerto Rico in 2001-2002. Since then, only dozens of Gigantic Jets have been photographed. They seem to love storms over water and are famous for surprising passengers onboard commercial aircraft.
In 2017 and 2018, lightning researcher Oscar van der Velde of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya set up high speed cameras on the northern coast of Colombia in a dedicated campaign to capture Gigantic Jets. In three months of observing time he managed to capture only 12. That's how elusive they are.
Above: The red arrow points from Lucena's camera to the offshore electrical storm.
"Frankie has photographed a rare Gigantic Jet with 'carrot' morphology, first reported by Su et al (2003)," notes van der Velde. "The other, more common type of jet has a 'tree' morphology." Here is a comparison: trees vs. carrots.
"Carrot jets" are remarkable for their internal beads--that is, bright balls of light hundreds of meters wide. Lucena caught dozens of them illuminating the jet's midsection. They might be places where streamers inside the jet are intersecting, or regions of enhanced heating.
"We don't know," says van der Velde. "Gigantic Jets are not easily placed in front of a spectrograph."
Meanwhile, Lucena is still marveling at what happened. "This is the brightest Gigantic Jet I have ever seen. It was truly remarkable."
Realtime Gigantic Jet Photo Gallery
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ALASKAN TIMBER WOLF PENDANT: It's a great gift for wolf lovers. On Sept. 5, 2021, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched this Alaskan Timber Wolf Pendant to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon. At the apex of the flight, it floated 103,018 ft high, above 99.7% of Earth's atmosphere.
You can have it for $99.95. The students are selling space pendants to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the wolf in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
OFF-TARGET CMEs: Sunspot AR2871 erupted twice yesterday, producing two significant M-class solar flares. Each explosion hurled a CME into space. Click to set the storm clouds in motion:
When it exploded, the sunspot was almost-directly facing Earth, yet the CMEs are off-target. They are not heading our way. Why not? A large hole in the sun's atmosphere located west of AR2871 is spewing solar wind into space. The emerging stream of gas may have deflected the CMEs.
There is still a chance that Earth might feel the effects of these CMEs when they pass near our planet on Sept. 27th. A glancing blow or even a near-miss could be enough to unsettle Earth's magnetic field, producing high-latitude auroras. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text.
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
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Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
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