12/16/2023 0 Comments Lunar eclipse diagram png![]() The question is, are SpaceX auroras good or bad? Hummel is the McDonald Observatory Dark Skies Sr. "The resulting 'auroras' can be very bright, easily visible with the naked eye and much brighter than Starlink satellites themselves, although only for a few seconds," notes Hummel. All this happens at ~300km altitude, near the peak of the ionosphere, so a significant hole is made." During the burn, the engine releases about 400lbs of exhaust gasses, mostly water and carbon dioxide. These burns happen ~90 minutes ( ~one orbital period) after launch. "The engine burns are only about 2 seconds long, just enough delta V to bring the second stage down over the south Atlantic Ocean. "We first noticed these SpaceX de-orbit burns over the McDonald Observatory in February 2023," says Boston University space physicist Jeff Baumgarder, who has been studying ionospheric holes for more than 40 years. 3, 2023, produced a red glow over McDonald Observatory in Texas. Right: The night launch of this Falcon 9 rocket on Nov. The second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket burns its engines in order to de-orbit and return to Earth, creating an ionospheric hole as it descends. "SpaceX auroras" are exactly the same-except instead of rockets going up, they are caused by rockets coming down. For reasons having to do with chemistry, ionospheric holes emit a red glow (630 nm). Water-filled rocket exhaust can quench local ionization by as much as 70%, erasing the ionosphere along the rocket's path. Falcon 9 rockets leaving Earth can " punch a hole in the ionosphere." The ionosphere is a layer of ionized gas surrounding our planet it is crucial to over-the-horizon shortwave radio communication and can affect the quality of GPS signals. The phenomenon is closely related to something we reported earlier this year. The bright red balls are caused by SpaceX rockets burning their engines in the ionosphere. ![]() ![]() "We are seeing 2 to 5 of them each month," reports Stephen Hummel of the McDonald Observatory in Texas, who photographed this example on Nov. SPACEX AURORAS: There's a new phenomenon in the night sky: "SpaceX auroras." They're red, roughly spherical, and visible to the naked eye for as much as 10 minutes at a time. 19th has either missed, or it is moving much more slowly than models indicated. A CME ( movie) previously expected to hit Earth's magnetic field on Nov. GEOMAGNETIC STORM WATCH-CANCELED: NOAA forecasters have canceled their geomagnetic storm watch for Nov. 28, 2023, as a show of thanks for years of service and hope for future daisies: Until then, we will maintain AIM's iconic "daily daisy," frozen at Feb. There may be some hope of a recovery as AIM's orbit precesses into full sunlight in 2024. As a result AIM is offline, perhaps permanently. What happened to NASA's AIM spacecraft, which has been monitoring NLCs since 2007? Earlier this year, the spacecraft's battery failed. 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 Arctic Circle by the NOAA 21 satellite. The northern season for NLCs began on May 26th. There are no significant coronal holes on the Earthside of the sun. 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. Sunspot complex AR3490-91 is crackling with M-class solar flares. ![]()
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