Strange Skies
© Chinatopix Via AP
The Kwanyin temple built on a rocky island in the middle of the Yangtze River is seen flooded as the water level surge along Ezhou in central China's Hubei province on Sunday, July 19, 2020.
The Kwanyin temple built on a rocky island in the middle of the Yangtze River is seen flooded as the water level surge along Ezhou in central China's Hubei province on Sunday, July 19, 2020.
© NASA
Image of corona from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory showing features created by magnetic fields.
Image of corona from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory showing features created by magnetic fields.
"We are becoming increasingly dependent on space-based systems that are sensitive to space weather. Earth-based networks and the electrical grid can be severely damaged if there is a large eruption", says Tomas Brage, Professor of Mathematical Physics at Lund University in Sweden.
Solar flares are bursts of radiation and charged particles, and can cause geomagnetic storms on Earth if they are large enough. Currently, researchers focus on sunspots on the surface of the sun to predict possible eruptions. Another and more direct indication of increased solar activity would be changes in the much weaker magnetic field of the outer solar atmosphere - the so-called Corona.
However, no direct measurement of the actual magnetic fields of the Corona has been possible so far.
© ESA/GCP/UPV/EHU Bilbao
A recurrent feature, the cloud is made up of water ice, but despite appearances it is not a plume linked to volcanic activity. Instead, the curious stream forms as airflow is influenced by the volcano's 'leeward' slope − the side that does not face the wind.
These images of the cloud, which can reach up to 1800-km in length, were taken on 17 and 19 July by the Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) on Mars Express, which has been studying the Red Planet from orbit for the past 16 years.
"We have been investigating this intriguing phenomenon and were expecting to see such a cloud form around now," explains Jorge Hernandez-Bernal, PhD candidate at the University of the Basque Country (Spain) and lead author of the ongoing study.
"This elongated cloud forms every martian year during this season around the southern solstice, and repeats for 80 days or even more, following a rapid daily cycle. However, we don't know yet if the clouds are always quite this impressive".
© P-M Hedén
Screenshot: Red NLCs over Vallentuna, Sweden. July 25, 2020.
Screenshot: Red NLCs over Vallentuna, Sweden. July 25, 2020.
Hedén hopped in his car and drove to a clear site for a better look. The movie he made, above, shows the dynamics of the clouds and the development of their amber crown. "This all happened around local midnight," he says.
NLCs are Earth's highest clouds. Seeded by meteoroids, they float at the edge of space 83 km above the ground. Hedén's video shows ordinary clouds scudding dark and low across the Swedish landscape. NLCs float high overhead, catching the rays of the sun, which is still "up" at their extremely high altitude.
Comment: It's notable that the most recent sighting of rare red NLC's was just last year, because rare phenomena of all kinds appear to be on the increase in recent years:
- Stunning iridescent clouds snapped above skies of Siberia's Belukha mountain
- Gigantic jet photographed piercing the sky in China
- Rarely-seen atmospheric gravity wave phenomenon captured by satellite over Australia
- 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
- MindMatters: The Holy Grail, Comets, Earth Changes and Randall Carlson
- 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?
© Northwestern University
The blue dot marks the approximate location of the supernova event.
The blue dot marks the approximate location of the supernova event.
It's only the second time such a rare type of supernova has been seen, they say, and may help explain how white dwarfs explode.
The flash "is telling us something very specific", says Adam Miller from Northwestern University, US, the lead author of a paper in in the Astrophysical Journal.
"As time passes, the exploded material moves farther away from the source. As that material thins, we can see deeper and deeper.
"After a year, the material will be so thin that we will see all the way into the centre of the explosion."
Using the Zwicky Transient Facility in California, the researchers spotted the event, named SN2019yvq, just a day after it occurred last December in a galaxy about 140 million light-years from Earth and very close to the tail of the dragon-shaped Draco constellation.
They quickly studied it in ultraviolet and X-ray wavelengths using NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and classified it as a type Ia supernova.
© Remanzacco Blogspot
On images taken on July 16.82, 2020 we can confirm the presence of an optical counterpart (with R-filtered magnitude about +4.5; B-filtered magn. +5.6; V-filtered magn. +5.6) at coordinates:
R.A. = 03 58 29.61, Decl.= -54 46 39.8
(equinox 2000.0; Gaia DR2 catalogue reference stars for the astrometry).
This transient was discovered by Robert H. McNaught (Coonabarabran, NSW, Australia) as an apparent 5th-magnitude nova on CCD images obtained on July 15.590 UT with a Canon 6D camera and an 8-mm-f.l. f/2.8 lens (at ISO 800). The position is very close to an object listed as "MGAB-V207" in the AAVSO's VSX online database (which gives position R.A. = 3h58m29s.55, Decl. = -54d46'41".2, equinox J2000.0, which calls it a novalike "VY Scl"-type variable with V magnitude range 15.8-18.0).
Spectroscopy by E. Aydi et al. (ATel #13867) using the High Resolution Spectrograph (HRS) mounted on the 11m Southern African Large Telescope as part of the SALT Large Science Program on Transients shows a spectrum that resembles that of a classical nova, likely after optical peak. Also, R. Kaufman (Bright, VIC, Australia) reports a low-resolution spectrum obtained by him on 2020 Jul. 16.62 UT (with a Canon 800D camera + 200-mm-f.l. f/3.5 lens) indicates the object to be a "Fe II-type" classical nova.
© Harlan Thomas on July 14, 2020 @ West of Calgary, Alberta
STEVE/Picket Fence Aurora, NLC's and Comet NEOWISE
STEVE/Picket Fence Aurora, NLC's and Comet NEOWISE
STEVE is a recent discovery. It looks like an aurora, but it is not. The purple glow is caused by hot (3000°C) ribbons of gas flowing through Earth's magnetosphere at speeds exceeding 6 km/s (13,000 mph). It appears during some geomagnetic storms, often alongside a type of green aurora known as the "picket fence," also shown in Thomas's photo.
Statistics suggest that STEVE appears most often in spring and fall. What summoned STEVE in mid-summer? It may have been a CME that grazed Earth's magnetic field on July 13th. As our planet passed through the CME's magnetized wake on July 14th, hot currents and plasma waves rippled through Earth's magnetosphere. STEVE was the result.
Comment: If only all we had to worry about was an Ice Age, because discoveries like STEVE are just the tip of the ice berg when it comes to the unusual phenomena that reflects the shift occurring on our planet - and even further afield:
- Astronomers observe SIX galaxies undergo sudden, dramatic transitions into super-bright quasars
- Stunning iridescent clouds snapped above skies of Siberia's Belukha mountain
- Betelgeuse is bright again, and it's a bit cooler
- Cosmic rays reaching atmosphere increase 12% in 3 years - highest levels ever recorded
- Sun's strongest solar flare since 2017, noctilucent clouds reach "rare" intensity over Sweden, cosmic rays up 18% since 2015
- Gigantic jet photographed piercing the sky in China
- Behind the Headlines: Earth changes in an electric universe: Is climate change really man-made?
- Adapt 2030 Ice Age Report: Interview with Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Pierre Lescaudron
© Via Twitter @VladimirPozoC80
After the intense electrical storm that hit the capital during the afternoon, users on social networks shared photos and videos of a group of red lights in the sky of elongated appearance, as if it were sparks of fire:
Although speculation about its origin was immediately related to UFO sightings and other theories that lack scientific support, the explanation of meteorologists and specialists is that it is a luminous event that receives the name of sprites.
© CSIRO
Antennas of CSIRO's ASKAP telescope at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in Western Australia.
Antennas of CSIRO's ASKAP telescope at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in Western Australia.
The objects, which look like distant ring-shaped islands, have been dubbed odd radio circles, or ORCs, for their shape and overall peculiarity. Astronomers don't yet know exactly how far away these ORCs are, but they could be linked to distant galaxies. All objects were found away from the Milky Way's galactic plane and are around 1 arcminute across (for comparison, the moon's diameter is 31 arcminutes).
In a new paper detailing the discovery, the astronomers offer several possible explanations, but none quite fits the bill for all four new ORCs. After ruling out objects like supernovas, star-forming galaxies, planetary nebulas and gravitational lensing — a magnifying effect due to the bending of space-time by nearby massive objects — among other things, the astronomers speculate that the objects could be shockwaves leftover from some extragalactic event or possibly activity from a radio galaxy.
"[The objects] may well point to a new phenomenon that we haven't really probed yet," said Kristine Spekkens, astronomer at the Royal Military College of Canada and Queen's University, who was not involved with the new study. "It may also be that these are an extension of a previously known class of objects that we haven't been able to explore."
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