ORIONID METEOR UPDATE: This year's Orionid meteor shower may have been stronger than expected. Early reports to the International Meteor Organization suggest the shower peaked during the early hours of Oct. 22nd with rates as high as 45 meteors per hour, more than double the norm. Earth may have passed through an overdense filament of debris from parent Comet Halley.
A CRACK IN EARTH'S MAGNETOSPHERE: Bright auroras are dancing around the Arctic Circle on Oct 22nd as a significant crack opens in Earth's magnetosphere. Claudio Comi sends this picture from Abisko National Park, Sweden:
"Man! Such weird colors!" says Comi, who works as a tour guide for Lights over Lapland in Abisko. "It was my night off, but I couldn't stay inside. The auroras were too incredible!"
Cracks in Earth's magnetosphere are nothing to worry about. They happen all the time, especially during weeks around equinoxes. Solar wind pours through the gaps to fuel beautiful light shows. Today's crack has been open for more than 10 hours, sparking auroras at both ends of our planet. Aurora alerts: SMS Text
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THE SUN JUST SWALLOWED ANOTHER COMET: For the second time in a week, a bright comet has dive-bombed the sun. It didn't work out well for the comet. This movie from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) shows the dirty snowball evaporating as it enters the sun's atmosphere:
This comet, RIP, was a Kreutz sungrazer. Kreutz sungrazers are fragments from the breakup of a single giant comet many centuries ago. They get their name from German astronomer Heinrich Kreutz, who studied them in the 19th century. Fragments from the breakup pass by the sun and disintegrate almost every day. SOHO has seen thousands of them. Most, measuring less than a few meters across, are too small to see, but occasionally a bigger fragment like this one attracts attention.
PS. If this story gives you a sense of déjà vu, it's because exactly the same thing happened last weekend when another Kreutz fragment dive-bombed the sun. It happens all the time.
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VOYAGER GOLDEN RECORD ORNAMENT: This is a must-have Christmas ornament for space fans: The Voyager Golden Record. On Oct. 15th, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched it to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon:
You can have it for $129.95. The 4-inch aluminum disk is imprinted with instructions intended for extraterrestrials, telling them how to play the phonographs now sailing through interstellar space onboard NASA's Voyager probes. Having touched the edge of space, it's the closest thing on Earth to an actual Golden Record.
The students are selling these unique ornaments to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the ornament in flight and extra materials decoding the markings on the disk.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
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