SpaceWeather.com Archive — Tue, Jul 16, 2024

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MARTIAN AURORA WARNING: A CME is heading for Mars. According to a NASA model, the storm cloud will strike the Red Planet on July 19th. The impact could spark global auroras and erode a small amount of the planet's atmosphere. Aurora alerts: SMS Tex t

X-CLASS SOLAR FLARE: Departing sunspot AR3638 exploded today (July 16th @ 1326 UT), producing an X1.9-class solar flare. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the extreme ultraviolet flash:

Radiation from the flare caused a deep shortwave radio blackout over the Atlantic Ocean: map. Transatlantic mariners and ham radio operators may have noticed loss of signal at all frequencies below 30 MHz for as much as an hour after the flare.

Watch the movie again. It shows the explosion ascending through the magnetic canopy of the sunspot at ~45,000 mph. The upward motion probably propelled a CME into space. Stay tuned for updates as new coronagraph images become available. Solar flare alerts: SMS Tex t

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VENUS IN FULL: Like the Moon, Venus has phases. There is one phase, however, that astronomers rarely see: Full. The 100% disk of Venus can be devilishly difficult to observe because it only appears when Venus is behind the sun. On July 13th, Patricio Leon photographed the full disk in a blue winter sky over Santiago, Chile:

"I located the planet by optical means when it was close to transiting the meridian at noon," says Leon. "In round numbers it presents a 100% phase, measures 10 arcseconds in diameter, and lies 10° east of the sun."

This won't last long. Venus is emerging from the glare of the sun to renew its position as the Evening Star. As the second half of 2024 unfolds, it will shape-shift into a gibbous, half, then crescent easily seen in the twilight sky. If you decide to catch the rare Full Venus, do so now, but be careful! The blinding sun is only 10° away.

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GLOW-IN-THE-DARK AURORA PENDANT: Are you looking for a far-out gift? Consider the Glow-in-the-Dark Aurora Pendant. On July 8, 2024, it flew to the stratosphere onboard an Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray research balloon:

You can have it for $99.95. For 3 hours, the necklace floated 106,444 feet above the Sierra Nevada mountains of central California while radiation sensors inside the balloon's payload gathered data for the students' cosmic ray monitoring project. It comes with a greeting card showing the pendant in flight and explaining the Earth to Sky Calculus radiation experiment.

The students of Earth to Sky Calculus are selling space jewelry to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. Don't wait for Christmas--get yours now!