NASA'S IMAGES OF COMET 3I/ATLAS: Spoiler alert: You won't be impressed. On Nov. 19th, NASA released long-awaited images of interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS taken by spacecraft near Mars and elsewhere. Their publication had been delayed for more than a month by the US government shutdown. NASA's cameras revealed the comet to be a fuzzy blob. Photos being taken now by amateur astronomers on Earth are far more informative.
GLOWING RED RING OVER ITALY: For a few milliseconds on Nov 17th, an enormous ring of red light appeared in the sky over central Italy. Valter Binotto photographed it from the small town of Possagno in the foothills of the Italian Alps:
This is an "ELVE"--short for Emissions of Light and Very Low Frequency Perturbations due to Electromagnetic Pulse Sources. It's a rare species of sprite discovered in 1990 by cameras onboard the space shuttle. ELVEs hover about 100 km above the ground, and this one is about 200 km in diameter.
"The ELVE was generated by a powerful negative lightning strike in a storm in Vernazza about 300 km south of me," says Binotto. One bolt was so strong (-303 kilo-ampères), it generated an intense electromagnetic pulse (EMP). The red ring marks the spot where the EMP hit Earth's ionosphere. For comparison, normal lightning bolts carry only 10 to 30 kilo-ampères of current.
Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter
SASQUATCH SANTA CHRISTMAS ORNAMENT: No Christmas tree is complete without one: The Sasquatch Santa Ornament. The students of Earth to Sky Calculus flew it to the stratosphere on Nov. 16th.
You can have it for $98.95. Hand-sculpted in the USA, this humorous ornament shows the hairy elf relaxing with a mug of hot chocolate after a busy night of Christmas deliveries. Its durable polyresin construction makes it lightweight enough to hang on any tree but sturdy enough to last for many Christmases to come.
The students of Earth to Sky Calculus are selling space ornaments to support their cosmic ray balloning program. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the ornament in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter