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© Taken by Matthew Steinberg on February 18, 2020 @ Reine, Lofoten Islands NorwayAfter snow, sleet, and heavy wind all day, the clouds parted for a 2 hour display of spectacular pale green, blue, and purple auroras over the mountains of Reine.
Comment: See also:
- "The Dunes": NEW type of aurora discovered, and the unexpected physics behind it
- Rare blue auroras captured over Norway, 'strangest in years'
- Weird 'electrical surge' detected running through ground in northern Norway - Auroras follow
- Unique interaction in Earth's magnetosphere causes new type of auroras
Rare narrow band of snow 150 miles long and 15 wide
A similar sight was seen above Hutchinson, Kansas.
Weather satellites confirmed the bizarre feature, which highlights the meteorological caprice that can give rise to such narrow swaths of snow. More than a foot of snow fell in the band, which was 10 to 15 miles wide in places. Just a few miles on either side, there were hardly flurries.
The thin stretch of intense snow was oriented northwest to southeast, passing through parts of Russell, Lincoln and Ellsworth counties in Kansas. The snow persisted toward Cottonwood Falls and Marion.
© X-RAY: NASA/CXC/NAVAL RESEARCH LAB/GIACINTUCCI, S.; XMM:ESA/XMM; RADIO: NCRA/TIFR/GMRTN; INFRARED: 2MASS/UMASS/IPAC-CALTECH/NASA/NSFGalaxy clusters, the largest structures in the Universe held together by gravity, contain thousands of individual galaxies, dark matter and hot gas.
It came from a supermassive black hole at the centre the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster, about 390 million light-years from Earth, and released five times more energy than the previous record holder, according to a paper to be published in The Astrophysical Journal and currently available on the pre-print server arXiv.
It was so powerful, the authors say, that it punched a cavity in the cluster plasma - the super-hot gas surrounding the black hole.
"We've seen outbursts in the centres of galaxies before but this one is really, really massive - and we don't know why it's so big," says Melanie Johnston-Hollitt, from the Curtin University, Australia, node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR).
"But it happened very slowly - like an explosion in slow motion that took place over hundreds of millions of years."
The study brought together a team from Australia, the US and New Zealand.
© Via Twitter@Beautiful China
A video shared by a page called Beautiful China on Twitter, showing five suns in the sky is going viral.
'What a spectacular wonder! Five suns are seen shining in the sky in N China's Inner Mongolia," the video shared by People's Daily, China was captioned.
© Taken by Matthew Steinberg on February 18, 2020 @ Reine, Lofoten Islands NorwayAfter snow, sleet, and heavy wind all day, the clouds parted for a 2 hour display of spectacular pale green, blue, and purple auroras over the mountains of Reine.
"After snow, sleet, and heavy wind all day, the clouds parted for a 2 hour display of spectacular pale green, blue, and purple auroras over the mountains of Reine," says photographer Matthew Steinberg.
Blue auroras are rare. Auroras are usually green, and sometimes red. Those are the colors produced by oxygen when it is excited by electrons raining down from space. Blue is a sign of nitrogen. Energetic particles striking ionized molecular nitrogen (N2+) at very high altitudes (> 400 km) produces a cold azure glow of the type captured in Steinberg's photo. Usually the blue is faint, but on Feb. 18th it was strangely intense.
Comment: Just a day before this Space Weather reported that, although there were no sunspots, no solar flares and no gusts of solar wind, there was the surprising appearance of an aurora display which was also attributed to this 'crack' in Earth's magnetic field:
© Taken by Alexander Kuznetsov on February 17, 2020 @ Kilpisjärvi, Lapland Finland
- "The Dunes": NEW type of aurora discovered, and the unexpected physics behind it
- Brocken spectre: Rare weather phenomenon captured on film by walker in Wales
- Mysterious "cloud rosettes" only visible from space captured by NASA off coast of western Australia
- Weird 'electrical surge' detected running through ground in northern Norway - Auroras follow
- Stunning iridescent clouds snapped above skies of Siberia's Belukha mountain
- Strange but beautiful skies: Noctilucent 'tornado' cloud, auroras, double and twin rainbow plus a midnight rainbow
- Adapt 2030 Ice Age Report: Interview with Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Pierre Lescaudron
- Behind the Headlines: Earth changes in an electric universe: Is climate change really man-made?
© NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS/LANCE and GIBS/WorldviewNASA's Aqua satellite spotted these actinoform clouds over the Indian Ocean.
NASA's Aqua satellite captured the breathtaking view on Jan. 29, and the space agency's Earth Observatory shared it as an image of the day on Friday. The clouds appeared off the western coast of Australia.
Comment: A variety of unusual and normally rare phenomena are being sighted in our skies with an increasing frequency these days:
- Stunning iridescent clouds snapped above skies of Siberia's Belukha mountain
- Brocken spectre: Rare weather phenomenon captured on film by walker in Wales
- Gigantic jet photographed piercing the sky in China
- Planetary wave supercharges extremely rare southern noctilucent clouds event
- Adapt 2030 Ice Age Report: Interview with Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Pierre Lescaudron
- Behind the Headlines: Earth changes in an electric universe: Is climate change really man-made?
© SuppliedContainer ships at Fremantle Port were shrouded in the heavy fog.
Boaters have been urged to be aware of the conditions as the thick fog moves past Rottnest Island and south off Perth's coast.
"We'll definitely see some fairly reduced visibility over the coastal waters during today, which is potentially quite hazardous for boats out there," Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) duty forecaster Max Strack said.
The fog emerged off the coast of Geraldton last night and gradually developed south.
Ms Strack said the fog was caused by a low pressure trough drawing warm, moist air from the north.
Sea fog is only seen off WA's coast a couple of times a year, with the current conditions likely to last into the afternoon.
FILE PHOTO
Next 2-5 Days a Far Cry From Last Year
At the risk of being trite and cliche (I'm not above that) what a difference a year makes! One year ago today Minne?refresh=truesota was getting punched by the dreaded "Polar Vortex". Exactly a year ago MSP woke up to -25F, with a "high" of -1F. January 30, 2019 was the coldest day, with a seizure-inducing -28F low and a Fairbanks-friendly daytime high of -13F. Wind chills fell to 50 below as the state endured some of the
coldest readings since the 1990s.
Climate scientists tell us we'll still see cold outbreaks from time to time, but the intensity and duration of subzero cold will be a shadow of what it was as recently as the 1970s. We'll see more warm blips, fewer extended cold ruts.
Comment: The above data would suggest that 'cold ruts' are actually worsening.
Temperatures slowly mellow in the coming days, with 40s possible by Super Bowl Sunday. 7 inches of snow on the ground will act as an atmospheric brake, limiting how high the mercury can go. But February definitely starts on a mild note.
Comment: Record cloud cover is notable because scientist Hernik Svensmark shows that with the coming solar minimum and the resulting increase in cosmic rays on Earth, more cloud cover is created resulting in more heat being reflected back into space and thus global cooling follows - and this is even before taking into account the effects of cometary and volcanic dust:
- A dark December: In one month Moscow totals 6 minutes of sunlight while Belgium bears just 10.5 hours
- France: Winter 2017-18 had the most rain and least sun
- Winter of discontent: Germany endures darkest winter in 43 years
- The 'missing link' between clouds, cosmic rays & climate change
- Study: Cosmic rays trigger climate change on Earth by increasing cloud cover
- Revision to 400-year sunspot record makes current solar cycle weakest in 200 years
© Bob KingBetelgeuse (lower left) has cornered our attention this winter season.
As astronomers turned their spectrographs toward Betelgeuse, skywatchers from beginners to seasoned amateurs thrilled to see the red supergiant fade before their eyes. With a little help from Aldebaran and Bellatrix, which served as comparison stars, Betelgeuse made hundreds if not thousands of new variable star observers.
I spoke with Elizabeth O. Waagen, senior technical assistant at the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO), and while she didn't have an exact number at her fingertips, she confirmed that Betelgeuse inspired new observers to contribute their magnitude estimates.
Comment: Airlines are flying empty 'ghost flights' amid coronavirus fears