SpaceWeather.com Archive — Sun, Sep 1, 2024

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ANOTHER CME TARGETS VENUS: For the second time in days, the sun hurled a CME straight toward Venus on Aug. 31st. A NASA model predicts it will strike on Sept. 2nd. The impact will erode a small amount of Venus's atmosphere. There's still plenty left. CME impact alerts: SMS Tex t

PLASMA FALLS ON THE SUN: Imagine a waterfall made of hot plasma falling from a precipice tall enough to swallow Earth five times. Here it is:

Dutch photographer "Neo" captured this movie on August 28th. "For three days I've been watching these prominences around the edge of the active sun," he says. "The plasma did not stop falling for a moment."

Plasma falls have been seen on the sun many times before, yet researchers still don't fully understand them. One big mystery is how fast they fall. The sun's gravity is powerful, but not powerful enough to pull the plasma down so quickly through the thicket of solar magnetic fields.

Nuclear engineers would like to figure out how this happens, because it also happens on a smaller scale in fusion reactors, frustrating their efforts to sustain an energy-producing reaction. Studies of plasma falls on the sun could lead to practical breakthroughs here on Earth.

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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!