Tag Archives: Space

Scientists Warn of Geomagnetic Storm Affecting Earth

Scientists say parts of the lower 48 states could witness the Northern Lights and some other effects tonight as the aftermath of a powerful explosion on the sun travels toward the Earth.

The Space Weather Prediction Center has issued a G3 (Strong) warning for Wednesday evening, saying a geomagnetic storm could cause the Northern Lights to be seen as far south as Oregon and Illinois. The scientists say recent events on the sun could trigger the storm in the night sky.

According to the Space Weather Prediction Center, the sun underwent a coronal mass ejection on Monday and released a significant amount of plasma and magnetic material into space. That material is expected to impact the Earth’s magnetosphere tonight, according to the scientists, creating conditions ripe for a geomagnetic storm that could possibly linger into Thursday.

Geomagnetic storms involve the disruption of Earth’s natural magnetic elements, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center. The scientists caution storms of this strength can impact satellites, radio transmissions and necessitate some voltage corrections in power supplies.

Scientists: Giant Comets May Present Greater Risk to Earth than Asteroids

Giant comets and their debris may present a significantly higher risk to human life than asteroids and should be studied more closely, according to a team of British astronomers.

The astronomers say that hundreds of “centaurs,” huge orbs of ice and dust that usually are between 30 and 60 miles wide, have been discovered in far-flung parts of space in the past two decades. The researchers say the massive comets travel along unstable orbits near the four gas giants of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Centaurs seldom enter the inner solar system, the astronomers say, but their research indicates that the gravitational pull of those four planets can redirect one toward Earth. One centaur will cross Earth’s orbit about every 40,000 to 100,000 years, according to their research.

As the centaurs approach the Sun, they disintegrate and spray debris throughout space. The astronomers say some of that debris will inevitably impact the Earth.

One centaur “contains more mass than the entire population of Earth-crossing asteroids found to date,” according to a news release from the Royal Astronomical Society, which published the study in the December issue of its journal, Astronomy & Geophysics.

Astronomers from Armagh Observatory and Buckingham University performed the research.

One of the study’s co-authors, Bill Napier, said in a statement that scientists have devoted a lot of time and energy to analyzing the risk of an asteroid colliding with the Earth, particularly in the past three decades.

“Our work suggests we need to look beyond our immediate neighborhood too, and look out beyond the orbit of Jupiter to find centaurs,” Napier said. “If we are right, then these distant comets could be a serious hazard, and it’s time to understand them better.”

NASA officials have publicly stated that there’s no known asteroid or comet that has any chance of impacting the Earth within the next 100 years.

However, scientists didn’t discover a space rock that came within 300,000 miles of the Earth – about 1.3 times the distance between the planet and the moon – until three weeks before it zoomed by this past Halloween.

Leonid Meteor Shower At Peak Tonight

Tonight, tiny sand sized bits of debris and dust from the Temple-Tuttle comet will pass the earth, fall through it’s atmosphere and ignite. This show, called the Leonid Meteor Shower fills the sky every November and features up to a dozen meteors seen an hour.

The Leonids appear to be coming from the constellation Leo the Lion (hence their name) in the east, but they should be visible all the way across the sky. Leonids strike the Earth’s atmosphere at a zipping 158,000 mph, the fastest of any meteor shower.

Skywatching experts say that the best time to see the annual mid-November show will be between midnight and dawn.

As always, the best place to watch is said to be away from city light, preferably in a rural location with little light pollution. Since the eye can take up to 45 minutes to adapt to the dark, USA Today advises skywatchers to be patient so that the falling stars become brighter to them as the night wears on.

According to NASA, the waning crescent moon should leave skies dark enough for a decent show.

Taurid Meteor Shower Coming Wednesday

If storms don’t block your view, you may get to see a beautiful spectacle from the heavens on Wednesday night as the Taurid meteor shower lights up the sky between the hours of midnight and 3 a.m. local time.

According to the International Business Times, Earth is still passing through the tail of Comet Encke, causing the meteor shower. And while Wednesday is the peak time to watch the meteor shower, NASA stated that Monday and Tuesday nights are also good for watching the shower.

The fireballs are expected to be as bright as Venus, and during the peak hours, observers will get to see approximately 7 to 10 meteors every hour, according to NASA.

Earth is currently passing through a stream of residual dust and debris in space that was left by the passing comet. Earth’s center of gravity pulls the debris in and it burns in the atmosphere, creating the falling stars.

According to the American Meteor Society, there were seven other meteor showers in 2015 in January, April, mid-April to mid-May, August, October, November, and another will take place in December.

Last Supermoon of the Year Takes Place Tonight

Tonight will be the last time stargazers can enjoy a supermoon for the year 2015.

In fact, if you miss tonight’s supermoon, you will not be able to see one again until October of 2016, almost a whole year away. A supermoon is when the moon is at its closest point to Earth in its monthly orbit, making it look bigger and brighter.

Science World Report states that this year’s lunar activity has been unusual due to us seeing three supermoons in a row. They also report it’s very unusual that last month’s supermoon happened to be at the same time as the full lunar eclipse.

Tonight’s supermoon will be the 6th supermoon of 2015.

“Coronal Hole” Found in Sun; Geomagnetic Storm Watch Issued for Later This Week

NASA has discovered a colossal dark hole – “the size of 50 earths” – on the sun’s surface, and it has been sending solar wind our way.

The Huffington Post reports that the new image of the sun, revealing the hole, was taken on October 10th by NASA’s orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory. The hole is located on the outmost layer of the sun, called the corona. Coronal holes have a lower density of solar material and weakened magnetic field lines, resulting in faster solar winds, of up to 500 miles per second, to escape.

When solar winds hit Earth, it disturbs our planet’s magnetosphere and causes geomagnetic storms. The geomagnetic storms create auroras in the sky like the Northern Lights, but they can also disrupt radio communications systems and satellites.

A geomagnetic storm watch has been issued for Wednesday through Friday, however, coronal holes can last up to months and more geomagnetic storms could be on the way.

Evidence of Water Found on Mars Announced by NASA

The strongest evidence yet of water on mars was announced by NASA Monday afternoon.

“Our quest on Mars has been to ‘follow the water’ in our search for life in the universe, and now we have convincing science that validates what we’ve long suspected,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C. “This is a significant development, as it appears to confirm that water — albeit briny — is flowing today on the surface of Mars.”

Although scientists are not sure where the water comes from, liquid water runs down the crater walls over the summer months and leave dark stains on the Martian terrain that have been measured hundreds of meters downhill before they dry up in the autumn when temperatures drop.  

Researchers say the discovery raises the chances of this being home to some form of life.  

Black Holes Set to Collide

Two black holes in Virgo are heading for a “massive collision,” Columbia University astronomer Zoltan Haiman said in a Columbia news release posted on Science Daily. Haiman and his colleagues believe the pair of black holes will collide in about 100,000 years, which is virtually tomorrow in cosmic time. The holes are incredibly large: combined, the size of a billion suns,

The pair of black holes orbiting each other in quasar PG 1302-102, about 3.5 billion light-years away are about a light-week or two apart — less than 200 billion miles. Understanding that a light-year is the distance light travels in a year, what astronomers are seeing in PG 1302-102 actually occurred when life had just emerged on Earth.

Black hole mergers are considered to be the most violent events in the universe. When they finally meet, they converge in a type of “death spiral.” Their merger, the astronomers calculated, could release as much energy as 100 million supernova explosions, mostly in the form of violent ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves that would blow the stars out of that hapless galaxy like leaves off a roof.

Fireball Lights Up Pennsylvania Sky

A meteor that NASA estimates hit the atmosphere at 45,000 miles per hour lit up the Pennsylvania sky Tuesday morning.

The meteor broke up over Kittanning and Brendan Mullen of the Carnegie Science Center said the rock was close to 500 pounds when it blew apart.

“Usually, the whole thing burns up, and that’s what causes shooting stars and things like that. But it’s possible that pieces of this meteor fragmented off, and shattered and scattered all across Kittanning,” he said.

Mullen speculated the asteroid came from the belt that circles the solar system.

“A lot of chunks of space rocks and debris are gravitationally tugged out of their orbit within that ring up there, and find their way into the atmospheres of planets,” Mullen said.

“There’s a lot of meteoroids out there, a lot of space garbage,” Mullen told CBS Pittsburgh. “And a lot of it gets tugged around gravitationally by the planets. And sometimes they get tugged into orbits that intersect the orbits of the planets, like earth.”

Giant Asteroid To Pass Earth on January 26

An asteroid about 1/3 of a mile in width will rush past earth on January 26th and mark the closest an asteroid of its size will come to Earth until 2027.

The asteroid, 2004 BL86, will pass the planet at a range of 745,000 miles, or three times the distance between the Earth and the moon.  That will be the closest this asteroid will come to Earth in our lifetime according to NASA.

“While 2004 BL86 poses no threat to Earth for the foreseeable future, it’s a relatively close approach by a relatively large asteroid, so it provides us a unique opportunity to observe and learn more,” Don Yeomans, of NASA’s Near Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.

NASA will track the asteroid from the Deep Space Network in Goldstone, California and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

The asteroid was first detected January 30, 2004 in New Mexico by the LINEAR telescope.  NASA says it should be visible in the Northern Hemisphere with small telescopes and strong binoculars.