Strange Skies
S


Info

Ultra-bright star in the Crab Nebula, breaks all the rules


Cosmos Magazine
Fri, 24 Feb 2017 03:48 UTC
Crab Nebula
© NASA/Getty ImagesMultiple images of the Crab Nebula made over a span of several months with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory show matter and antimatter propelled to nearly the speed of light by the Crab pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star the size of Manhattan.
Well, bang go those theories. Astrophysicists have identified a neutron star that overturns not one but three well supported hypotheses.

The star, known as NGC 5907 ULX, is emitting far more x-rays than any other ever observed.

So huge is the output that it has been classified as an "ultraluminous x-ray source" (ULX). It is by no means the first ULX to be recorded in nearby galaxies, but all the others are confidently predicted to be generated by black holes - this is the first one that uses star-power.

So there goes the first theory.

But there are still more baffling elements to the discovery, made by a team led by Gianluca Israel from the National Institute of Astrophysics in Rome, Italy, and reported in Science.
Read More...
Sun

Sunday's 'Ring of fire' eclipse visible in the southern half of our planet is a treat or omen of upheaval? (Video)


RT
Sun, 26 Feb 2017 13:00 UTC
Space nerds are in for a treat on Sunday when the moon blocks out the sun in an annual solar eclipse that will cloak more than two dozen countries and three continents in momentary darkness.

Astronomers can see the cosmic display from 8:16am ET (US), but, unfortunately for northern hemisphere stargazers, the eclipse will only be visible in the southern half of our planet, moving across South America, the Atlantic Ocean, Antarctica, and Africa.
Read More...
Info

Rare nebula, ELAN discovered - No obvious source of power for the light it is emitting

Tim Stephens
UC Santa Cruz
Thu, 23 Feb 2017 04:49 UTC
MAMMOTH-1
© Figure 2 of Cai et al., Astrophysical JournalMAMMOTH-1 is an extended blob of gas in the intergalactic medium called an enormous Lyman-alpha nebula (ELAN). The color map and contours denote the surface brightness of the nebula, and the red arrows show its estimated spatial extent.
Astronomers have found an enormous, glowing blob of gas in the distant universe, with no obvious source of power for the light it is emitting. Called an "enormous Lyman-alpha nebula" (ELAN), it is the brightest and among the largest of these rare objects, only a handful of which have been observed.

ELANs are huge blobs of gas surrounding and extending between galaxies in the intergalactic medium. They are thought to be parts of the network of filaments connecting galaxies in a vast cosmic web. Previously discovered ELANs are likely illuminated by the intense radiation from quasars, but it's not clear what is causing the hydrogen gas in the newly discovered nebula to emit Lyman-alpha radiation (a characteristic wavelength of light absorbed and emitted by hydrogen atoms).

The newly discovered nebula was found at a distance of 10 billion light years in the middle of a region with an extraordinary concentration of galaxies. Researchers found this massive overdensity of early galaxies, called a "protocluster," through a novel survey project led by Zheng Cai, a Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Santa Cruz.

"Our survey was not trying to find nebulae. We're looking for the most overdense environments in the early universe, the big cities where there are lots of galaxies," said Cai. "We found this enormous nebula in the middle of the protocluster, near the peak density."
Read More...
Attention

HAARP lives! US military weapon reactivated 'for experiment to create and study artificial auroras'

Tracy Sinclare
KTUU
Tue, 21 Feb 2017 23:00 UTC
Artificial Aurora
© KTUU
This week at the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) about a half dozen scientists are running experiments, including Chris Fallen, Assistant Research Professor with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute.

Over the course of four nights, Fallen has been attempting to create and study the artificial aurora.

"The more we understand about the artificial aurora, it helps us understand the natural aurora and vice versa," says Fallen.

Natural aurora occurs because high speed electrons hit the upper atmosphere and collide with gases there. The resulting light appears as aurora to the human eye and camera lens.

Fallen is trying to reproduce that using radio waves from HAARP as the energy source. "We're accelerating the electrons with radio waves through processes that are not fully understood and those electrons are accelerated to high velocities and collide with the gases in the atmosphere and create air-glow in basically the same colors as the natural aurora."

Comment: Uhm, didn't they say they were shutting down HAARP in 2014?

So now it's in civilian hands. Or so they say...

Read More...
Bizarro Earth

Purple rain: Thunderstorms turn Houston sky to vivid shades pink and purple

Jennifer Earl
CBS News
Mon, 20 Feb 2017 00:00 UTC
Purple sky houston texas
© Bruna Pantarotto Souza Bruna Pantarotto Souza shares a view of a cloudy purple sky in Spring, Texas.

Houston-area residents woke up to a colorful view as severe thunderstorms began to roll in Monday morning, and this time, it wasn't a rainbow.

The sky lit up with vivid shades of pink and purple as the sun rose — and social media users couldn't help but connect the stunning sky's magenta hue with Prince's famous "Purple Rain" song.

It was unlike anything residents had seen before.

"It was raining pretty bad and I just woke up to see what was going on and saw this amazing sky," Bruna Pantarotto Souza from Spring, Texas, told CBS News. "I've never seen this before."
Read More...
Rainbow

Rare 'fire rainbow' lights up the sky over Singapore

Jon Sharman
The Independent (UK)
Tue, 21 Feb 2017 12:28 UTC
fire rainbow above Singapore
© Chi NavarroThe fire rainbow above Singapore

Observers say fleeting phenomenon lasted 15 minutes

Singapore was treated to a rare weather phenomenon as an apparent "fire rainbow" lit up the sky.

Weather watchers on the island state in south-east Asia were treated to the multi-coloured glow yesterday.

The stunning scene may also have been cloud iridescence. Both phenomena can be caused by the refraction of light through ice crystals, or in the case of iridescence, by water droplets.

For iridescence to occur clouds must be thin so the sun's rays encounter very little water.

The technical name for a fire rainbow is a "circumhorizontal arc".

The light show persisted for about 15 minutes and could reportedly be seen across the island.
Read More...
Cloud Grey

Incredible 'breaking wave' clouds amaze as they form across the sky over Palmerston North, New Zealand


New Zealand Herald
Sun, 19 Feb 2017 17:24 UTC
NZ wave clouds
© Carl GadsbyThe "breaking wave" clouds, also know as Kelvin-Helmholtz instability waves, which formed over the eastern side of Palmerston North early today.

Waves were breaking in the Palmerston North sky this morning in a relatively uncommon phenomenon.

Unsurprisingly the formation is dubbed "breaking wave clouds" but its official title is Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, named after Scots-Irish scientist Lord Kelvin William Thomson and German physician and physicist Hermann von Helmholtz.

Comment:

Read More...
Camera

Stunning polar stratospheric clouds shine over Sweden, Finland


Space Weather
Tue, 14 Feb 2017 19:49 UTC
Around the Arctic Circle, observers are reporting an outbreak of polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs). "Yesterday, Feb. 13th, the sky was filled with their brilliant colors from sunrise to sunset," says Mia Stålnacke, who sends this picture from Kiruna, Sweden:
Polar stratospheric clouds
© Mia Stålnacke
These clouds are newsworthy because normally the stratosphere has no clouds at all. Home to the ozone layer, the stratosphere is arid and almost always transparent. Yet, Stålnacke says, "we've been seeing stratospheric clouds very often this winter and last."

According to multiple longtime residents of the area, the Feb 13th display was exceptional. "Everyone I spoke to agrees it was the best they had ever seen," says Chad Blakley, who operates the Lights over Lapland tour guide service in Abisko, Sweden.
Polar stratospheric clouds in Sweden
© Mia Stålnacke
Read More...
Cassiopaea

Beginnings of supernova seen for the first time

Amy Middleton
Cosmos Magazine
Mon, 13 Feb 2017 19:56 UTC
Supernova
© Ofer YaroniPTF13dqy (SN2013fs) exploded in a relatively nearby (~160 million light years) spiral galaxy on 6 October 2013 and was detected by the Palomar Transient Factory sky survey a mere three hours after explosion.
An extremely rare recording of a massive star's explosive death reveals clues about the formation of supernovae.

Reported in Nature Physics by a team led by Ofer Yaronof at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, recent spectroscopic imaging captured the spectacular transformation of a star assumed to have been a red supergiant into a supernova, just three hours after it began.

It marks the first time a supernova has ever been seen in its infancy. Previously observed supernova - the predicted end-point for around 50% of supergiant stars - have all been recorded after the metamorphosis had been underway for several days, meaning that information about the start of the process was already destroyed.

The most recent event, capturing the fiery death of a star dubbed iPTF 13dqy, was captured by the Intermediate Palomar Transient Factory, an automated astronomical survey from Palomar Observatory in California, which has been monitoring the sky since 2013.

The survey snaps two images per night, over an hour period or longer, of a particular astronomical field and then compares them to identify any transient events. Any flagged are then confirmed and examined by a team of researchers.
Read More...
Info

NASA to create artificial clouds in space to understand auroras

Samuel Henry
NASA
Fri, 10 Feb 2017 18:52 UTC
Clouds
© NASA
A NASA sounding rocket to be launched from the Poker Flat Research Range, Alaska, between February 13 and March 3, 2017, will form white artificial clouds during its brief, 10-minute flight.

The rocket is one of five being launched January through March, each carrying instruments to explore the aurora and its interactions with Earth's upper atmosphere and ionosphere. Scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, explain that electric fields drive the ionosphere, which, in turn, are predicted to set up enhanced neutral winds within an aurora arc. This experiment seeks to understand the height-dependent processes that create localized neutral jets within the aurora.

For this mission, two 56-foot long Black Brant IX rockets will be launched nearly simultaneously. One rocket is expected to fly to an apogee of about 107 miles while the other is targeted for 201 miles apogee. Only the lower altitude rocket will form the white luminescent clouds during its flight.

Flying the two similar payloads simultaneously to different altitudes will provide researchers unprecedented vertical measurements within an aurora.

The launches will occur between 7 pm and midnight AKST. The launch decision is dependent on clear skies and auroral activity.

During the flight, a vapor tracer cloud of trimethyl aluminum or TMA will be deployed to allow scientists on the ground to be able to visually track the winds within the aurora.
Read More...