SpaceWeather.com Archive — Mon, Sep 1, 2025

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THE CME HAS ARRIVED: As predicted, a CME struck Earth's magnetic field today, Sept. 1st around 2100 UTC. The impact was abrupt and strong, bringing solar winds faster than 600 km/s (1.3 million mph). This sets the stage for category G1 (Minor) to G3 (Strong) geomagnetic storms in the hours ahead. If the storm becomes strong, auroras may be photographed in US states as far south as Virginia, Missouri and Colorado on Monday night. CME impact alerts: SMS Text

RED SPRITES OVER EUROPE: You know what comes out of the bottom of a thundercloud: lightning. But do you know what comes out of the top? The answer is sprites. Sometimes when an especially fierce lightning bolt connects with the ground, a corresponding discharge leaps from the top of the cloud toward space. These "sprites" are red, fleeting, and they tend to come in bunches.

On Aug. 29th, Giacomo Venturin of Monte Tomba, Italy, photographed a bunch of sprites dancing over a storm cell 300 km away:

"The clear sky allowed me to observe several red sprites across the border in Austria," says Venturin. "This one was generated by a lightning strike that occurred not far from Klagenfurt."

Although sprites have been seen, off and on, for at least a century, most scientists did not believe they existed until after 1989 when sprites were photographed by cameras onboard the space shuttle. Now "sprite chasers" routinely photograph sprites from their own backyards. Give it a try.

Realtime Sprite Photo Gallery
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LITTLE GREEN SANTA ORNAMENT: You can't buy this on Amazon: The Little Green Santa Christmas Ornamant is only available from the Earth to Sky Store. On Aug. 22, 2025, it flew to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon:

You can have it for $99.95. Hand-sculpted in the USA, this humorous ornament shows Santa arriving from the North Pole of a distant planet. Durable polyresin construction makes it lightweight enough to hang on any tree, but sturdy enough to last for many Christmases to come.

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