SpaceWeather.com Archive — Thu, Jul 4, 2024

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GEOMAGNETIC STORM WATCH--CANCELED: A CME expected to hit Earth on July 3rd missed. Or it is very late. Either way, the geomagnetic storm watch is canceled. A tardy, slow-moving arrival on July 4th is unlikely to cause a geomagnetic storm. Aurora alerts: SMS Tex t

ROCKET-FUELED NOCTILUCENT CLOUDS: Yesterday, July 3rd, just before sunrise in Florida, a Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral carrying 20 Starlink satellites. After the launch, a magnificent display of noctilucent clouds (NLCs) spread across the sky:

"After the rocket went up, over the next 45 minutes, these clouds formed from the rocket's exhaust in the upper atmosphere," says photographer Robert Duvall.

As the rocket burned through the mesosphere, water-rich vapors emerging from the engine formed a frosty rime around specks of meteor debris. These meteor-seeded ice crystals got together to make a noctilucent cloud.

Normally, NLCs form from plumes of water vapor rising from the summertime surface of the Earth to the edge of space. Rockets can turbocharge the process by spraying water into the mesosphere at point-blank range. Indeed, researchers believe that space traffic is responsible for a recent increase in global NLC sightings. The Cape Canaveral display on July 3rd is a great example.

more images: from Mark Femminineo of Oviedo, Florida; from JP Dewhirst of Debary, Florida; from Susan Parker of Coral Springs, FL

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THIS PENDANT HAS TOUCHED THE SHADOW OF THE MOON: On April 8, 2024, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched a cosmic ray research balloon directly into a total eclipse of the sun. This handmade pendant went along for the ride. Floating more than 118,110 feet above the path of totality in Texas, the necklace spent 3 minutes and 45 seconds wrapped in the shadow of the Moon:

You can have it for $149.95. Created by an artist in Texas where the balloon was launched, the pendant displays a solar eclipse art print sealed under a smooth glass cover. It comes with a greeting card showing the pendant in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space during the total eclipse.