Strange Skies
S


Sun

Strong magnetic fields discovered in majority of stars


Phys Org
Mon, 04 Jan 2016 05:46 UTC
Magnetic Field Around Stars
© University of Sydney Stars like the Sun puff up and become red giants towards the end of their lives. The red giants ('old' Suns) of the same mass as the Sun do not show strong magnetic fields in their interior, but for stars slightly more massive, up to 60 percent host strong magnetic fields.
An international group of astronomers led by the University of Sydney has discovered strong magnetic fields are common in stars, not rare as previously thought, which will dramatically impact our understanding of how stars evolve.

Using data from NASA's Kepler mission, the team found that stars only slightly more massive than the Sun have internal magnetic fields up to 10 million times that of the Earth, with important implications for evolution and the ultimate fate of stars.

"This is tremendously exciting, and totally unexpected," said lead researcher, astrophysicist Associate Professor Dennis Stello from the University of Sydney.

"Because only 5-0 percent of stars were previously thought to host strong magnetic fields, current models of how stars evolve lack magnetic fields as a fundamental ingredient," Associate Professor Stello said. "Such fields have simply been regarded insignificant for our general understanding of stellar evolution.

"Our result clearly shows this assumption needs to be revisited."

The findings are published today in the journal Nature.
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Cassiopaea

Nova discovered on Christmas Day

Tanya Lewis
Yahoo News
Wed, 30 Dec 2015 10:11 UTC
New Star_1
© Slooh
A nova discovered in the Triangulum Galaxy.

Although no three kings were present at the time, amateur astronomer Emmanuel Conseil discovered a "new star" or nova in the Triangulum Galaxy on Christmas Day.

He made the discovery using the online Slooh observatory, whose telescopes are located in the Canary Islands. It was the second time Conseil had discovered a nova this way.

Slooh did a live broadcast of the galaxy and its "new star" on its webpage Tuesday afternoon, and will host a second show next week Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. EST, when scientists will hopefully know what kind of nova it is.

"The object was there on my images on Christmas Day, but not there on the 24th. It's pretty new!" Conseil said in a statement.
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Question

Mysterious hole punch clouds appear over Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama


Strange Sounds
Fri, 01 Jan 2016 20:04 UTC
hole in the clouds
A pretty hole in the clouds.
A series of mysterious hole punch clouds appeared in the sky of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama on December 29, 2015.

As if these fallstreak clouds punched gaping holes in the skies across the South.

These weird clouds form when water vapor is suspended in subfreezing air, but the vapor has not frozen because there is a lack of particles for it to freeze around.

Interesting cloud formation in Northport, Alabama.
Interesting cloud formation in Northport, Alabama.
When particles are then introduced, the vapor starts to freeze and falls towards the surface, leaving a void or hole at cloud level, but streaks of cloud underneath.

Hole punch clouds in Tuscaloosa, AL
Hole punch clouds in Tuscaloosa, AL
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Info

Meteor dust sucking up electrons in atmosphere

Tia Ghose
Live Science
Tue, 29 Dec 2015 14:19 UTC
Earth's atmosphere
© NASA/GoddardThe layers of Earth's atmosphere. A mysterious decline in the concentration of free electrons occurs in the D-region of the ionosphere, a phenomenon known as the D-region ledge. Now, researchers suggest the ledge can be explained by the burn up of tiny meteors in the atmosphere.
Scientists may have finally found the cause of a mysterious disappearance of electrons dozens of miles above Earth.

It turns out that a layer of invisible meteor dust falling to Earth every day may be sucking up electrons coming from higher in the atmosphere, creating the so-called "D-region ledge," where the concentration of electrons suddenly plunges, Earle Williams, an atmospheric electrician at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said earlier this month at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

Physicists have long been hunting for the disappearing electrons, and had turned to everything from high-flying ice clouds to electrically charged water clusters in the atmosphere to explain the sudden drop-off in this region, he said.

"It's the most dramatic gradient anywhere in the ionosphere," Williams said, referring to the part of Earth's upper atmosphere where the D-region ledge is found. "It really is very conspicuous, so it's begging for an explanation."
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Rainbow

Colorful polar stratospheric clouds return to Swedish skies


Strange Sounds
Sun, 27 Dec 2015 23:05 UTC
Polar stratospheric clouds are back again around the Arctic Circle
polar stratospheric cloud sweden
© Patricia Cowern
The new outbreak of these colorful high-altitude clouds has started on December 26, 2015. Look at them floating above Porjus, Lappland, Sweden:

polar stratospheric cloud sweden
© Patricia Cowern
For the second time this month, sky watchers around the Arctic Circle are reporting an outbreak of colorful polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs). Also known as "nacreous" or "mother of pearl" clouds, icy PSCs form in the lower stratosphere when temperatures drop to around minus 85ºC.

polar stratospheric clouds sweden
© Patricia Cowern
High-altitude sunlight shining through tiny ice particles ~10µm across produce the characteristic bright iridescent colors by diffraction and interference. Once thought to be mere curiosities, some PSCs are now known to be associated with the destruction of ozone.

Comment: Colorful 'mother of pearl' cloud appears in Swedish skies

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Christmas Tree

Giant lenticular cloud forms in Yalta, Crimea during sunset


Strange Sounds
Thu, 24 Dec 2015 17:18 UTC
This giant lenticular cloud appeared in the sunset sky of Yalta, Crimea on December 23, 2015.

A present of Mother Nature just before Christmas.
Yalta lenticular cloud
Lenticular cloud Yalta
Yalta lenticular cloud
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Water

Canadian startup selling bottled air in China

Trevor Mogg
Digital Trends
Fri, 18 Dec 2015 05:43 UTC
Smog in China
© Digital Trends
Tourists visiting Beijing in the hope of seeing the city's famous landmarks will be lucky to see anything at all at the moment as the Chinese capital struggles with a particularly acute episode of air pollution. In fact, it's so bad that officials have in recent days been forced to issue their first ever "red alert" warnings.

And for residents who have to endure severely toxic air sometimes several times a year, the situation must surely be a whole lot grimmer.

Helping to provide Beijing citizens with some much-needed respite from the suffocating smog, and possibly make a few bucks in the process, a Canadian startup has started selling fresh air - yes, air - to customers there.

The company, Vitality Air, told CNN that its first batch of 500 canisters sold out in less than two weeks when it went on sale on a Chinese e-commerce site last month.
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Christmas Lights

Amazing pillars of light captured in Russia


Strange Sounds
Sun, 20 Dec 2015 21:15 UTC
If you have ever been privy to the phenomenon of light pillars, then you know it is truly an amazing sight. They appear when the weather is extremely cold and form vertical columns of light beaming directly towards the sky. Here a compilation of pillars of light for December 2015.

They sometimes look like multiple fireballs heading to the sky:
Yekaterinburg light pillar
© Alex JuliaThe mysterious pillars of light phenomenon over Yekaterinburg on December 20, 2015.
They are created when light from the sun, moon, streetlamps, or any terrestrial source, reflects on the surface of a flat piece of ice crystal as shown in the diagram below:
Light pillar diagram
© Strange sounds
When the light source is close to the ground, the light pillar appears above the floating crystals.
Sterlitamak ice pillar
© Stanislav GilyazovLight pillars in the night between 18 and 19 December 2015 at Sterlitamak.
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Sun

Sundog illusion appears over Manitoba after snowstorm

Ben Hooper
UPI
Fri, 18 Dec 2015 14:43 UTC
SUNDOG
Sundog
A group of Canadian storm chasers captured footage of a "phantom sun," or sundog, in the sky over Manitoba after a snowstorm.

The video, posted to YouTube by the NZP Chasers group, shows the "phantom sun," a phenomenon known as a sundog, in the sky over southern Manitoba after a snowstorm Thursday.

The video shows the sun with a large halo and what appears to be a spare star to its left.

The sundog phenomenon results from the rays of the real sun reflecting off ice crystals in the atmosphere.

A suspected sundog was caught on camera over Florida in October, and a triple-sun illusion was recorded over Mongolia in January.

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Galaxy

Supernova in Einstein Cross galaxy reappears

Irene Klotz
Discovery News
Thu, 17 Dec 2015 00:45 UTC
Supernova
© NASA & ESA and P. Kelly (University of California, Berkeley)This Hubble image shows the supernova's signal appearing in the Einstein Cross as predicted by astronomers.
An ancient supernova that was serendipitously captured in four Hubble space telescope images thanks to a naturally occurring cosmic magnifying lens has reappeared, as astronomers predicted.

The exploded star, known as Refsdal in honor of Norwegian astronomer Sjur Refsdal, first appeared in November 2014. Scientists were stunned to find four images of the supernova around a galaxy, a configuration known as an "Einstein Cross."

The multiple images were caused by light from the supernova, which exploded about 10 billion years ago, taking different paths around a gravitationally warped region of space, relative to Hubble's line of sight.

These warped regions are due to massive galaxy clusters bending space and time, a phenomenon predicted by Albert Einstein 100 years ago.
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