Sky and Telescope has prepared four detailed charts to help observers locate 3122 Florence this week. Two of these show the asteroid’s general motion northward among the constellations. Two more show small areas of sky, plotting all stars brighter than magnitude 9.5, for North American observers on the evenings of August 29-31 and September 1-3. Note that the detailed charts are labeled for Universal Time (GMT), and you’ll have to apply a time-zone correction for your location (for example, 0h UT on August 31st corresponds to 8 pm EDT on August 30th).
During its visit, Florence will be traveling roughly south to north, crossing through the constellations Capricornus, Aquarius, Delphinus, Vulpecula, and Cygnus. An especially good opportunity occurs at about 8 pm Eastern Daylight Time on Saturday evening, September 2nd, when the asteroid crosses the quartet of 4th-magnitude stars that mark the head of Delphinus, the Dolphin. It will be gliding northward by a little less than the full Moon’s diameter each hour, motion that should be obvious by watching the asteroid’s starlike pinpoint through a telescope for just a few minutes.
Florence appears this bright, despite being far away, both because it’s among the largest near-Earth asteroids (2.7 miles across) and it has a fairly bright surface that reflects more than 20% of the sunlight that strikes it. (For comparison, the Moon’s average reflectivity is just 12%.) Although it rotates in just 2.4 hours, this asteroid must be nearly spherical because its brightness varies by no more than about 11% – too small a change to pick up by eye.
A house-sized asteroid will shave past our planet on October 12, far inside the Moon’s orbit but without posing any threat, astronomers said Thursday. The space rock will zoom by harmlessly at a distance of about 44,000 kilometres (27,300 miles) — an eighth of the distance from the Earth to the Moon, according to the European Space Agency. This is just far enough to miss our geostationary satellites orbiting at about 36,000 kilometres.
“We know for sure that there is no possibility for this object to hit the Earth,” Detlef Koschny of ESA’s “Near Earth Objects” research team told AFP. There is no danger whatsoever.”
The asteroid, dubbed 2012 TC4, first flitted past our planet in October 2012 — at about double the distance — before disappearing from view. It is about 15-30 metres (49-98 feet) long, and was travelling at a speed of some 14 kilometres (nine miles) per second when spotted. Scientists expected the asteroid to return for a near-Earth rendezvous this year, but did not know how close it would get. Now, the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile has managed to track the rock down, some 56 million kilometres away, and determine its trajectory.
“It’s damn close,” said Rolf Densing, who heads the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany. “The farthest satellites are 36,000 kilometres out, so this is indeed a close miss,” he told AFP.
For researchers, the near miss will provide a rare chance to test Earth’s “planetary defence” systems — which at this point are focused on early warning rather than active asteroid deflection.
Observing TC4’s movements “is an excellent opportunity to test the international ability to detect and track near-Earth objects and assess our ability to respond together to a real asteroid threat,” said an ESA statement. Asteroids are rocky bodies left over from the formation of our solar system some 4.5 billion years ago. There are thought to be millions of them, most of them in a “belt” between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
A space rock slightly bigger than TC4, at 40 metres, caused the largest Earth impact in recent history when it exploded over Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908.
In 2013, a meteoroid of about 20 metres exploded in the atmosphere over the city of Chelyabinsk in central Russia with the kinetic energy of about 30 Hiroshima atom bombs.
The resulting shockwave blew out the windows of nearly 5,000 buildings and injured more than 1,200 people. It caught everyone unawares.
If an object the size of TC4 were to enter Earth’s atmosphere, “it would have a similar effect to the Chelyabinsk event,” said the ESA.
But Earth’s atmosphere stretches only a few hundred kilometres far, and TC4 will comfortably miss it. Also, it would likely behave very differently to the Chelyabinsk object.
“The Chelyabinsk meteoroid was a piece of comet and they are usually made of icy material,” said Densing. “Due to the icy nature it probably dissipated in the atmosphere… When we’re talking about asteroids, this is solid material. They are mostly made up of iron, so will not so easily dissipate their energy in the atmosphere.”
TC4 is unlikely to shed any debris into the atmosphere.
Even if it did, no evacuation would be required for an object this size, said Koschny, merely a warning for people to stay away from windows that could shatter from the shockwave.
Densing, who has previously warned that humanity is not ready to defend itself against an Earth-bound object, said he would not lose any sleep, not over this one. “However, it makes you wonder what will happen next time,” he said. “I would have felt a bit more comfortable if we… had a longer pre-warning time.”
April 4 and the 22nd had some excellent Aurora Borealis, and Saturday the 22nd was also the Lyrid meteor shower. The skies were clear for a brief time, so I saw a few Lyrid meteors.
Jerry Mason’s photo above shows green auroral glow and blue streaks. Taken from College Way above Vernon at 10:30pm. I suspect the curved streak at right is a lens reflection from the streetlight at lower left.
Something new, have you heard about auroral proton arcs actually being a new high velocity 300km high, high temperature gas stream called “STEVE” acronym: Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement?
STEVE was assumed by aurora photographers to be a “proton arc”. (Protons can hit the upper atmospheric gases also and while the electrons they bump loose can cause a glowing light, it’s a broad, diffuse and dim glow unlike the structure of STEVE that is a narrow streamer with rotation and other motion.
Proton Arc Vanexus Photography Aug2016
Photo Credit: Karina & Amir, Vanexus Photography, Vancouver BC. Taken at Porteau Cove provincial Park in August 2016. “While it started as a thin white line, it transformed into vibrant greens and purples before fading away.”
Basics about STEVE, from NASA’s Aurorasaurus blog: source: http://blog.aurorasaurus.org/?p=449
1.STEVE appears ~10-20° (in latitude) closer to the equator (south in the Northern hemisphere) than where the normal green aurora is overhead. This means it could be overhead at latitudes similar to Calgary, Canada.
2.STEVE is a very narrow arc aligned East-West and extending for hundreds or thousands of miles.
3.STEVE emits light in mostly purplish colors. It is quite faint but is usually photographed with 5-10 second exposures.
4.Sometimes, it is accompanied by a rapidly evolving green short-lived picket fence structure.
5.STEVE can last 20 minutes or even longer.
6.STEVE appears to have a season. For instance, it has not been observed by citizen scientists from October 2016 to February 2017.
7.This phenomena has been reported from the UK, Canada, Alaska, northern US states, and even New Zealand.
“Ordinary auroras we see from the ground and space are caused by electrons precipitating down into the atmosphere,” Dennis Gallagher of the Nasa Marshall Space Flight Centre said last year. “Protons can cause auroras, too, but they are different. For one thing, proton auroras are brightest in the UV part of the spectrum, invisible to the human eye.”
There is some visible light from proton auroras, but these are broad and spread out, not tight and filamentary like the streaks seen in the photographs.
Eric Donovan, a professor of Physics and Astronomy from the University of Calgary:
With data gathered by Alberta’s network of aurora watchers, Eric Donovan found it coincided with a flyby from one of the three satellites from the European Space Agency’s Swarm magnetic field mission.
“As the satellite flew straight through Steve, data from the electric field instrument showed very clear changes. The temperature 300 km above Earth’s surface jumped by 3000°C and the data revealed a 25 km-wide ribbon of gas flowing westwards at about 6 km/s compared to a speed of about 10 m/s either side of the ribbon,” explained U of C astronomer Eric Donovan in an ESA blog post.
“It turns out that STEVE is actually remarkably common, but we hadn’t noticed it before. It’s thanks to ground-based observations, satellites, today’s explosion of access to data and an army of citizen scientists joining forces to document it.
“Swarm allows us to measure it and I’m sure will continue to help resolve some unanswered questions.”
Roger Haagmans, Swarm’s mission scientist added that there is still a lot we need to learn about Steve. For example, it is not created by the interaction of solar particles with the Earth’s magnetic field, meaning it is not classified as an Aurora and requires further investigation.
So, instead of an aurora caused by solar particles slamming into air molecules, this turned out to be a super-heated ribbon of gases, where the air molecules were emitting light simply due to the heat, like the filament of an incandescent light bulb.
According to NASA’s Aurorasaurus blog, there were more than 50 observed sightings of Steve (which has since been hammered into the acronym Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement) last year and they’re hoping to gather more data in 2017.
On 19 April an asteroid will pass close by. At its closest it will be less than five times the distance of the Moon. The asteroid, named 2014 JO25, is about 600 metres across. It will scoot across our northern sky in a few hours, moving at 33.5 km/s. It will be closest to us at 08:24 EDT, 05:24 PDT. However, to see it you’ll need a telescope.
If it were made of basalt, like the Moon, it would have a mass of some 300 million tonnes. This is the biggest object in about 13 years to pass this close. A rough estimate suggests on average we could be hit by something that size every million years or so. Such an event would certainly be a disaster, but it would not be likely to endanger our existence. Smaller objects pass within that distance every week and on average one of them could hit us every 80 years.
The Moon is peppered with craters due to impacts. The Earth has been hit at least as often, but weathering and the continuous recycling of the Earth’s surface due to subduction and the emergence of new land surface have erased most of them. However, there are still conspicuous craters on the Earth’s surface. These cosmic collisions are not unusual; they are just part of the ongoing process of planet building.
The Earth itself was formed through impacts, as dust and progressively larger lumps of material smashed together some 4.6 billion years ago. Some of that material contained ice, which brought us the water to make our oceans. Fortunately most of that primordial “building material” has been used, but there are still pieces of it orbiting the Sun. A piece of this material some 12km across smashed down in the Sudbury area in Ontario about 1.8 billion years ago. The geological disturbance brought a wealth of minerals closer to the surface and concentrated them.
One of the most well-known and dramatic impacts occurred about 64 million years ago. After 180 million years of stability, environmental change and habitat loss was putting many species, such as the dinosaurs and ammonites into a steady decline. Then a 10km diameter asteroid hit the Earth, leading to such a rapid environmental change that 75% of species became extinct, including the dinosaurs and ammonites. In 1908 something entered the atmosphere and exploded over Tunguska, Siberia. Over 2000 square kilometres were flattened, and glasses rattled on shelves in Paris, France. A tiny difference in arrival time could have put that impact in Europe.
Today, our species dominates the Earth. Feeding ourselves and providing for our other needs involves heavily exploiting our planet’s resources. That means we are becoming increasingly vulnerable to any sort of environmental disaster. Can we do anything to reduce the impact risk? This involves two problems: detecting impact threats and then somehow mitigating them.
Small, dark objects on a dark background are hard to see. We usually detect them just in time to watch them sail past. Current radar methods are no better. In principle we can use our observations to assess the possibilities of future collisions. This is rendered difficult by all our data being obtained over a tiny part of the orbit, and the perturbation of that orbit by little tugs by the other planets. This means that unless we can give threatening asteroids a really big “shove”, changing the orbit by more than the uncertainties in our calculations, we might turn a miss into a hit. Unfortunately, as yet we don’t know how to give objects with masses of millions of tonnes a big shove. Blowing them up, as in the movies, would just turn one threat into many. However, the detection and mitigation of cosmic impact threats are getting a lot of attention.
Ken Tapping is an astronomer at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory, Penticton, BC.
A Meteor fireball fell over Central Washington State, and broke up over the Colville Reservation north of Yakima. The bright fireball was seen by many people from Vancouver Island , Vancouver, Seattle, and as far East as Spokane, Washington. The American Meteor Society received 116 reports of “a fireball” over Washington, B.C., Idaho and Oregon.
Vancouver time that was Thursday March 16, 2017 at 9:39pm. People described a green tail turning briefly yellow, followed by a quick double flash at it broke up.
Kathy M. wrote on the AMS site: “It was so amazing and beautiful. I’ve seen small, white falling stars before but never anything like this….large bright green with a huge white tail. Very cool.” http://www.amsmeteors.org/members/imo_view/event/2017/1012
Colour VIDEO: Tammy Kwan, a Vancouver weekly newspaper Georgia Straight reporter, posted her dashcam video to YouTube she was driving on Lougheed Highway in Pitt Meadows. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfcg_GiZhqA
Many of The Meteor Network All sky cameras across BC and Washington picked it up at 17 Mar 2017 at 04:39 UTC :
Bellview Wash (just a flash through clouds) at 04:39 UTC
Victoria BC at 04:39
Cranbrook Allsky
Cranbrook BC at 04:39;
Kelowna AllskyWest Kelowna BC at 04:39.
Prince George BC at 04:53. (Their clock may be out).
The Anarchist Mtn, and Richland, Wash sites weren’t online. The Courtney BC site didn’t see it.
TRIANGULATION: On these Allsky photos, North is at the top, and East is on the left. Knowing the location of the photos, and from their directions, we can triangulate where the meteor was. If you get your ruler out and draw intersecting lines on a map, it appears South of Kelowna BC, in Central Washington, over the Colville Reservation. In this case, it’s unlikely it hit the ground.
A second smaller meteor was seen to the North on 03/17/2017 at 04:53 UT, 14 minutes afterward.
Father of Meteor Allsky Networks, Richard Spalding died Feb 8.
[Excerpts from an article by Tom Dorman.]
Dick passed away Wed, Feb 8 2017, after battling multiple heart issues this past year. Dick was the Founder of the SkySentinel Allsky Network (Sandia National Laboratories) and was instrumental in setting up and running the meteor fireball camera Systems in the U.S. and around the world. Allsky camera systems can now be bought off the shelf but back in the 1990’s Dick was giving the camera systems to willing amateurs in support of the North America fireball network. (Locally he sent Allsky camera systems to a number of nodes in the BC Meteor network in Canada in 2011. ) Dick gave graciously of his time and always was willing to answer questions from even lowly amateurs such as ourselves.
These early camera systems gave a better understanding of meteors, fireball events, meteor showers and their origins. Some of the early fireball cameras that Dick gave out to many amateurs were through DOD grants but many were paid for out of his own money.
Lindley Johnson, Planetary Defense Officer at NASA wrote: “He was a great man as well as an insightful scientist and a hero to us all, albeit largely unsung. It is nice to see this latest paper come out and know that he was active to the end in uncovering the mysteries of nature. He will of course be greatly missed, but I hope he was heartened in his last days by seeing us finally making progress in getting bolide reports instituted into our warning infrastructure. In his memory, we will redouble our efforts to make full use of what he had shown us of what is possible to better understand the science of natural objects entering our atmosphere in service of better protection of all human populations and our collective society.”
**The Geminids are the best at 120 meteors per hour, are on 14 Dec. *The Orionids (21 Oct) and the Leonids (17 Nov) both at 15 meteors per hour are middling. The Northern Taurids on 12 Nov at 5 meteors per hour aren’t as frequent but they produce many bright fireballs, and flashes on the Moon. However, the bright Moon will spoil much of the meteor showers this year. Meteor velocities can range from about 11 km/s (very slow) to 72 km/s (very fast). 40 km/s is roughly medium speed. (That’s still pretty fast. For comparison, the International space station orbits at 8km/s, and goes around the Earth in 90 minutes.)These meteors travel across the sky very swiftly, with “trains”. Look for a series of small explosions in the meteor trail as the rock breaks up. Some leave a luminous train of particles that last for a few seconds or even a minute. Colours can be yellow to brilliant green. You may hear a delayed supersonic rumble (5 minutes later) if a fireball comes close overhead and a chirp of descending pitch on a shortwave radio, from the meteors ion plasma.
*Fri 21 Oct: The ORIONIDs: Active: Oct 02–Nov 07 with maximum on Friday Oct 21; The zenith hourly rate (ZHR) is 15 meteors/hr; with a fast speed of 66 km/s, the remnants of Comet Halley. This year is likely a typical shower at 15 meteors per hour. This can vary from year to year, with a 12 year cycle of strong and weak peaks ranging from 14 to 31 meteors per hour; and another factor which can produce outbursts of 70 meteors/hr. The Moon will rise around midnight at its last quarter (65%-illuminated) which bright glow will drown out the fainter meteors. The meteors should radiate out from the North part of Orion the Hunter, by his club, on the Eastern horizon. Since the Moon is located quite close to the radiant at this time it will spoil all optical observations.
These meteors consist of falling ice pellets, dust and sand debris encountered as the Earth crosses the orbit of Halley’s Comet, coming in fast at 66 km per second. This debris moves parallel to itself along the orbit of the comet, thus from our Earth perspective it looks like they radiate out from a single point, the “radiant”. The Orionids all appear to radiate out from Orion, the streaks looking like huge bicycle spokes with the centre hub at Orion’s shoulder. They are visible coming from the Eastern horizon when Orion rises after midnight towards 1 to 6am. The half of the meteors that go below the horizon won’t be seen. You should be out of town where it’s dark to see them best. Don’t look towards the East, these trails will look short due to foreshortening. Instead look 90 degrees away, either straight overhead, or to the North, away from the Moon’s bright light.
Sat 12 Nov: The Northern TAURIDs: (Active: Oct 20 to Dec 10, max on 12 Nov). The zenith hourly rate (ZHR) is just 5 meteors/hour; velocity a slow 29km/s. The Earth passes through a debris stream left by Comet Encke, source of the Taurid Meteor Shower. Taurid meteors tend to be larger than average: they are bright, with many fireballs. They also penetrate deeper into the Earth’s atmosphere than other meteors. For example, Orionids typically burn up at altitudes of 93 km, but the Taurids make it down to 68 km. Some get even lower — meteor cameras have tracked 1-inch Northern Taurid meteors down to 58 km.
Moon Impacts: Because the Taurid Meteors can be 1 inch bullets of ice moving at 29 km/s (which is a hypersonic mach 88), they produce bright flashes of light when they strike the Moon. Taurid lunar impacts are visible with the college’s 10″ or 11” Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes as small flickers of light, in dark regions. However, since the moon is 94% illuminated on Nov 12, there’s not much dark area to look into. But sometimes you can see brighter flashes in the illuminated area as well. Some telescopes are fitted with video cameras and count how many meteors hit the Moon overall. One impact imaged on Sep 2013 was so hot it glowed white hot for 8 seconds–it was estimated to be a 40kg rock.
*Thu 17 Nov: The LEONIDs Active: Nov 06–Nov 30 Nov 17; Maximum: Thu Nov 17; ZHR = 15 meteors/hr; V = 71 km/s. These arrive just three days after the full Moon, which will make it hard to see them. There are a lot of fast green meteors in the Leonids.
Mon 28 Nov: The November Orionids. Active: November 14–December 6; Maximum: Monday Nov 28; ZHR = 3 meteors/hr; V = 44 km/s
**Wed 14 Dec: The GEMINIDS; active Dec 04–Dec 17; Maximum: Dec 14; ZHR = 120 meteors/hr; V= 35 km/s.
The best and most reliable meteor shower of the year are the Geminids at 120 meteors per hour on Wednesday, December 14. Except we have the Full Moon on the same night to spoil them. The Geminid meteors are debris from an extinct comet (called 3200 Phaethon) coming in at 35 km/second. (That’s a medium speed for a meteor. Other meteor shower velocities range from 11 to 72 km/s.) The Geminids come in various colours–65% being white, 26% yellow, and the remaining 9% blue, red and green. The meteors are the sand, dust and gravel remains of an Apollo asteroid (3200 Phaethon), coming in at medium speeds of 35km/second.
Colourful meteor here taken by Robert Ede in Invermere, against the Milky Way to the South. Note the colour in the trail starts green and turns red.
Fireball Colours: Green can be caused by copper or magnesium metal burning. Other colours seen are yellow, orange and red. Iron burns yellow (eg. steel wool), silicates burn red and sodium burns orange.
Ionization trails: Sometimes the wakes behind them can be ionized oxygen emitting green light. That occurs at higher altitudes where the air pressure is low. The higher collision energies make oxygen produce a greenish glow, nitrogen emits blue and red, at the lower energies a dim red. Just like the colours in the Northern Lights. So, fast meteors would have more energy and produce more greens and blues, slow meteors would have lower energy and produce reds.
Which direction is best to look? Where it’s darkest. As you can see in these composite photos from last year, the fireballs scatter all over the sky, radiating out from Gemini to the East. But when you watch the area around Gemini, the streaks there are shorter and slower moving. These fisheye photos show the whole sky as a circle: North is up, South down, East to the left, and West to right.
All the brighter Geminid Meteors during the night of 14 Dec 2014. The photos were taken with the College of the Rockies meteor cam in Cranbrook, BC.
It is thought the Geminids originated from an asteroid named 3200 Phaethon, discovered in 1983. It may be a small 5km fragment from the 544km main belt asteroid Pallas
The college meteor camera is already seeing more bright meteors zipping overhead. The Perseid meteor shower started July 17, ends Aug 24 but peaks on Thursday night, August 11 and Friday morning Aug 12. If it’s cloudy Thursday, note that Wednesday night and Friday night will also be very active.
This year the Earth will cross the centre of the comet debris; so we should get the full show. We should also get three additional early peaks: Jupiter’s gravity has shifted some debris; and we’ll see debris from the 1862 and 1479 comet ejection trails to hit this year. Peak estimates (by Esko Lyytinen and Mikhail Maslov) are 150 to 160 meteors per hour, about three per minute.
There are four peaks in two waves; we’ll miss the first wave since it hits Thursday in daylight; and the last wave which hits in Friday’s morning light. But the whole night should be pretty constant at 100 meteors/hour. Best seeing times in the East Kootenays would be after midnight once the Moon sets (low in Scorpius) and the skies darken; continuing until dawn at 5am. We’ll miss the last wave at 7am. But these peak times are estimates, we can hope they arrive during darkness instead.
(Mountain Daylight Savings Time-- minus 1 hr for Pacific) 1. Thurs Aug 11 at 4:34pm [1862 comet trail] 2. Aug 11 at 5:24pm [1479 comet trail] 3. Aug 11 from 6 to 10pm [Jupiter shifts] 4. Fri Aug 12 from 7 to 9am [Centre of comet orbit].
It takes the Earth a week to pass through all the ice and dust from comet Swift-Tuttle. The shower will gradually taper off and end by Aug 24. The meteors are travelling at a speed of 59 km/s when they enter the Earth’s atmosphere. Their trails will all point to Perseus (if it’s a Perseid). The closer they are, the smaller their trail: and the further away, the longer the trail. Look for their colours—at high speed they ionize the air to a green; then that fades to yellow, orange, red as it slows down. If they disrupt and flare, you may see green/bluish wide streaks that glow afterward for a second or two (mainly it’s water ice, but there may be metals present like copper or cobalt).
Allsky Cam Meteor Images Aug 11-12
Where to look? The composite photo above shows the entire sky, and all the meteors that fell on 11 and 12 Aug 2015 over Cranbrook; taken by our college meteor camera. Perseus is the constellation to the North East (middle left side of the photo). Normally there are fewer meteors seen straight overhead, since there is less volume of atmosphere overhead. There are slightly more meteors seen high to the West around Hercules and above the handle of the big dipper; since the meteor trails are longer there, and the meteors skim lower in a greater volume of atmosphere. That’s where I aim my cameras. (Or where it’s darkest, away from the Moon or city streetlight glow).
Allsky Captures Stacked for 13 Aug 2015
Some of the meteors seen will be from the k-Cygnids running from August 6–19. These peak on August 18 at 3 meteors per hour. They show a number of slow falling fireballs moving at 25km/second.
Small k-Cygnid Fireball Crossing Cygnus
This photo shows a k-Cygnid meteor crossing through Cygnus the Swan as seen during the last Perseid shower of 2015 (it’s tail is short and it points from Cygnus). Photo taken with a Nikon D100, Tamron 28mm f/2.5 lens, 30 second exposure. I outlined Cygnus in yellow against the Milky Way. The bright star Deneb is the tail at top, and Albireo is the beak at bottom. Photo credit: Rick Nowell.
Starmap of Northeast Sky with Perseus for 13Aug
While you’re out stargazing, here is a starmap showing the Perseus region of the sky, looking Northeast late after midnight in August. The Milky Way band (grey in the map) runs through Perseus; who is the Greek hero coming to rescue Andromeda (daughter of Cassiopeia) who is chained to the rocks. Look below the W of Cassiopeia (the Queen of Ethiopia). You should also see the great square of Pegasus, the winged horse to the right. If you have good eyes (or binoculars), you can spot the fuzzy cloud of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31 in the Map) just above Andromeda’s stick-figure knee. (Andromeda’s head is one corner of the square of Pegasus.) The big dipper, little dipper and Polaris are easy to locate to the left. (Starmap generated by Skyglobe software).
Note: to zoom in a picture or map and see the lines, right-click and open in new tab.
The strongest solar storm so far of 2016 hit us Saturday night at 10:48pm and again between 2 to 3am (according to our college meteor camera). The clear starry East Kootenay sky lit up with glowing curtains and spikes that reached a third of the way up from the Northern horizon.
Our meteor cam has some nifty video on it. And I zipped out of town and took some photos. I missed the best at 11pm, but got some shots at 11:45. But I packed up at 1:50 am, too soon. According to the meteor cam, if I had waited until 2:10 I would have got the big proton arc spiral. Later it died down to a green glow to the North that lasted all night. It was as bright outside as though the Moon was up.
Yet just before 2am, the whole North half of the sky was pulsating; with dim patches travelling from North to South, at about 2 cycles per second, like sheet lightning (I was getting a sore neck watching this over Ft. Steele, 15 km out of Cranbrook). Some kind of oscillation involving the trapped charge bouncing back and forth in the ionosphere, at right angles to the Earth’s magnetic field, creating waves of its own local magnetic field. Anyhow, at 2:10 the build-up must have discharged in a nice arc.
LakitFtS_6s_537_50pc.JPG
Shot from Ft. Steele hill, facing Northeast over Lakit Mountain. The W of the constellation Cassiopeia (Queen of Ethiopia) just above. Rippling, but just greens, no reds or blues. Photos taken with a Nikon and a 28mm f/2.5 lens, with 6 to 15 second exposures.
Perseus_6s_545_50pc.JPG
Looking at the Western edge of the glowing cloud, groups of spikes. Perseus in background. Pale traces of a narrow vertical streamer west of that.
Fisher_6s_448_50pc.JPG
Even Fisher Peak to the East was backlit by rippling bands.
EagerHill_Steeples_30s_1600_554.JPG
Pine trees and the Steeples silhouetted from Eager Hill outside of Cranbrook.
7 May 2016: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center has issued a 48 hour magnetic storm watch indicating a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) or a high speed solar wind stream emanating from the Sun may be heading towards Earth. These fast moving charged particles can cause a Northern Lights display.
The current Geomagnetic Activity level (Kp number) is 5.33 — STORM LEVEL, peaking over the Northern BC and Alberta border.
NorthernLightsFernieMay2016_Sasha3619.JPG
Fernie had it even better, since they saw blues as well. Facing North from Fernie BC, Cassiopeia above. Sent by Sasha Prystae of Kimberley.
Electrons cause most of the glow. The dim red glow at the top of the curtain occurs above 200 km, when fast moving electrons hit low-pressure oxygen atoms in the atmosphere. The middle green is from glowing oxygen molecules between 100 and 200 km. Below 100 km, nitrogen atoms will glow a dim purplish colour and blue. Below that, the air pressure is too high and no effect is seen.
This is a brief spiraling proton arc pillar hitting the Pacific Ocean North of Vancouver in Porteau Cove Provincial Park taken by Karina and Amir around 11pm Saturday, and another at 2am. Wow. See https://www.instagram.com/vanexusphotography/ for a video of that.
Those vertical spiraling curtains are likely ionized oxygen atoms corkscrewing down around the Earth’s magnetic field lines.
This was the strongest flare of 2016 so far. Reportedly, as the Earth moved in its orbit, it crossed a wrinkle in the Sun’s magnetic field, where it reversed polarity briefly. This briefly buffeted the Earth’s protective magnetic field, which let in a gust of protons and electrons.
The best and most reliable meteor shower of the year are the Geminids at 120 meteors per hour on early Monday December 14. The second best are the Quadrantids at 120/hr on January 4 but these last only for a few hours. The Perseids are better known, since they occur on August 13 when it’s nice and warm out. But they’re actually number three on the list at 100 meteors per hour.
Since the new Moon occurs on Dec 11, the sky will be dark so we should see even the fainter meteors. The peak should occur around 10am in the morning, Dec 14, persisting for 24 hours. But 2am is fine when the shower’s radiant point, Gemini, rises high in the sky to the East. The meteors are the sand, dust and gravel remains of an Apollo asteroid (3200 Phaethon), coming in at medium speeds of 35km/second. (That’s a medium speed for a meteor. Other meteor shower velocities range from 11 to 72 km/s.) The Geminids come in various colours–65% being white, 26% yellow, and the remaining 9% blue, red and green. They’re active from Dec 4 until Thursday Dec 17. Last night I saw a bright yellow tinted fireball zip across Orion crossing a quarter of the Southern sky, leaving a shorter glowing trail along the last third of it’s flight; and another fireball went across Taurus just two minutes later. Last night I saw a bright yellow tinted fireball zip across Orion crossing a quarter of the Southern sky, leaving a shorter glowing trail along the last third of it’s flight; and another fireball went across Taurus just two minutes later.
Which direction is best to look? Where it’s darkest. As you can see in these composite photos from last year, the fireballs scatter all over the sky, radiating out from Gemini to the East. But when you watch the area around Gemini, the streaks there are shorter and slower moving. These fisheye photos show the whole sky as a circle: North is up, South down, East to the left, and West to right. Geminids during the night of 15 Dec 2014 These photos were taken from Cranbrook, BC with the College of the Rockies meteor cam. Geminid Meteors Towards North and Big Dipper
Below is a starmap looking East around 11pm on Dec 14. Note Gemini the Twins rising due East, just left of Orion the Hunter. Look for two bright stars, Castor over top of the other, Pollux. Gemini the Twins used to be a benevolent guide for the ancient Sailers. In movies you sometimes hear old sailors exclaim “By Jiminy!”. Sirius is the very bright star along the SouthEastern horizon below Orion. Taurus the Bull is the “>” shape above Orion, with the red eye of Aldebaran. The Pleiades are a small fuzzy patch above that.
Starmap for 14 Dec 2015 Looking East
These pictures are pixelated to fit in this small window–right click and open image in a new tab to zoom in more.
