![]() ![]() SPACE WEATHER BALLOON DATA: Almost once a week, and the students of Earth to Sky Calculus fly space weather balloons to the stratosphere over California. "Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distanceīetween Earth and the Moon. Each one comes with greeting card showing the cozy in flight, and telling the story of its trip to the stratosphere and back again.Īll sales support hands-on STEM education They make great Father's Day and birthday gifts. The students are selling beer cozies (beer not included) to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. The students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched it to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon: SPOCK BEER COZY (BEER NOT INCLUDED): Father's Day is coming, and this is the gift every Trekkie Dad needs: the Mr. These red arcs were also seen on April 23rd. (3) Proton auroras are sometimes accompanied by deep red arcs of light (SARs), the glow of heat leaking from the ring current system. (2) Proton auroras love to pulse-a sign of plasma wave activity in Earth's ring current. Why? Electric fields in Earth's magnetosphere push the protons toward the dusk not dawn side of our planet. ![]() Here's what to look for: (1) Proton auroras tend to appear around sunset. Future storms will surely knock more protons loose from the ring current system. Solar Cycle 25 ramping up to a potentially-strong Solar Maximum next year. "It was very exciting to watch," says Ulbricht. "This is a question for future research." "We still don't know why proton auroras seem to tear themselves apart in such a dramatic way," says Nishimura. Ordinary auroras, on the other hand, are caused by particles from more distant parts of Earth's magnetosphere and have nothing to do with Earth's ring current. Earth-orbiting satellites have actually seen these protons on their way down. Sometimes during strong geomagnetic storms, protons rain down from the ring system, causing a secondary shower of electrons, which strike the atmosphere and make auroras. The ring current skims the orbits of geosynchronous satellites and plays a huge role in determining the severity of geomagnetic storms. They are made of electricity-a donut-shaped circuit carrying millions of amps around our planet. Unlike Saturn's rings, which are vast disks of glittering ice, Earth's rings are invisible to the naked eye. Most people don't realize that Earth has rings. "They are called 'proton auroras,' and they come from Earth's ring current system." Indeed, "these were not ordinary auroras," confirms space physicist Toshi Nishimura of Boston University. "My pulse was still racing hours later!" The same blobs were sighted in France and Poland, and in Denmark they were caught flashing like a disco strobe light. "It literally took my breath away," he says. "The auroras began to tear themselves apart, pulsating as they formed individual blobs that floated high in the sky." "I had never seen anything quite like it," says Heiko Ulbricht of Saxony, Germany. But when the auroras appeared, they were very strange. Everyone knew that a CME was coming photographers were already outside waiting for auroras. MYSTERIOUS "AURORA BLOBS" EXPLAINED: Europeans are still trying to wrap their minds around what happened after sunset on April 23, 2023. Since May 16th, it has been relatively quiet-gathering strength for the next eruption? Stay tuned. It is a large sunspot, some 3 times wider than Earth, and is surrounded by a bright froth of magnetic tubulence. Neutron counts from the University of Oulu's Sodankyla Geophysical Observatory show that cosmic rays reaching Earth are slowly declining-a result of the yin-yang relationship between the solar cycle and cosmic rays.ĮMERGING BIG SUNSPOT: The source of Monday's partially-eclipsed X-flare is emerging into full view. Credit: SDO/HMIĬosmic Rays Solar Cycle 25 is intensifying, and this is reflected in the number of cosmic rays entering Earth's atmosphere. Sunspot AR3310 poses a threat for X-class solar flares. ![]()
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