Tag Archives: Aurora

Recent Auroral Activity, Prediction Websites, And Chances Of The Next Few Days – Head’s Up!

Posted on June 24, 2015 10:29 am - - Leave a Comment

Greetings fellow astrophiles (and those checking in from the syracuse.com page about auroral activity this week)!

For those not in the magnetic field line loop, Sunspot 2371 (which several of us saw in full glory at the Hazard Branch Library this past Saturday) let off a significant coronal mass ejection (CME for short) in our direction that made it to Earth two days ago. This has produced some gorgeous aurora for those not coated in cloud cover or light pollution (as was the case for Syracuse at its peak on Monday). CNYO’s David Wormuth has kept the board aware of potential observing the past two nights, while at least one member of ASRAS posted a picture from his own locale that shows just enough aurora with an 8 second exposure. When Glenn Coin from syracuse.com asked about potential activity yesterday, I “kept it local” by passing the image along (included in Glenn’s article “Northern lights could be visible this week in Upstate New York”).

The current auroral activity from SWPC/NOAA

We may be due for another glow-worthy event in the next day or two as a smaller storm passes by. We’re keeping track of predictions for early-early Thursday morning to see if activity will be worth waking up extra early for (or not sleeping at all). If you want to see/capture aurora:

Naked Eye:

* Look North!
* The higher (the elevation) the better
* Avoid having a big city to your North
* For the best view, wait until the Moon sets. That’s going to put you out to 2 or 3 a.m. right now, but not having its glow will improve auroral sights.

Camera – same as Naked Eye observing, but include the following:

* High ISO (+1600)
* Longer exposures (try the 5 second to 15 second range on most small cameras, then experiment with longer sessions with a good DSLR)
* Steady tripod – it is supposed to be clear enough in the next few nights, but wind will complicate your picture taking

Want to keep track for yourself?

www.gi.alaska.edu/AuroraForecast/NorthAmerica – The direct North America prediction page from the Geophysical Institute

www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/space-weather-enthusiasts – The Space Weather Enthusiast dashboard from NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (you didn’t even know we had one of those!)

solarham.net – Solar activity isn’t just for space scientists. The Sun is of great importance to HAM Radio operators. You can tell how serious they are by the very thorough presentation of data.

www.aurorasaurus.org – this is an awesome idea. It’s a perfect mix of twitter and google maps. If you see aurora, you make a quick post on the website to let others know it may be active in your area. If enough people report, I say trust the posts and make a drive. Why wait for predictions when you can keep track of real-time data?

We’ll be keeping track of events over the next few days. For those who want to see what caused the whole mess, I encourage you to come to Liverpool Public Library tonight for their How-To Festival, where we’ll have solar scopes (and solar glasses) available to get a good view of the very prominent sunspots currently on the surface. And if we go late enough, maybe even a sneak peak of Jupiter and Venus as their conjunction brings them especially close to one another on June 30th (which we plan to have a session for as well. Stay tuned!).

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NASA News Digest: Space Science For 15 March – 26 March 2015

Posted on April 2, 2015 1:54 pm - - Leave a Comment

Greetings fellow astrophiles,

The NASA News service provides up-to-date announcements of NASA policy, news events, and space science. A recent selection of space science articles are provided below, including direct links to the full announcements. Those interested in receiving these news announcements directly from NASA can subscribe to their service by sending an email to:

hqnews-request@newsletters.nasa.gov?subject=subscribe

New Desktop Application Has Potential To Increase Asteroid Detection, Now Available To Public

RELEASE 15-041 (Click here for the full article) – 15 March 2015

2015april2_15_041A software application based on an algorithm created by a NASA challenge has the potential to increase the number of new asteroid discoveries by amateur astronomers.

Analysis of images taken of our solar system’s main belt asteroids between Mars and Jupiter using the algorithm showed a 15 percent increase in positive identification of new asteroids.

During a panel Sunday at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, NASA representatives discussed how citizen scientists have made a difference in asteroid hunting. They also announced the release of a desktop software application developed by NASA in partnership with Planetary Resources, Inc., of Redmond, Washington. The application is based on an Asteroid Data Hunter-derived algorithm that analyzes images for potential asteroids. It’s a tool that can be used by amateur astronomers and citizen scientists.

…

The new asteroid hunting application can be downloaded at: topcoder.com/asteroids

For information about NASA’s Asteroid Grand Challenge, visit: www.nasa.gov/asteroidinitiative

NASA Spacecraft Detects Aurora And Mysterious Dust Cloud Around Mars

RELEASE 15-045 (Click here for the full article) – 18 March 2015

2015april2_15_045aNASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft has observed two unexpected phenomena in the Martian atmosphere: an unexplained high-altitude dust cloud and aurora that reaches deep into the Martian atmosphere.

The presence of the dust at orbital altitudes from about 93 miles (150 kilometers) to 190 miles (300 kilometers) above the surface was not predicted. Although the source and composition of the dust are unknown, there is no hazard to MAVEN and other spacecraft orbiting Mars.

“If the dust originates from the atmosphere, this suggests we are missing some fundamental process in the Martian atmosphere,” said Laila Andersson of the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospherics and Space Physics (CU LASP), Boulder, Colorado.

…

For images related to the findings, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/maven

NASA’s SOFIA Finds Missing Link Between Supernovae And Planet Formation

RELEASE 15-044 (Click here for the full article) – 19 March 2015

2015april2_15_044aUsing NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), an international scientific team discovered that supernovae are capable of producing a substantial amount of the material from which planets like Earth can form.

These findings are published in the March 19 online issue of Science magazine.

“Our observations reveal a particular cloud produced by a supernova explosion 10,000 years ago contains enough dust to make 7,000 Earths,” said Ryan Lau of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

The research team, headed by Lau, used SOFIA’s airborne telescope and the Faint Object InfraRed Camera for the SOFIA Telescope, FORCAST, to take detailed infrared images of an interstellar dust cloud known as Supernova Remnant Sagittarius A East, or SNR Sgr A East.

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For more information about SOFIA, visit: www.nasa.gov/sofia or www.dlr.de/en/sofia

For information about SOFIA’s science mission and scientific instruments, visit: www.sofia.usra.edu or www.dsi.uni-stuttgart.de/index.en.html

NASA’s Opportunity Mars Rover Finishes Marathon, Clocks In At Just Over 11 Years

RELEASE 15-049 (Click here for the full article) – 24 March 2015

2015april2_15_049cThere was no tape draped across a finish line, but NASA is celebrating a win. The agency’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity completed its first Red Planet marathon Tuesday — 26.219 miles (42.195 kilometers) – with a finish time of roughly 11 years and two months.

“This is the first time any human enterprise has exceeded the distance of a marathon on the surface of another world,” said John Callas, Opportunity project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. “A first time happens only once.”

The rover team at JPL plans a marathon-length relay run at the laboratory next week to celebrate.

The long-lived rover surpassed the marathon mark during a drive of 153 feet (46.5 meters). Last year, Opportunity became the long-distance champion of all off-Earth vehicles when it topped the previous record set by the former Soviet Union’s Lunokhod 2 moon rover.

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For more information about Opportunity, visit www.nasa.gov/rovers

Follow the project on social media at: twitter.com/MarsRovers and www.facebook.com/mars.rovers

NASA’s Hubble, Chandra Find Clues That May Help Identify Dark Matter

RELEASE 15-046 (Click here for the full article) – 26 March 2015

2015april2_15_046Using observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have found that dark matter does not slow down when colliding with itself, meaning it interacts with itself less than previously thought. Researchers say this finding narrows down the options for what this mysterious substance might be.

Dark matter is an invisible matter that makes up most of the mass of the universe. Because dark matter does not reflect, absorb or emit light, it can only be traced indirectly by, such as by measuring how it warps space through gravitational lensing, during which the light from a distant source is magnified and distorted by the gravity of dark matter.

To learn more about dark matter and test such theories, researchers study it in a way similar to experiments on visible matter — by watching what happens when it bumps into other objects. In this case, the colliding objects under observation are galaxy clusters.

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For images and more information about the Hubble Space Telescope, visit: www.nasa.gov/hubble

For more Chandra images, multimedia and related materials, visit: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/main

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CNYO Observers Log: Green Lakes State Park Solar Session (7 March 2015) and Monthly Baltimore Woods Session (13 March 2015)

Posted on March 19, 2015 8:49 pm - - Leave a Comment

Greetings fellow astrophiles,

A quick observing log combining two recent events hosted by Central New York’s own Bob Piekiel. As everyone who’s been local all winter knows, conditions were less than ideal for lots of observing. For those sessions that cloud cover (and snow) didn’t ruin, the Arctic Chill that hit CNY in the middle of February really did a number on even the most determined observers.

Solar Session – Green Lakes State Park – 7 March 2015

2015march19_solarsession

Having put off and re-put off a solar observing session at Green Lakes State Park bus to lousy conditions, the powers that be wanted to go forward with a session on Saturday afternoon, March 7th. With H-alpha and Baader’ed scopes in tow, Bob (and I helping run the Baader’ed scope) hosted a session in the parking lot behind the main building at Green Lakes. Over the course of about 90 minutes, perhaps 10 good minutes of observing were had. Clear skies to the East couldn’t be coaxed to shift West and the upcoming mild snow storm that afternoon even provided some advanced warning. Still, about 10 people either showed specifically for the solar or made their way off the skiing path to take in a few sights of our nearest star.

2015march19_sunspots_1024_20150307The Sun itself wasn’t particularly busy that afternoon, with a major sunspot region having just fallen off the Sun’s edge, leaving a small speck of dark spots just within scopesight (see the March 7th image at right from NASA SOHO. Click for a larger view). As with all sessions, the observing was complemented by good introductory astronomy discussions and direction to the CNYO site for upcoming events (including upcoming solar sessions).

For those keeping additional track, the Sun did provide quite a show over the past few days in the form of fantastic aurora after an X-class solar flare fired up ionization in our atmosphere. For those looking for a gallery of what everyone by Central New Yorkers (it seems) saw over this past St. Patrick’s Day, I encourage you to let google do the work for the following image search: solar storm st. patricks 2015.

Baltimore Woods Monthly Session – 13 March 2015

2015march19_baltimorewoods

A panorama from the Baltimore Woods Session start. Click for a larger view.

A decidedly more fruitful session was had in the thawing parking lot of Baltimore Woods on Friday, March 13th. This evening was also first light for 2015 of my 12.5” NMT Dob (Bob’s SCT having already seen action with a few observing sessions this year). The sky (mostly) did not disappoint! Jupiter and Venus were easy and excellent targets, Mars was at the horizon at session start but still observable (Uranus having slipped too low to see), and a dozen eager observers attended to take in the sights. The only real letdown for the evening was the persistent cloud cover that obstructed all of Orion throughout, giving only a few passing views of the Orion Nebula. To Jupiter, Venus, Mars, and the Orion Nebula (sort of), a very double-centric crowd were treated to views of the double cluster in Perseus, Alcor and Mizar in Ursa Major, and Castor (a sextuplet star system that resolves to a bright binary pair) and Pollux in Gemini. Cloud cover was just persistent and wide-ranging enough to make galaxy views all but impossible, making the whole session a real hopscotch survey of the brightest available at the time. After a solid 80 minutes of observing, we finally packed up with plans for the next sessions made.

For those wanting to check out one of Bob Piekiel’s many events this year, please see his calendar on the CNYO website. We hope to see you!

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Definite Maybe, But It Depends – Aurora Alert For Central New York Friday Night, 12 September 2014

Posted on September 12, 2014 12:16 pm - - Leave a Comment

2014sept12_aurora_kuenzli_big

We can only hope… from Astronomy Picture Of The Day

Greetings fellow astrophiles,

The news has been busier than usual with stellar phenomena the past 24 hours with the report of a solar flare heading right for us. These flares are full of solar plasma that hit our magnetosphere and excite molecules in our upper atmosphere, producing long bands of mostly greens and reds (sometimes blues, depending on the altitude) we know as aurora. Reports have also been coming in that aurora have been brighter and farther south than usual in the last 12 hours, meaning we *might* be in for a show tonight if the CNY skies are clear enough.

2014sept12_333380_468637556480176_831387001_o

Physics! the Sun-Earth connection, with a flare to boot. From universetoday.com.

All that said, while the fact that “aurora will occur” is reasonably easy to predict based on the known direction of a solar flare, the overall brightness, timing, and the final observable latitudes are not easy to predict (we’re talking meteorological accuracy here, folks).

1. Brightness – The beautiful pictures you often see of aurora are, like the high-quality deep space images from Hubble, not exactly what you’d see if you were there in person. The strong green and red colors in aurora images are often produced with longer-exposure photography using DSLR cameras. This means that, to see them best, you need to be away from lit locations where your eyes can adjust to dark surroundings to pick up that much more green and red. Those attempting to see aurora from Syracuse are more likely to confuse the bright parking lights from DestinyUSA and St. Joseph’s with aurora. Having all of the bright city lights to your South IS THE KEY – so consider driving as far North as you believe to be reasonable to improve your chances of seeing aurora.

2. Timing – There were reports of aurora in Arizona last night. Arizona. That’s quite a ways South! That, unfortunately, can mean bad news for CNY observing. Solar flares are not continuous streams of plasma from the Sun – you can think of them more like a fireball. That is, there’ll be a little bit of heat (aurora activity) when the front edge of the fireball interacts with our magnetosphere, then the aurora will really brighten when the core of the fireball (and the most plasma) interacts with our magnetosphere, then the fireball will taper off and the aurora will dim. The fact that aurora were visible in Arizona last night might mean that a strong piece of the front edge (hopefully not the core, but that remains to be seen) had just hit Earth, which might mean the greatest intensity might occur during our afternoon and early evening tonight – which means we won’t see any activity (because the Sun is filling our sky with scattered blue photons). It is tough to know if we’ll still be in the throes of high activity or not until we see it tonight.

3. Latitude – For the most part, aurora are localized to a band around 15 degrees away from Earth’s geomagnetic poles, placing the peak of this phenomena usually in the Arctic (and Antarctic, let’s not forget!) zone – which is why most of the really good aurora pictures you see reveal a considerable amount of snow and ice on the ground (also made possible by the long exposures of the DSLR cameras). When large flares hammer on Earth’s magnetosphere, this peak region can slide in the direction of the equator, making aurora visible to more of Canada and the US. At peak hammering, we can see aurora in CNY no problem. But, again, timing and location are everything in this case – if the timing is just right, you’re still likely better off driving North for better views.

2014sept12_650x366_09111550_hd22

The predictions for tonight from accuweather.com (as for 11:30 p.m. Friday)

What To Check Tonight:

2014sept12_NorthAmerica_5Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks – When you google “aurora prediction,” this is the first site you get. That should tell you something about how much others trust it. Most of the images you might see in local news reports likely come from this website. To use this site, click on THIS LINK, then scroll down on your left-hand side to the “Select a Map” box, then click on the North America map. You’ll get an estimate of the likelihood of seeing aurora for our area, then more detail about timings and what it is that’s causing the specific aurora (Click HERE for tonight’s updates).

Aurorasaurus – A site that absolutely needs to be used by more people. This is a crowdsource’d aurora alert system, where you can see if others in your area are reporting aurora or YOU can report seeing aurora to coax someone else outside. The site will get more interesting for CNY as we approach evening, but I would give this site a good look tonight to see if anyone else in our area is having good luck to the North.

Syracuse.com – Glenn Coin already gave us one update this morning and I suspect updates will follow as prime observing time approaches and we (scientists and citizens together) have more to say about what is or isn’t visible. So, keep track of your favorite local news sources – or be the news source and report to them if you end up seeing anything!

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