Fire in the SkyS


Sun

Coronal Mass Ejection's ground current surge

As expected, a CME hit Earth's magnetic field on Jan. 24th at approximately 1500 UT (10 am EST). Geomagnetic storms are likely in the hours ahead. If it's dark where you live, go outside and look for auroras.

In Lofoton, Norway, the CME's arrival produced a surge in ground currents outside the laboratory of Rob Stammes:

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© Rob Stammes

Sun

Strongest Solar Storm Since 2005 Hitting Earth

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© NASAA solar flare erupting on the Sun's northeastern hemisphere; taken Sunday night, Jan. 22, 2012.
The sun is bombarding Earth with radiation from the biggest solar storm in more than six years with more to come from the fast-moving eruption.

The solar flare occurred at about 11 p.m. EST Sunday and will hit Earth with three different effects at three different times. The biggest issue is radiation, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center in Colorado.

The radiation is mostly a concern for satellite disruptions and astronauts in space. It can cause communication problems for polar-traveling airplanes, said space weather center physicist Doug Biesecker.

Radiation from Sunday's flare arrived at Earth an hour later and will likely continue through Wednesday. Levels are considered strong but other storms have been more severe. There are two higher levels of radiation on NOAA's storm scale - severe and extreme - Biesecker said. Still, this storm is the strongest for radiation since May 2005.

The radiation - in the form of protons - came flying out of the sun at 93 million miles per hour.

Sun

Huge Solar Eruption Sparks Biggest Radiation Storm in 7 Years

Solar Flare
© NASA/SDO and the AIA consortium. Edited by J. Major. This SDO image shows an M9-class solar flare erupting on the Sun's northeastern hemisphere on Jan. 23, 2012, just 4 days after a previous strong CME that sparked aurora around the world on the 22nd.

A powerful solar eruption is expected to blast a stream of charged particles toward Earth tomorrow (Jan. 24), as the strongest radiation storm since 2005 rages on the sun.

Early this morning (0359 GMT Jan. 23, which corresponds to late Sunday, Jan. 22 at 10:59 p.m. EST), NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory caught an extreme ultraviolet flash from a huge eruption on the sun, according to the skywatching website Spaceweather.com.

The solar flare spewed from sunspot 1402, a region of the sun that has become increasingly active lately. Several NASA satellites, including the Solar Dynamics Observatory, the Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), and the Stereo spacecraft observed the massive sun storm.

A barrage of charged particles triggered by this morning's solar flare is expected to hit Earth tomorrow at around 9 a.m. EST (1400 GMT), according to experts at the Space Weather Prediction Center, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

According to NOAA, this is the strongest solar radiation storm since May 2005, and as a precaution, polar flights on Earth are expected to be re-routed within the next few hours, Kathy Sullivan, deputy administrator of NOAA, said today at the 92nd annual American Meteorological Society meeting in New Orleans, La.

Sun

Almost X-Flare and CME

This morning, Jan. 23rd around 0359 UT, big sunspot 1402 erupted, producing a long-duration M9-class solar flare. The explosion's M9-ranking puts it on the threshold of being an X-flare, the most powerful kind. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the flare's extreme ultraviolet flash:

X-Flare
© SpaceWeather
The Solar and Heliosphere Observatory (SOHO) and the STEREO-Behind spacecraft have both detected a CME rapidly emerging from the blast site. Analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab estimate a velocity of 2200 km. There is little doubt that the cloud is heading in the general direction of Earth. A preliminary inspection of SOHO/STEREO imagery suggests that the CME will deliver a strong glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field on Jan. 24-25 as it sails mostly north of our planet. Stay tuned for updates.

Meteor

Slow, Odd Fireball Recorded from Japan - 17 January 2012


Source

Meteor

NEOShield to assess Earth defence

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© NASA/JPL/JHUAPL
NEOShield is a new international project that will assess the threat posed by Near Earth Objects (NEO) and look at the best possible solutions for dealing with a big asteroid or comet on a collision path with our planet.

The effort is being led from the German space agency's (DLR) Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin, and had its kick-off meeting this week.

It will draw on expertise from across Europe, Russia and the US.

It's a major EU-funded initiative that will pull together all the latest science, initiate a fair few laboratory experiments and new modelling work, and then try to come to some definitive positions.

Industrial partners, which include the German, British and French divisions of the big Astrium space company, will consider the engineering architecture required to deflect one of these bodies out of our path.

Should we kick it, try to tug it, or even blast it off its trajectory?

Meteor

Space invasions: what to do when stuff falls from the sky

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© Pat DaltonNearly 8,000 objects have been identified for possible collision with Earth
In the past six months, it seems something has fallen from the sky every second minute. In September, the UARS satellite re-entered the Earth's atmosphere, causing a media frenzy. In October, the German satellite Rosat re-entered, with much less fanfare. Before Christmas, there were reports of space junk falling near Esperance in Western Australia.

And skywatchers were out in droves when the Quadrantid meteor shower put on its annual display earlier this month. Last weekend, the Russian Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, the country's 19th attempt to reach Mars, plunged back to Earth amid much speculation about the effects of its toxic fuel.

Meteor

NASA Satellite Witnesses a Comet's Plunge into the Sun

A sun-watching spacecraft has for the first time tracked a comet's path all the way into the solar atmosphere

As dramatic exits go, it's on par with Major T. J. "King" Kong riding a falling nuclear bomb like a rodeo bull at the end of Dr. Strangelove. A NASA spacecraft has documented a comet's demise as it plunged toward the sun at 600 kilometers per second, broke apart and vaporized inside the solar atmosphere.
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© NASA / SOHO
The comet, known as C/2011 N3 (SOHO), met its fiery fate on July 6. The object's official name designates that it was discovered in early July 2011 by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft. Many comets meet a similar end, but astronomers and solar physicists have never been able to track a comet's trajectory all the way into the depths of the solar corona, the outermost layer of the sun's atmosphere.

Meteor

Scientists: Mars Rocks Fell in Africa Last July

Meteorite
© Darryl Pitt, Macovich Collection, via APA Martian meteorite was recovered in December last year near Foumzgit, Morocco.

Washington - Scientists are confirming a recent and rare invasion from Mars: meteorite chunks from the red planet that fell in Morocco last July.

This is only the fifth time scientists have chemically confirmed Martian meteorites that people witnessed falling. The small rock refugees were seen in a fireball in the sky six months ago, but they weren't discovered on the ground in North Africa until the end of December.

Scientists and collectors of meteorites are ecstatic and already the rocks are fetching big bucks because they are among the rarest things on Earth.

A special committee of meteorite experts, which includes some NASA scientists, confirmed the test results Tuesday. They certified that 15 pounds of meteorite recently collected came from Mars. The biggest rock weighs over 2 pounds.

Astronomers think millions of years ago something big smashed into Mars and sent rocks hurtling through the solar system. After a long journey through space, one of those rocks eventually landed here. It plunged into Earth's atmosphere, splitting into smaller pieces and one chunk shattered into shards when it hit the ground.

This is an important and unique hands-on look at Mars for scientists trying to learn about the planet's potential for life. So far, no NASA or Russian spacecraft have returned bits of Mars, so the only Martian samples scientists can examine are those that come here in a meteorite shower.

Meteor

Russia's Mars probe crashes into Pacific

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© Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesRussian specialists working with the Fobos-Grunt spacecraft in 2011 before its launch
Russia believes fragments of its Phobos Grunt probe crashed into the Pacific ocean on Sunday after a failed mission to mars, a spokesman for its space forces says.

The splashdown marks an inglorious end for the Phobos Grunt probe, which Russia launched in November and hoped would scoop up a sample from Mars' largest moon, phobos, and bring it back to earth.

"According to information from mission control of the space forces, the fragments of Phobos Grunt should have fallen into the Pacific Ocean on Sunday morning," spokesman Alexei Zolotukhin told the Interfax news agency.

There was no immediate comment from Russia's space agency Roscosmos, which throughout the day, as the probe approached earth, had given wildly different predictions about where it could land.