The most intense geomagnetic storm of the 20th Century took place one hundred years ago during solar cycle 15 in a 3-day period from May 13-15 in 1921. The storm occurred before the widespread electrical dependence of infrastructure that we have in today’s world, but the impact from an extraordinarily powerful coronal mass ejection was still quite extensive. The storm’s electrical current sparked a number of fires around the world including one near the Grand Central Terminal in New York City. In addition, auroras appeared throughout the eastern US creating brightly lit nighttime skies and telegraph service virtually stopped in its tracks due to blown fuses and damaged equipment. Research in recent years has suggested that this super solar storm of May 1921 was equally as intense as the granddaddy of all super storms in recorded history – the “Carrington Event of 1859”.
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After two postponements over the past two days, a rocket launch is now scheduled for Monday evening at the NASA/Wallops facility in Virginia and it could be visible in much of the eastern US. The mission is scheduled for no earlier than 8:04 PM on May 10th with a 40 minute launch window and it is designed to study space plasmas after the release of barium vapor.
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Earlier today, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter became the first aircraft to make a controlled flight on another planet. The solar-powered helicopter became airborne at 3:34 AM (ET) which was at a local time on Mars that was determined to likely feature optimal energy and flight conditions. Data indicates Ingenuity climbed to its prescribed altitude of 10 feet and maintained a stable hover for 30 seconds. It then descended and touched back down on the surface of Mars after logging a total of 39.1 seconds of flight. This was an important test for the helicopter which was full of unknowns as Mars has an extremely thin atmosphere and significantly lower gravity than Earth.
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NASA’s fifth Mars rover, Perseverance, successfully landed on the red planet last Thursday, February 18th and it will remain there for nearly two years searching for ancient life and exploring the surface. There have already been several newly released images by NASA and you can actually listen to a ~10 mph wind on the red planet (see below). Perseverance is the most technologically advanced robot NASA has sent so far having traveled 293 million miles to reach the planet over the course of more than six months. One of the highlights of the mission will be the deployment of a 19 inch tall helicopter named “Ingenuity” which will become the first rotorcraft ever used beyond Earth.
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If you step outside tonight shortly after sunset and look to the southwest sky you should see Jupiter and Saturn quite close together. The two giant gas planets have actually been converging in recent weeks in terms of their appearance to us here on Earth and they will appear closest together on Monday, December 21st - the day of the winter solstice and the day of what is being called the “Great Conjunction”. In fact, it has been many, many centuries since the two giant gas planets have appeared so close together and have been so easy to see.
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You may have already noticed two close together bright objects in the sunset sky in recent weeks which happen to be the giant gas planets of Jupiter and Saturn. These two planets are actually converging for an even closer encounter in terms of their appearance to us here on Earth - the likes of which haven’t been seen in many, many centuries. Jupiter and Saturn currently appear about 2 degrees apart and they will actually look only 0.1 degrees apart by the time we get to the winter solstice on December 21st - the day of the “Great Conjunction” of 2020.
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After a deep solar minimum, the number of sunspots on our nearest star has been on the increase in recent weeks heralding the new solar cycle #25. The last solar cycle, #24, was one of the weakest in terms of the number of sunspots in more than a century since solar cycle #14 peaked in February 1906 and it continued a downward trend in cycle strength since around 1980 when cycle #21 reached a peak. Many predictions of solar cycle #25 have it just about as weak as its predecessor with a peak likely to arrive sometime in the middle of 2025. Even weak solar cycles, however, can produce significant solar storms and it’s something we’ll monitor closely in coming months.
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Just 100 miles up the coast from where the Wright brothers first flew their airplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Northrop Grumman is scheduled to launch its Cygnus cargo spacecraft aboard the Antares rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), located at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The rocket launch is scheduled for 9:38 PM Thursday, October 1st at NASA’s Wallops Island Facility and it may be visible throughout the Mid-Atlantic region (launch was originally scheduled for Tuesday, but was scrubbed due to rainy weather conditions).
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The sun continues to be quiet with no visible sunspots during the last eleven days and it has been without sunspots 68% of the time this year which is slightly less than the 77% experienced during all of 2019. In fact, last year turned out to be the quietest year in terms of sunspots since 1913 with 281 spotless days as the solar minimum phase intensified from the year before. Back-to-back years of very high levels of spotlessness on the sun would certainly support the notion that this is indeed a noteworthy and deep solar minimum. Solar minimum represents the end of solar cycle #24 which featured the fewest number of sunspots since solar cycle 14 peaked in February 1906. Some of the latest predictions for solar cycle #25 suggest that it may be about as weak as solar cycle #24 with a peak around July 2025. Even weak solar cycles, however, can produce significant solar storms. In fact, it was this same time of year back in 1859 when a super solar storm - now known as the “Carrington Event” - took place during another weak solar cycle (#10). The event has been named for the British astronomer, Richard Carrington, as he observed from his own private observatory the largest solar flare which caused a major coronal mass ejection (CME) to travel directly toward Earth.
Recent studies have warned that these type of super solar storms may not be quite as rare as once thought (e.g., Hayakawa et al). Many previous studies of solar superstorms leaned heavily on Western Hemisphere accounts according to spaceweather.com, omitting data from the Eastern Hemisphere. This skewed perceptions of “The Carrington Event” of 1859, highlighting its importance while causing other superstorms to be overlooked. A super storm of the same magnitude as “The Carrington Event” in today’s world would very likely have a much more damaging impact than it did in the 19th century potentially causing widespread power outages along with disruptions to navigation, air travel, banking, and all forms of digital communication.
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Courtesy spaceweather.com, NASA/SOHO:
On August 7th, an unusual object flew past the sun. "It was a triple comet," says Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab in Washington DC, who made this animation using coronagraph images from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). "The two main components are easy to spot, with the third, a very faint, diffuse fragment following alongside the leading piece," he says.
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