WANTED: WHITE LIGHT IMAGES OF THE SUN: A wildfire in California has cut off electricity to Stanford University, home of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) data center. As a result, we are not receiving images from SDO. You can help! Readers are encouraged to submit their own full-disk white light images of the sun so we can see what the sun looks like today. Submit your images here.
A TRAIN OF CLASSIFIED SATELLITES: When SpaceX launched the Globalstar communications satellite on June 19th, analysts knew something was not quite right. The Globalstar was not big enough to fill the Falcon 9 rocket. Something else must be inside. Marco Langbroek of Leiden, the Netherlands, just photographed the secret contents, a train of four new classified satellites:
"These objects (USA 328 - 331) were covertly launched with Globalstar FM15 on June 19, 2022," says Langbroek. "The second object in the 'train', USA 329, is slowly varying in brightness, which might indicate it is tumbling. It varies between about magnitude +5 and +10 with a period of around half a minute. The other payloads are steady in brightness, at about magnitude +7/+8."
A much brighter 5th object following the train is a piece of debris from the Falcon 9 rocket that carried the satellites to space. "The Falcon 9 debris piece is about mag +4.5 to +5," says Langbroek.
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SOLSTICE PLASMA TWISTER: Imagine a tornado 20,000 km tall, twirling hot plasma in a vortex big enough to swallow Earth. Here it is:
Apollo Lasky of Naperville, Illinois, photographed the twister on June 21st, the summer solstice, using a backyard solar telescope. This solar storm system did not hurl material toward Earth. Instead, most of the tornado fell back to the sun after an exhausting spin. A higher resolution version of the movie may be found here.
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"I LOVE YOU FOREVER" MOONSTONE PENDANT: Are you looking for a far-out gift? Consider the "I Love You Forever" Moonstone. This one hitched a ride to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon on May 13, 2022:
You can have it for $162.95. The moonstone's sterling silver infinity wrap is inscribed with the words "I love you forever." It makes a great anniversary or birthday gift. The moonstone comes with a greeting card showing the pendant in flight, telling the story of its trip to the edge of space and back again.
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