Strange Skies
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Sun

Brilliant sun halo seen over Kuching, Malaysia

Sun halo over Malaysia
© YouTube/KiniTV
Fadzli Hussen (left) and Meor Alief Rasdi wave the Sarawak and Malaysia flags as they celebrate National Day at Kuching Sentral beneath a 22° halo phenomenon around the sun. Photo by Chimon Upon

A spectacular phenomenon took place on National Day today as members of the public throughout the state observed a 22° halo around the sun, with many taking the opportunity to snap photos of it to share on social media.

The optical phenomenon was observed in Kuching and Miri, with double rainbows forming a large circular ring around the sun as early as 11am on National Day.

Vehicles were also seen moving slowly as drivers and passengers tried to capture shots of the phenomenon.


Cloud Grey

Huge ominous looking cloud engulfs Hinesville, Georgia

Ominous cloud in Hinesville, Georgia
© Instagram/johanna_hood_37 (screen capture)
A huge ominous looking cloud engulfed the city of Hinesville in Georgia on August 31, 2017.

The phenomena appears to be a type of arcus cloud, which is a low, horizontal cloud formation, usually appearing as an accessory cloud to a cumulonimbus. Roll clouds and shelf clouds are the two main types of arcus.


Question

A new type of sprite captured over western Oklahoma?

new type of sprite
© Thomas AshcraftA new type of sprite?
Barely 30 years ago, many researchers did not believe that upper atmospheric lightning existed-until 1989 when researchers from the University of Minnesota captured them on video tape. Now there is a menagerie of accepted forms: sprites, elves, gigantic jets, gnomes. These "transient luminous events" (TLEs) appear above thunderclouds, reaching toward space rather than lancing down to the ground like regular lightning.

On Aug.14th, Thomas Ashcraft may have spotted a new kind of sprite. "I was photographing a cluster of sprites over a thunderstorm in western Oklahoma when something curved snaked up behind the main cluster." This frame from his video of the event shows the strange form:

Comment: Some other transient luminous events (TLEs) so far this year include:

July 2017: Huge red sprite captured over Austria

June 2017: Red jellyfish sprites with halo of light captured over Austria

April 2017: Rare ELVE and red sprites captured in Czech Republic and 6 'gigantic jets' (ionospheric lightning) were photographed in Western Australia.

March 2017: A huge blue jet was observed over Brazil.

See also: Electric universe: Lightning strength and frequency increasing

The Electric Universe model is clearly explained, with a lot more relevant information, in the book Earth Changes and the Human Cosmic Connection by Pierre Lescaudron and Laura Knight-Jadczyk.


Cassiopaea

Historical observations reveal ancient Nova

Nova Scorpii 1437
© K. Ilkiewicz and J. MikolajewskaThis image shows the ejected shell of the recovered Nova Scorpii 1437. The red tick marks show the current location of the source and the red plus sign marks the location of the shell center in 1437.
Astronomers and historians pinpoint the source of a 15th-century classical nova. It's currently regathering strength.

In 1437, Korean royal astronomers observed a new star appearing in the constellation Scorpius. "A guest star began to be seen between the second and third stars of Wei," they wrote in the Sejong Sillok, a chronicle of the reign of King Sejong who ruled Korea from 1418 to 1464. The star faded from sight after 14 days.

What the puzzled subjects of King Sejong witnessed was a classical nova - the outburst of a white dwarf in a close binary system when it collects sufficient hydrogen from its companion star.

In this scenario a white dwarf, normally hydrogen-poor, accumulates fresh gas on its surface until the bottom layers become deep and hot enough that hydrogen atoms begin to fuse. A runaway thermonuclear reaction ensues, turning the dwarf's thin surface layer into a shell-shaped hydrogen bomb.

But little is known about what happens to the binary system centuries after the white dwarf throws its tantrum. Astronomers think the system remains relatively unharmed and the gas transfer resumes, setting things in motion for another catastrophic event. Indeed, "recurrent novae" re-explode on observably short timescales.

A team led by Michael Shara (American Museum of Natural History) with help from Richard Stephenson (Durham University), a historian specializing in Asian astronomical records, followed the indications from the Sejong Sillok to look for the stellar system responsible for the guest star, now called Nova Scorpii 1437. "It was the best-located classical nova in over 2,000 years of records by Chinese, Korean and Japanese astronomers," Shara says. "We expected it to be faint, so a fairly precise location was essential if we were to have any realistic chance of recovering it."

Question

Mysterious cloud sickens scores at British Beaches

The beach at Birling Gap
© Gareth Fuller/PA/ZumaThe beach at Birling Gap in Eastbourne, UK. This stretch of coastline was evacuated on Aug. 27 after a mysterious chemical cloud descended upon the beach.

A mysterious chemical cloud descended on beaches in England on Sunday (Aug. 27), according to news reports, and authorities are puzzling over what caused it and why it sickened more than 100 people.

As the cryptic cloud fogged up the shoreline, several beaches in East Sussex were evacuated and residents were advised to close their windows and doors, The Independent reported yesterday (Aug. 28).

Still, nearly 150 people who were exposed to the cloud needed medical treatment for problems such as stinging eyes, sore throats and vomiting, according to The Independent.

The chemical composition of the cloud is not clear. "What it was, it smelled like burnt plastic," Bob Jefferey, a deputy launching authority at the Royal National Lifeboat Institution Eastbourne division told The Guardian.

One beachgoer tweeted, "Some sort of chemical incident at Birling Gap, eyes are streaming and there's a strong smell of chlorine in the air."

Bizarro Earth

Predictions of earthquakes following last eclipse

Predictions
© Sunday Guardian Live
Shakeel Ahmad, a well known cloud reader from Varanasi, has predicted powerful to medium earthquakes and strong tidal waves in several countries, including North and South America, Turkey Japan, China, Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand. This, he says, will be in the aftermath of the solar eclipse that took place on Monday night.

Shakeel Ahmad, who has predicted several earthquakes by studying formations and patterns of clouds, says that on Monday he observed cloud patterns that are known to signify earthquakes on land and in sea.

"I have, once again, observed the earthquake predicting clouds indicating the first warning signal. A disturbance was noticed in the ionosphere which was due to the condensation of clouds in S E-140 to E N-45 direction. By the magnetic compass from Varanasi, these clouds began to move towards this direction EN-45 to NW-310 and SE-150 to SW-240 and SE-140 to EN-45 direction too," he says.

Ahmad says that on this basis, he predicts powerful and medium earthquakes, tsunami and tidal waves.

Info

First X-rays from mystery supernovas detected

type Ia supernova
© Digital Sky SurveyScientists have detected the first X-rays from what appears to be a type Ia supernova, located inside the spiral-shaped galaxy ESO 336-G009, about 260 million light-years from Earth.
Exploding stars lit the way for our understanding of the universe, but researchers are still in the dark about many of their features.

A team of scientists, including scholars from the University of Chicago, appear to have found the first X-rays coming from type Ia supernovas. Their findings are published online Aug. 23 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Astronomers are fond of type Ia supernovas, created when a white dwarf star in a two-star system undergoes a thermonuclear explosion, because they burn at a specific brightness. This allows scientists to calculate how far away they are from Earth, and thus to map distances in the universe. But a few years ago, scientists began to find type Ia supernovas with a strange optical signature that suggested they carried a very dense cloak of circumstellar material surrounding them.

Such dense material is normally only seen from a different type of supernova called type II, and is created when massive stars start to lose mass. The ejected mass collects around the star; then, when the star collapses, the explosion sends a shockwave hurtling at supersonic speeds into this dense material, producing a shower of X-rays. Thus we regularly see X-rays from type II supernovas, but they have never been seen from type Ia supernovas.

Bizarro Earth

Receding ocean, huge waves and lenticular 'fireball' cloud in South America

Fireball cloud
© Twitter/folhadoestadoLenticular 'fireball' cloud over Teixeira de Freitas, Brazil
In the second week of August, South America experienced colossal movements of water, where the Brazil / Uruguay side ocean levels receded as much as 30 meters, while on the Chile side waves of 5-7 meters magically appeared out of nowhere. Add into this rain delayed sugar crops and strange lenticular cloud formations and we really need to look at century long cycles to explain this.


Comment: See also:


Cloud Grey

Apocalyptic cloud stuns residents of Teixeira de Freitas, Brazil

Apocalyptic cloud over Brazil
© João Paulo Magalhães
Residents of a Brazilian town were stunned by the appearance of a strange, menacing-looking cloud Thursday evening, leading some to wonder if it spelled the beginning of something far more sinister.

At first look the obscure cloud resembles a meteorite trail or tornado, frozen in time, seconds before the impending doom. At second glance,it looks more like a freaky cloud formation.


Comment: Taken from a different angle this impressive photo of the cloud looks like a giant incoming fireball.

Fireball cloud
© Twitter/folhadoestadoLenticular 'fireball' cloud over Teixeira de Freitas, Brazil



Cassiopaea

Nearby supernova colliding into companion star observed

Observations of a supernova colliding with a nearby companion star take UCSB astrophysicists by surprise.
Supernova SN 2017
© The UC Santa BarbaraOnly 55 million lightyears away, this is one of the closest supernovae discovered in recent years.
In the 2009 film Star Trek, a supernova hurtles through space and obliterates a planet unfortunate enough to be in its path. Fiction, of course, but it turns out the notion is not so farfetched.

Using the nearby Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO), astrophysicists from UC Santa Barbara have observed something similar: an exploding star slamming into a nearby companion star. What's more, they detected the fleeting blue glow from the interaction at an unprecedented level of detail. Their observations revealed surprising information about the mysterious companion star, a feat made possible by recent advances in linking telescopes into a robotic network. The team's findings appear in the journal Astrophyiscal Journal Letters.

The identity of this particular companion has been hotly debated for more than 50 years. Prevailing theory over the last few years has held that the supernovae happen when two white dwarfs spiral together and merge. This new study demonstrates that the supernova collided with the companion star that was not a white dwarf. White dwarf stars are the dead cores of what used to be normal stars like the sun.