SpaceWeather.com Archive — Wed, Aug 13, 2025

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THE PERSEID METEOR SHOWER IS NOT OVER: Worldwide meteor counts from Aug. 12-13 (including data from NASA cameras) suggest that the peak of the Perseid meteor shower has not yet arrived. The peak could occur tonight, Aug 13-14. Step outside after midnight and watch for bright, fast fireballs streaking from the constellation Perseus. And don't worry if you don't know where Perseus is; the meteors can appear anywhere in the sky. [Photo gallery]

SPIRALING ROCKET EXHAUST (UPDATED): Not everything in the sky last night was a Perseid meteor. Many observers in the eastern USA saw this instead:

"This caught my eye as I was looking for Perseid meteors after sunset on Aug. 12th," says photographer Patrick Nixon of Purgittsville, West Virginia. "It started in the the Big Dipper and moved downward toward western PA or eastern OH."

Later, the same spiral was widely observed in Pennsylvania, New York City, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, Virginia, Ohio and Ontario.

This may be a fuel dump linked to a Vulcan Centaur rocket launched from Cape Canaveral by the United Launch Alliance (ULA). Carrying two satellites on behalf of the U.S. military, the rocket lifted off at 8:56 p.m. EDT on Aug. 12th. When multiple satellites are deployed from a single rocket, the rocket sometimes spins as part of a staggered-release strategy. Spin sends the various payloads in different directions. This could account for the spiral shape of the exhaust.

There is another possibility. Only 19 minutes before the Vulcan launch in Florida, Europe launched an Ariane 6 heavy-lift rocket from Kourou, French Guiana. A deorbit burn from the Ariane could also explain this spiral.

Did you see the spiral? Submit your picture here.

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"I LOVE YOU MORE" BLACK PEARL PENDANT: This black pearl has touched space. On May 26, 2025, the South Sea treasure hitched a ride on an Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray research balloon, floating 112,021 feet above the Sierra Nevada mountains of central California:

You can have it for $199.95. The black pearl's sterling silver infinity wrap is engraved with the words "I Love You More." It's the perfect birthday, anniversary or (never too early!) Christmas gift for someone who loves space.

The students are selling space pendants to pay the helium bill for their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the jewelry in flight and telling the story of its trip to the stratosphere and back again.

Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education

A SUNSPOT WITHIN A SUNSPOT? Sunspot 4172 looks like an ordinary sunspot group. However, data from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory reveals something different--a possible sunspot within a sunspot.

This is a magnetic map of the sunspot group. The expected polarity of a sunspot in the sun's northern hemisphere is . Indeed, sunspot 4172 has that polarity. But it also has a knot of reversed polarity, , embedded within it. (Note the circled region in the animation, above.) Is this a strange mish-mash of opposite polarity sunspots? If so, it is unstable and likely to explode. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text