Our monitoring program has been underway without interruption for 7 years, resulting in a unique dataset of in situ atmospheric measurements. These balloons are equipped with sensors that detect secondary cosmic rays, a form of radiation from space that can penetrate all the way down to Earth's surface. 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 a greeting card showing the jewelry in flight and telling the story of its trip to the stratosphere and back again.Īll sales support hands-on STEM education The students are selling space pendants to pay the helium bill for their cosmic ray ballooning program. The wings of the dragonfly include four pieces of natural amber colored Cognac, Olive Green and Honey Yellow. Made of genuine Baltic Amber with a sterling silver exoskeleton, the pendant measures 1 1/4 inch and comes with a matching 18-inch sterling silver chain. 28th, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched it to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon, 109,228 feet above California's Sierra Nevada: Kilometers above the desert floor, millions of ice crystals caught the rays of Arizona's winter sun, producing a 22-degree halo, a pair of sundogs, and a "rainbow-smile" circumzenithal arc.ĪMBER DRAGONFLY SPACE PENDANT: This dragonfly has touched space. How can there be ice in the air when the temperature is so far above freezing? Actually, cirrus clouds floating over the warm desert are freezing. "I can get a nice halo display here in Arizona when the temperature is 70 degrees." "The heck with freezing in Scandinavia," says Tucker. Yesterday, Scott Tucker looked up from the desert outside Tucson and saw multiple ice halos around the sun: Aurora alerts: SMS TextĭESERT ICE HALOS: You don't have to travel to the Arctic Circle to find ice in the air. They contain CME-like shock waves that do a good job sparking auroras. CIRs are transition zones between fast- and slow-moving solar wind streams. 1st when a co-rotating interaction regioon (CIR) is expected to hit Earth's magnetic field. NOAA forecasters say that G1-class storms are possible on Jan. GEOMAGNETIC STORM WATCH (G1): 2024 could begin with a geomagnetic storm. As the season progresses, these dots will multiply in number and shift in hue from blue to red as the brightness of the clouds intensifies. For the rest of the season, daily maps from NOAA 21 will be presented here:Įach dot is a detected cloud. An instrument onboard NOAA 21 ( OMPS LP) is able to detect NLCs (also known as "polar mesospheric clouds" or PMCs). The first clouds were detected inside the Antarctic Circle on Dec. The southern season for NLCs is underway. 30, 2023, the Arctic stratosphere is too warm for Type II polar stratospheric clouds. NASA's MEERA-2 climate model predicts when the air up there is cold enough: Credit: SDO/AIAĬolorful Type II polar stratospheric clouds (PSC) form when the temperature in the stratosphere drops to a staggeringly low -85C. Solar wind flowing from this coronal hole should reach Earth on Jan 1-2, 2024. Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica 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. Credit: SDO/HMIĬosmic Rays Solar Cycle 25 is intensifying, and this is reflected in the number of cosmic rays entering Earth's atmosphere. All of these sunspots have stable magnetic fields that pose no threat for strong solar flares.
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