According to a certain Amarkhan Jidara, who shared several photos of the spectacular dance of lights in the night sky, the latest celestial show they witnessed was last Sunday, June 30, 2019 at 7 p.m.
© Photos courtesy of Amarkhan Jidara
Strange Skies
"Pillars of light" appeared again in the province of Sulu this year, and were captured in several photos shared by netizens.
According to a certain Amarkhan Jidara, who shared several photos of the spectacular dance of lights in the night sky, the latest celestial show they witnessed was last Sunday, June 30, 2019 at 7 p.m.
According to a certain Amarkhan Jidara, who shared several photos of the spectacular dance of lights in the night sky, the latest celestial show they witnessed was last Sunday, June 30, 2019 at 7 p.m.
© Rob Dalling
The multi-coloured arc left residents across the city confused as it appeared in the shape of a 'U' rather than, well a rainbow shape!
People reported seeing it from Birchgrove, Fforestfach, Sketty, Clydach and even Rotherslade.
How did it occur?
According to the Met Office , the upside down rainbow is actually a circumzenithal arc.
The upside down rainbows appear when the sunlight refracts through ice crystals in cirrus clouds.
This type of rainbow is quite common but we usually can't see them because of the clouds underneath.
© NASA, ESA, N. Smith (University of Arizona, Tucson), and J. Morse (BoldlyGo Institute, New York)
Although the Great Eruption has long since faded from the view of the naked human eye, its tumultuous explosion is still going on and is quite visible to the Hubble telescope, which recently returned a stunning image of the moribund binary system.
© NASA
But the extreme altitude makes it a useful place for scientists. In 1990, they built an observatory here to study the showers of subatomic particles that rain down from the upper atmosphere whenever it is hit by a high-energy cosmic ray. This work is better done at high altitude because there is less atmosphere to absorb the particles.
Since then, the so-called Tibet Air Shower Array has recorded vast numbers of high-energy cosmic rays, particles accelerated to huge energies by astrophysical phenomena such as supernovas, active galactic nuclei, and mysterious as-yet-unidentified sources.
But the array also picks up air showers caused by a different source-high-energy photons. These mysterious photons are also created by astrophysical phenomena such as the interaction between high-energy particles and the cosmic microwave background. Consequently, they can provide a unique insight into these processes and the environments in which they occur.
© R. Margutti/W. M. Keck Observatory
HOLY COW - The cosmic oddity called the Cow may be a supernova that exploded in a dense environment. This image from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey shows the Cow’s host galaxy 200 million light-years away. The Cow itself is a bright spot at about 4 o’clock in the galaxy’s disk.
HOLY COW - The cosmic oddity called the Cow may be a supernova that exploded in a dense environment. This image from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey shows the Cow’s host galaxy 200 million light-years away. The Cow itself is a bright spot at about 4 o’clock in the galaxy’s disk.
Newly released observations support the idea that the burst occurred in a dense environment with strong magnetic fields, astronomer Kuiyun Huang and colleagues report in The Astrophysical Journal Letters June 12.
These new measurements "for the mysterious transient ... provide one of the strong hints of its nature," says Huang, of the Chung Yuan Christian University in Taoyuan City, Taiwan.
Since the Cow appeared in June 2018 as a brief burst of light in a galaxy about 200 million light-years away, astronomers haven't been sure what to think of it. The initial glow flared more quickly and seemed 10 times brighter than an ordinary supernova, the violent explosion that marks the death of a massive star (SN: 2/18/17, p. 20).
Follow-up observations of the Cow - which got its nickname from the randomly assigned name "AT2018cow" - left two main theories for what it could be: a strange sort of supernova, or an exotic star being shredded by a black hole (SN: 2/2/19, p. 13). But neither theory alone could explain all the Cow's weird features.
The 2019 season for noctilucent clouds (NLCs) has been remarkable, maybe the best ever, with NLCs appearing as far south as Los Angeles CA and Albuquerque NM. What's going on? Researchers aren't sure, but Lynn Harvey of the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics has just found an important clue.
"The mesosphere is quite wet," she says. "Water vapor concentrations are at their highest levels for the past 12 years."
Noctilucent clouds form when summertime wisps of water vapor rise to the top of the atmosphere. Water molecules stick to specks of meteor smoke, gathering into icy clouds that glow electric blue when they are hit by high altitude sunlight.
"The mesosphere is quite wet," she says. "Water vapor concentrations are at their highest levels for the past 12 years."
© Piotr Majewski
Noctilucent clouds over Piwnice, Poland, on June 18th.
Noctilucent clouds over Piwnice, Poland, on June 18th.
© Newsflare
Footage shows the shiny clouds moving across the skies in Cookstown.
Noctilucent clouds or night-shining clouds, are cloud-like phenomena that form in the upper atmosphere of Earth.
© Space Weather
If you've never seen a cloud of frosted meteor smoke, now is the time to look. 2019 is shaping up to be the best year for noctilucent clouds (NLCs) ... maybe ever.
Normally confined to near-Arctic latitudes, NLCs have been seen this month in most US states. On Friday morning, June 14th, Don Davis saw them, astonishingly, from the city of Joshua Tree not far from Los Angeles CA:
Davis's sighting at +34.1 degrees sets the record for low-latitude observations of NLCs, breaking the previous record set only five days earlier by Brian Guyer at the National Weather Service in Albuquerque, New Mexico (+35.1 degrees).
"I'm shocked to report that I saw the noctilucent clouds while venturing outdoors for a weather observation shortly after sunset," says Guyer, who is a senior meteorologist. "When I noticed the faint blue wavy tendrils far off to the north, I asked myself, 'am I really seeing noctilucent clouds from here?' I'm happy to see that other folks are also seeing these beautiful spectacles of nature at lower latitudes."
This is a good time of year to look up at the sky after sunset and before sunrise. Around the start of the astronomical summer on June 21st, there is a good chance that you will encounter the weather phenomenon noctilucent clouds.
The shiny clouds could be seen all over the Netherlands on Wednesday night and Thursday morning.
Noctilucent clouds are created by tiny ice crystals forming on dust particles. "When the sun is down for us and it gets dark, the clouds are still lit by the sun. This makes it look like these clouds are shining in the dark", Weerplaza writes about the phenomenon. Because it is often quite windy in the Netherlands this time of year, the glowing clouds may also look like they're dancing, according to the weather service.
Shining clouds are a quite rare phenomenon, only appearing a few days in the year. If you missed it last night, there is still a chance of noctilucent clouds in the coming weeks.
The shiny clouds could be seen all over the Netherlands on Wednesday night and Thursday morning.
© Via Twitter@pcb1970pcb
Noctilucent clouds over Uithoorn, Netherlands.
Noctilucent clouds over Uithoorn, Netherlands.
Shining clouds are a quite rare phenomenon, only appearing a few days in the year. If you missed it last night, there is still a chance of noctilucent clouds in the coming weeks.
© Jeremy Morgan
If the sun is visible where you are on Friday, you might notice a strange ring around it. The ring is called a 22-degree halo, because its radius is about 22 degrees around the sun or the moon. The rings are caused by light refraction or splitting through very thin upper level or cirrus clouds made of ice crystals, and can be seen as an indication of coming precipitation.
Weather folklore says a ring around the moon means rain is coming soon, and that does sometimes play out because cirrus clouds do come a day or so ahead of some low-pressure systems, which can bring precipitation, according to Texas A&M.
Potential rain sounds like a regular weather day in Newfoundland and Labrador, you might think - but apparently we're not the only ones seeing a halo right now.
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