On June 21st, something rare and magical happened in London. The skies of the great city filled with noctilucent clouds (NLCs). Phil Halper noticed the display, grabbed a camera, and raced from one landmark to another, hurriedly recording pictures like this:
WASHINGTON — Thin ribbons of purple and white light that sometimes appear in the night sky were dubbed a new type of aurora when brought to scientists’ attention in 2016. But new research suggests these mysterious streams of light are not an aurora at all but an entirely new celestial phenomenon. Amateur photographers had captured…
High above Earth, glowing clouds of frosted meteor smoke are spilling over populated areas of the USA and Europe. “Last night, for the first time this summer, noctilucent clouds stretched across our whole sky,” reports Danish observer Pernille Fjeldgaard Jensen. “Some of the clouds looked like silver corkscrews spiraling their long arms towards us.” “It was a…
In recent nights, noctilucent clouds (NLCs) have rippled across Europe from Scandinavia to the south of France. “We have been observing NLCs every night here in N. Ireland,” reports Martin McKenna of Maghera in Co. Derry. “Their brightness and complexity have been getting more advanced since the solstice, with whirls and knots glowing electric blue…
Remember when the pre-dawn SpaceX launch from Vandenberg just before Christmas created a flurry of UFO reports in Southern California? Now it’s Japan’s turn. On Jan. 18th, the Japanese space agency JAXA launched a small rocket from the Uchinoura Space Center. It made a big display. Japanese artist and photographer Kagaya captured dramatic images of the rocket’s exhaust…
NASA’s AIM spacecraft is monitoring a vast ring of electric-blue clouds circling high above Antarctica. These are noctilucent clouds (NLCs), made of ice crystals frosting specks of “meteor smoke” in the mesosphere 83 km above the frozen continent. Here is an animation from the past week: This is the season for southern noctilucent clouds. Every year…
Via NASA’s Spaceweather.com For the past two days, sky watchers in parts of Europe have reported strange colors in the daytime sky. “There’s a red glow overhead and the sun looks like a big Orange,” says Vincent Phillips, who sends this picture from Hale village near Liverpool UK: “This is apparently due to ex-hurricane Ophelia,…
WASHINGTON, DC — Dating back to the first century, scientists, philosophers and reporters have noted the occasional occurrence of “bright nights,” when an unexplained glow in the night sky lets observers see distant mountains, read a newspaper or check their watch. A new study accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the…
Florida Tech lightning research deepens understanding of sprite formation – link specific atmospheric conditions to exuberant, luminous displays above thunderstorms From the FLORIDA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY MELBOURNE, FLA. — A new study led by Florida Institute of Technology Professor Ningyu Liu has improved our understanding of a curious luminous phenomenon that happens 25 to 50 miles…
One day after a Chinese rocket disintegrated brightly over the western USA, another set of strange lights appeared over the same region. This time it was NASA’s doing. Before sunrise on Feb. 25th, a Terrier-Black Brant research rocket lifted off from White Sands Missile Range in southern New Mexico, carrying an experiment to Earth’s ionosphere.…
Scientists from Montana and Germany develop simple new model that explains the brilliant deep hues of Yellowstone National Park’s most beautiful thermal springs WASHINGTON D.C. – Researchers at Montana State University and Brandenburg University of Applied Sciences in Germany have created a simple mathematical model based on optical measurements that explains the stunning colors of…
Guest essay by Mike Alger, Chief Meteorologist,KTVN-TV,Reno, NV Here’s something you don’t see every day. Flying a mission for the Air Force, Capt. Ryan McGuire started rolling some video (I believe with an iPhone through night vision goggles) of a very active thunderstorm cell somewhere over the Indian Ocean. Hoping to just catch some of…
Of course, it might just be a negative feedback at work. From NASA: Appearance of Night-Shining Clouds Has Increased First spotted in 1885, silvery blue clouds sometimes hover in the night sky near the poles, appearing to give off their own glowing light. Known as noctilucent clouds, this phenomenon began to be sighted at lower…
This is interesting, a first dataset for noctilucent cloud variation. As the Sun dips below the horizon, the last rays of light can glint off crystals of ice high in the atmosphere, lighting up the sky with an electric blue glow. Known as noctilucent clouds, these collections of ice crystals occur most often at high…
My lovely and talented wife has a habit of being in the right place at the right time to capture nature doing interesting things. This particular shot was taken by cell phone from a moving vehicle in Northern California last night and shows something I’ve never seen before. Those of you looking for the elusive…
Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach Pushed by a commenter on another thread, I thought I’d discuss the R. W. Wood experiment, done in 1909. Many people hold that this experiment shows that CO2 absorption and/or back-radiation doesn’t exist, or at least that the poorly named “greenhouse effect” is trivially small. I say it doesn’t show…
From Disney Research (who knew?) Researchers unlock secret of the rare ‘twinned rainbow’ ZURICH — Scientists have yet to fully unravel the mysteries of rainbows, but a group of researchers from Disney Research, Zürich, UC San Diego, Universidad de Zaragoza, and Horley, UK, have used simulations of these natural wonders to unlock the secret to…
From the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center NASA jet stream study will light up the night sky – 5 sounding rockets to launch into upper atmosphere within 5 minutes High in the sky, 60 to 65 miles above Earth’s surface, winds rush through a little understood region of Earth’s atmosphere at speeds of 200 to 300…
From spaceweather.com An apparition of polar stratospheric clouds is underway around the Arctic Circle. “It is almost as good as the aurora borealis,” says Göran Strand, who took this picture last night from Östersund, Sweden: Eric Schandall of Oslo, Norway, adds this report: “We have seen them for three evenings over Oslo, with the ones…
via Physorg.com with h/t to Dr. Leif Svalgaard and Indur Goklany The Northern Lights have petered out during the second half of this decade, becoming rarer than at any other time in more than a century, the Finnish Meteorological Institute said Tuesday. The Northern Lights, or aurora borealis, generally follow an 11-year “solar cycle”, in…
From Eurka Alert: FECYT – Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology A team of Spanish researchers has made a high-speed recording of elves and sprites in storms, fleeting and luminous electric phenomena produced in the upper layers of the atmosphere. Their analysis of these observations has been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
From NASA Colliding Auroras Produce an Explosion of Light 12.17.09 This three frame animation of THEMIS/ASI images shows auroras colliding on Feb. 29, 2008. Credit: Toshi Nishimura/UCLA › Larger Image › View Animation A network of cameras deployed around the Arctic in support of NASA’s THEMIS mission has made a startling discovery about the Northern…
Today I stepped outside and was greeted with this image just after the clouds parted. Fortunately I had my camera ready to go. This view is at the Sierra Nevada foothills looking Northeast over Bidwell Ranch, CA. A light mist was falling and the sun was behind me. I had a wide view of the…