Strange Skies
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Sun

Stunning sun dog captured in Hertfordshire, UK skies


Photos of Weather
Tue, 03 Nov 2015 19:27 UTC
Image
© photosofweather.com

This is one of the most colourful examples of a Sun Dog I have ever seen. A sun dog is a beautiful example of atmospheric optics. This is a term used to describe the interaction between light and our atmosphere. You may have heard a sun dog described as different things. It's different names include a parhelion or mock sun. The cirrus clouds present in this image are a type of high level cloud. On this particular day they are all contrails.

The beautiful spectral colours of a sun dog can be found at 22 degrees, either side of the Sun. This photo was taken on a really cold day, -13 degrees centigrade! Hexagonal plate shaped ice crystals high in the atmosphere refract light. If millions of them refract light in just the right way we get a sun dog or sun dogs! A sun dog can also be part of a larger 22 degree halo. These phenomena are known as Ice Halos.

There are a great range of atmospheric optics that we can observe and photograph. Take a look at the atmospheric optics page of this site to see more examples. I took this photograph of a sun dog at Patmore Heath in Hertfordshire. Patmore Heath is an SSSI. That is a special site of scientific interest. This is due to the diverse range of wildlife and plant species found living there.

Comment: A combination of possible comet dust loading and changes in the layers of the atmosphere is producing all sorts of anomalous phenomena.

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Question

Meteor smoke trail? Mysterious cloud formation seen floating over Yanqi Basin, China

Chloe Lyme
Daily Mail, UK
Mon, 02 Nov 2015 17:33 UTC
Image
The mysterious clouds were seen on the morning of Sunday above a barracks and last for about an hour
A mysterious cloud formation was spotted floating over northwest China's Yanqi Basin yesterday.

Residents in the area noticed the colourful cloud in the morning, describing it as a 'huge question mark hanging in the northern sky,' reports The People's Daily Online.

Pictures of the unusual phenomenon have sent the Chinese online community into overdrive with many speculating what the shadowy object could be.
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Jupiter

Fifth giant planet in the solar system ejected after a close encounter with Jupiter


RT.com
Sun, 01 Nov 2015 19:51 UTC
Jupiter
© NASA
There was a fifth giant planet in the solar system, but it was ejected after a close encounter with Jupiter, a computer model made by Canadian astronomers suggests. They studied the orbits of a Jovian moon for proof.

The dominant scientific view of how our star system came to be as it is now is called the Nice model after the French city, where it was first developed. It is pretty good at explaining most, but not all things. For example, Jupiter is too far from the Sun to fit the model.

One possible explanation is a fifth giant planet in addition to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, which was ejected after a close encounter about 4 billion years ago. This would have been similar to how probes use planetary gravitational pull to slingshot themselves towards their next destination during interplanetary missions.
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Airplane

Russian A321 plane crash in Egypt: Evidence thus far points to sudden structural failure

Clive Irving
The Daily Beast
Sun, 01 Nov 2015 01:57 UTC
Russian A321 Crash_1
© EPA/STR Egypt OUTDebris from crashed Russian jet lies strewn across the sand at the site of the crash, Sinai, Egypt, 31 October 2015. According to reports the Egyptian Government has dispatched more than 45 ambulances to the crash site of the Kogalymavia Metrojet Russian passenger jet, which disappeared from radar after requesting an emergency landing early 31 October, crashing in the mountainous al-Hasanah area of central Sinai. The black box has been recovered at the site.
The jet split in two near the tail, which could mean a 'tail strike' in 2001 was never truly fixed.

The suddenness of what happened to the Russian-operated jet that crashed in the Sinai is highly unusual. According to reports the pilot had reported a technical problem and a diversion to the nearest airport. But the problem was apparently so severe that his plan was overtaken by events and the airplane literally fell out of the sky from its cruise altitude of 31,000 feet.

In theory the Sinai is dangerous air space. Much of the Sinai is a closed military zone where the Egyptian army has frequent skirmishes with Islamic terrorist groups. There have been claims by a jihadist group linked to ISIS that it brought down the flight, but the airplane's altitude put it well beyond the range of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, or MANPADS, the only relevant weapon fielded by such groups, and first pictures of the wreckage offer no evidence of a missile strike.

Instead investigators will treat as much more credible the possibility of a sudden structural failure. The Airbus A321 was 18 years old, but with a modern airplane like this and regular maintenance that is not in itself a cause for concern.

Comment: 'Sudden structural failure' sounds plausible, but it's unlikely that this plane's 'weakness' alone would have caused it to crash so spectacularly. As the author points out, "would have been rigorously inspected then and during subsequent maintenance checks."

Information is still coming in, and what has been shared publicly thus far only gives rise to more questions. That the crash involved a Russian plane and that it went down in a region teaming with military and paramilitary would suggest that this was a deliberate act by some unknown party.

However, for now Sott.net is leaving it open that this crash could have been the result of a natural, albeit unusual, catastrophic event, perhaps like the airburst that sent the Indonesia AirAsia Flight 8501 into the Java Sea in December last year.

Whatever happened to this Russian-owned plane, it's definitely something more than just the result of a structural weakness. Some kind of tremendous force knocked that plane out of the sky.

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Sun

Mysterious 'planet' filmed by Florida woman likely a sundog

Ben Hooper
upi.com
Fri, 23 Oct 2015 10:01 UTC
Image
A Florida woman filming a sunset in Florida had a "freak out" when she spotted a mysterious "planet" -- but the object was likely an illusion known as a sundog.

Melissa Huffman posted a video to YouTube showing the large light in the sky near the sun as she was filming from Florida's Sanibel causeway near sunset.

Huffman refers to the object as a "very clear planet" -- showing the moon hanging elsewhere in the sky -- and mentions it probably isn't Mercury or Venus.

"Somebody tell me what it is, thank you," Huffman says in the video.

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Comet 2

Recently discovered Halloween asteroid 'may actually be a comet'

Mike Wall
Space.com
Thu, 22 Oct 2015 17:05 UTC
Orbit of asteroid 2015 TB145
© NASA/JPL-CaltechThis graphic depicts the orbit of asteroid 2015 TB145 as it flies past Earth on Oct. 31, 2015.
The big asteroid that will zoom past Earth on Halloween may actually be a comet, NASA researchers say.

The roughly 1,300-foot-wide (400 meters) asteroid 2015 TB145, which some astronomers have dubbed "Spooky," will cruise within 300,000 miles (480,000 kilometers) of Earth on Halloween (Oct. 31) — just 1.3 times the average distance between our planet and the moon.

Though 2015 TB145 poses no threat on this pass, the flyby will mark the closest encounter with such a big space rock until August 2027, when the 2,600-foot-wide (800 m) 1999 AN10 comes within 1 Earth-moon distance (about 238,000 miles, or 385,000 km), NASA officials said.

Astronomers plan to beam radio waves at 2015 TB145 on Halloween using a 110-foot-wide (34 m) antenna at NASA's Deep Space Network facility in Goldstone, California, then collect the reflected signals with the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory.

Such work should reveal key details about the space rock's size, shape, surface features and other characteristics — including, perhaps, its true identity.

"The asteroid's orbit is very oblong with a high inclination to below the plane of the solar system," Lance Benner, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.

Comment: It IS a 'comet' because the only difference between an asteroid and a comet is that the latter is glowing from electrical discharge.

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Comet

Earth could be hurtling through comet shower that may cause mass extinction

Andrew Griffin
The Independent, UK
Wed, 21 Oct 2015 20:31 UTC
Asteroid 2011 UW-158
© CorbisAsteroid 2011 UW-158 will pass 1.5 million miles away from Earth.
Earth could be in danger as our galaxy throws out comets that could hurtle towards us and wipe us out, scientists have warned.

Scientists have previously presumed that we are in a relatively safe period for meteor impacts, which are linked with the journey of our sun and its planets, including Earth, through the Milky Way. But some orbits might be more upset than we know, and there is evidence of recent activity, which could mean that we are passing through another meteor shower.

Showers of meteors periodically pass through the area where the Earth is, as gravitational disturbances upset the Oort Cloud, which is a shell of icy objects on the edge of the solar system. They happen on a 26-million year cycle, scientists have said, which coincide with mass extinctions over the last 260-million years.

The most recent shower happened 11 million years ago. But that doesn't mean that the Earth is safe, according to a new study.
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Grey Alien

Astronomers launch search for ET in potential 'alien megastructure'


Sputnik News
Tue, 20 Oct 2015 02:13 UTC
Dyson Sphere
© Flickr/Kevin HillArtist rendering of a Dyson Sphere, a theoretical device used to harness a star's energy.
An unusual discovery 1,500 light-years from Earth has scientists (reservedly) crossing their fingers that we may have found signs of alien architecture circling a distant star. On Monday, the investigation began.

In the search for distant planets, NASA's Kepler telescope scans the sky, looking for faint dips in starlight. Those dips are usually caused by planets passing between our view and the planet's host star. By analyzing that slight dimming of the light, we can estimate the size of the planet.

But last week, reports surfaced that the telescope found something odd is orbiting around KIC 8462852. It is, by all measurements, far too large to be a planet. The effect is also irregular. If looking at our sun from a distance, one could expect to see the Earth pass every 365 days. Comets are one leading theory, but that explanation isn't perfect, either.

Whatever is moving around KIC 8462852, it's something humanity can't explain.
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Airplane

Customs computer outages, glitches reported at airports across US


RT
Thu, 15 Oct 2015 00:52 UTC
US Airports Computer Glitches
© Brendan McDermid/Reuters
Problems and outages affecting Customs and Border Protection computers have been reported at multiple American airports. The cause of the problem is unknown.

So far, problems have been reported at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, Los Angeles International Airport, Logan International Airport in Boston, Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in Texas, and other airports in Seattle, Charlotte and Baltimore.

There have also been reports of problems at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the world's busiest.


According to NBC News, which cited government sources, the outage is affecting a Department of Homeland Security computer system that screens passengers against a terrorist watch list.
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Question

Has Kepler detected a fleet of ancient alien megastructures orbiting a star?

Ross Anderson
The Atlantic
Tue, 13 Oct 2015 09:16 UTC
Mystery Star
© The Atlantic
In the Northern hemisphere's sky, hovering above the Milky Way, there are two constellations—Cygnus the swan, her wings outstretched in full flight, and Lyra, the harp that accompanied poetry in ancient Greece, from which we take our word "lyric."

Between these constellations sits an unusual star, invisible to the naked eye, but visible to the Kepler Space Telescope, which stared at it for more than four years, beginning in 2009.

"We'd never seen anything like this star," says Tabetha Boyajian, a postdoc at Yale. "It was really weird. We thought it might be bad data or movement on the spacecraft, but everything checked out."

Kepler was looking for tiny dips in the light emitted by this star. Indeed, it was looking for these dips in more than 150,000 stars, simultaneously, because these dips are often shadows cast by transiting planets. Especially when they repeat, periodically, as you'd expect if they were caused by orbiting objects.

The Kepler Space Telescope collected a great deal of light from all of those stars it watched. So much light that Kepler's science team couldn't process it all with algorithms. They needed the human eye, and human cognition, which remains unsurpassed in certain sorts of pattern recognition. Kepler's astronomers decided to found Planet Hunters, a program that asked "citizen scientists" to examine light patterns emitted by the stars, from the comfort of their own homes.
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