The extremely rare sighting attracted crowds.
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The extremely rare sighting attracted crowds.
© Independent
The video was shot in West Australia during an intense thunderstorm. As local resident Leigh Stevens looked on, a strange green light - accompanied by an equally unexplained sound - flashed bright across the sky.
"WTF is that," Stephens wrote. "Taken last night during electrical storm from our back yard."
And experts agreed that the phenomenon was like nothing they had seen before, according to the West Australian, which reported on the strange video.
"It's not something we've ever seen before," Neil Bennett from the Bureau of Meteorology said, according to the newspaper. "We don't think it (the green light) is part of the thunderstorm, we think it's a reflection of something on the ground, rather than coming from the clouds."
Thursday update: Newly obtained photo shows off additional dramatic sky phenomena
After posting the original version of the story, Alex Kotzias wrote in with this incredible photo taken from Cannon Mountain's chairlift. The portrait-mode photo captures two more halo phenomena that were high up out of view in the original photograph: a superlateral arc and a circumzenithal arc. The former curves downwards, while the latter opens up like a bowl. Circumzenithal arcs look like upside-down rainbows wrapping around an imaginary point straight above.
That brings the total number of atmosphere phenomena in Franconia Notch on Saturday to nine! Part of the reason? Diamond dust. Kotzias' photo confirms the presence of tiny ice crystals floating around in the air at ground level. That's what those shimmering white sparkles are. The ice crystal overload means the 22-degree ring can even appear to shimmer down on the ground! And like a diamond, the resulting colors were truly priceless.
© Alex Kotzias
© Alex Kotzias, adapted by Matthew Cappucci/WaPo
If you looked into sky on Monday, you might have noticed something just a little different with the sun. It was still there, don't worry. But in North Texas, it was obscured behind a haze of wispy clouds and joined on both sides by what looked like flashes of a rainbow.
Except there hadn't been any rain all day.
Instead, what you were seeing was called a "sundog," which doesn't actually look like much of a dog but is a cool name nonetheless. WFAA meteorologist Jesse Hawila snapped a good picture of Monday's sundog in Frisco. Notice the rainbow-like arch above the sun:
Except there hadn't been any rain all day.
Instead, what you were seeing was called a "sundog," which doesn't actually look like much of a dog but is a cool name nonetheless. WFAA meteorologist Jesse Hawila snapped a good picture of Monday's sundog in Frisco. Notice the rainbow-like arch above the sun:
© WFAA/Jesse Hawila
© Koichi ItagakiNew supernova 2018 ivc recently appeared in the bright Messier galaxy M77 located in Cetus at R.A. 2h 42′ 41″, Dec. -00° 00′ 48″. The object is northeast of the core along the edge of the bright inner disk.
With an apparent magnitude of 9.6, M77 is easy to find in telescopes as small as 3 inches though a 10-inch or larger scope will be needed to ferret out this supernova - at least at the moment.
Designated 2018 ivc, the new supernova has brightened to about magnitude 14.5 and appears as a tiny pinprick of light 8.7″ east and 16.1″ north of the center of the galaxy along the edge of the bright inner disk. Spectroscopy reveals the "new star" as a Type II supernova in its early stages, implying that the object could brighten further. Not to throw water on the fire, but intervening dust within the galaxy has dimmed and reddened the explosion, so it's difficult to predict how bright it might become. One outlier observation from November 25th put it at about magnitude 13.6.
© Carnegie Institution for ScienceSix images showing the host galaxy of the newly discovered supernova ASASSN-18bt. The top row shows three images from before the explosion taken by Pan-STARRS, ASAS-SN, and Kepler. The bottom row shows images from ASAS-SN and Kepler after the supernova was visible. The discovery image from the ASAS-SN team is in the bottom middle. To its left is a version with all the surrounding stars eliminated, showing only the new supernova’s light output. On the bottom right is a Kepler image from after the supernova was detected. Kepler’s precision was crucial to understanding the light from ASASSN-18bt in the early hours after the explosion.
Their findings are published in a trio of papers in The Astrophysical Journal and The Astrophysical Journal Letters. (You can read them here, here, and here.)
Type Ia supernovae are fundamental to our understanding of the cosmos. Their nuclear furnaces are crucial for generating many of the elements around us, and they are used as cosmic rulers to measure distances across the universe. Despite their importance, the actual mechanism that triggers a Type Ia supernova explosion has remained elusive for decades.
That's why catching them in the act is crucial.
Astronomers have long tried to get detailed data at the initial moments of these explosions, with the hope of figuring out how these phenomena are triggered. This finally happened in February of this year with the discovery of a Type Ia supernova called ASASSN-18bt (also known as SN 2018oh).
© DutchNews.nlSunset over Amsterdam.
Meteorologists define autumn as the period between October 1 and November 30. Southern Limburg has been the brightest place this autumn so far, with 465.4 hours up to now, though this is not a local record. Almost all central and western areas have set new records already this autumn, including the central weather station at De Bilt, which clocked up 2000 hours of sunlight for the year to date.
© Natalie Richards
Natalie Richardson was passing through with her mum yesterday when they noticed the phenomena in the sky, saying it was slowing changing colour for about 15 minutes.
"Thought the country should know because it's amazing! Never seen it before!" she said.
MetService meteorologist Tui McInnes said the rainbow was in fact a phenomena called a Circumhorizontal Arc.
"Basically what happens is sunlight enters the cloud and ice crystals in the cloud refract the light and form a rainbow," she said.
© Natalie Richards
© Matti Helin
Most aurora watchers have never seen one, though, because they are usually invisible to the human eye. Last night in southern Finland, Matti Helin saw one.
"The SAR was visible to the naked eye for nearly 30 minutes and, after fading a bit, remained visible to my camera for another hour and a half," says Helin. "Normally we see auroras in the north, but this stable red arc appeared to our south. It was strange shooting in that direction :D"
SARs are related to auroras, but they are not the same. Regular auroras appear when high-energy particles rain down along polar magnetic field lines, hitting the atmosphere (100-200 km high) and causing it to glow like the picture tube of an old color TV. SARs form differently.
They are a sign of heat energy leaking into the upper atmosphere (~400 km high) from Earth's ring current system. Normally, SARs become visible to the naked eye only during strong geomagnetic storms. Last night's G1-storm was far from strong, but the arc appeared anyway--further proof that auroras can be full of surprises.
Comment: It would appear that the increase in sightings of unusual atmospheric phenomena point to our rapidly changing atmosphere:
- Rare green flash sunset photographed flickering into even rarer blue in Norway
- Our changing atmosphere: Stunning iridescent cloud over Mexico, complex solar halo over Russia and a triple rainbow over Norway
- Changing atmosphere: Red sprites and a blue jet seen above Europe's stormy skies
- Sunlight drips through clouds and strange arc of dotted light spotted in sky at Missouri River (PHOTOS)
- Strange skies: Red Sprites in Oklahoma, aurora Steve in Canada, iridescent clouds in Illinois and noctilucent clouds in Denmark
- Strange but beautiful skies: Noctilucent 'tornado' cloud, auroras, double and twin rainbow plus a midnight rainbow
Comment: Interestingly, this past winter saw the darkest months on record for some parts of Europe:
- Winter of Discontent in France: Protests, Endless Dark Skies, And Crazy New Laws
- A dark December: In one month Moscow totals 6 minutes of sunlight while Belgium bears just 10.5 hours
- Study: Cosmic rays trigger climate change on Earth by increasing cloud cover
And for more on the changes our planet is experiencing, check out SOTTs monthly documentary: SOTT Earth Changes Summary - October 2018: Extreme Weather, Planetary Upheaval, Meteor Fireballs