From Spaceweather.com: Big sunspot AR3576 erupted today, producing a spectacular X2.5-class solar flare.This sunspot is entering 'the danger zone'- a location on the sun which is magnetically connected to Earth. Additional X-flares this weekend could trigger a full-fledged radiation storm.

Full story https://spaceweather.com/ 

Also see:
https://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/ 
 

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Thanks to your information Roger I remembered to check the Aurora cams on YT. The following link is the best so far this evening, cloud free viewing and starting to look quite strong right now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJMR08UD-NM 

 

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I did not spot this! 🙄
Fireball spotted in sky over Lincolnshire and Yorkshire
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-lincolnshire-68345843 

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I did not spot this! 🙄
Fireball spotted in sky over Lincolnshire and Yorkshire
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-lincolnshire-68345843 

Spotted fireballs? Whatever next? Maybe there'll be a striped one.

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Spotted fireballs? Whatever next? Maybe there'll be a striped one.

I can see where you are coming from DEW! 🙄
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRNBY7iKtpI 

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A massive black hole has been detected - 17 billion times the mass of our sun, and an accretion disk that is  a whopping 7 light years across.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68346725 

 

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A massive black hole has been detected - 17 billion times the mass of our sun, and an accretion disk that is  a whopping 7 light years across.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68346725 

 

The light we see from that has taken 12bn years to reach us 

🤯

The scale of the universe really boggles my brain. If our planet was the size of a grain of sand, the Milky Way would, to the same scale, still be over 46m km across. 

And there are between 2 and 20 trillion galaxies in the universe.


In this article,  they mention a neutron star. It's so dense that just one teaspoon of it would weigh 10m tonnes. And it's 100m times brighter than the sun.



 

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Helioseismic images of the farside of the sun reveal a large sunspot on the sun's southern hemisphere. It will turn to face Earth this weekend, possibly bringing an uptick in solar activity.
https://spaceweather.com/images2024/27feb24/farside.jpg 
https://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/ 

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The scale of the universe really boggles my brain. If our planet was the size of a grain of sand, the Milky Way would, to the same scale, still be over 46m km across. 

And there are between 2 and 20 trillion galaxies in the universe.


 

The human mind cannot comprehend such a scale.

And yet some humans, smaller than the tiniest bacteria on that grain of sand (on that scale), think they can explain the origins of the universe using a tiny shiny thing floating just above that grain of sand.

When you think of it on that scale, how much do we really know ? We know a lot on our own scale, but how much of the science wrapped up in the universe have we discovered ? Virtually nothing in my opinion.

 

Looks like a major geomagnetic storm is taking place this evening, with most of the UK at risk of seeing the aurora. For once, it's also looking like the weather will co-operate.

https://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/ 

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Looks like a major geomagnetic storm is taking place this evening, with most of the UK at risk of seeing the aurora. For once, it's also looking like the weather will co-operate.

https://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/ 

Bloody Norah! Have a look folks. 21.210 hrs. If you have dark skies you might spot something.

 

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I set my time-lapse camera up facing north early evening and I did catch a few faint dances of aurora throughout the evening:

https://youtu.be/_Kg-INYVuJo 

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Thanks for that, Bolty. Too much light pollution from Lincoln here.

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I wonder if this event could have turned a bit dodgy!  😲
"AN "SAR STORM" OVER THE BALTICS: Earlier this week, a CME hit Earth's magnetic field. The impact ignited a widespread display of SAR arcs over the Baltics and Russia. Glowing with some of the purest red light nature can produce, these arcs look like auroras but are produced by a completely different process."
https://spaceweather.com/ 

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I wonder if this event could have turned a bit dodgy!  😲
"AN "SAR STORM" OVER THE BALTICS: Earlier this week, a CME hit Earth's magnetic field. The impact ignited a widespread display of SAR arcs over the Baltics and Russia. Glowing with some of the purest red light nature can produce, these arcs look like auroras but are produced by a completely different process."
https://spaceweather.com/ 

Interesting and I have not come across SAR before.

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Here's another odd phenomenon...
MAN-MADE NOCTILUCENT CLOUDS:
Last week, sky watchers in Texas witnessed a bright display of noctilucent clouds (NLCs). This should be impossible. Naturally-occurring NLCs don't appear until late spring or summer--and almost never in Texas. However, these clouds were not natural; SpaceX made them. Full story @ https://spaceweather.com/ 
 

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Contrails are stated to promote global warming, as they trap more radiation than they reflect (a surprise to me; I thought it would be the other way round, but I've seen the claim repeated in various sources).

It would be interesting to know if the these NLCs have the same effect, and if so, whether they occur sufficiently often to be significant .

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Spaceweather post today:
THE POLAR VORTEX IS SPINNING BACKWARD:
A sudden stratospheric warming event is underway, and this has caused the polar vortex to spin backward. As a result, ozone is piling up over the North Pole, setting a 45-year record for the month of March.
https://spaceweather.com/ 

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Anyone else seen the BBC doc about the Columbia disaster - The Shuttle that fell to earth? 
I've seen a lot of docs about this but this is the most comprehensive with interviews with all the main players behind the scenes and family members of the dead.

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A BIG CME IS COMING: This morning's X1-class solar flare hurled a bright CME toward Earth. A NASA model predicts the CME will arrive during the late hours of March 24th. The direct hit could spark strong G3-class geomagnetic storms through March 25th. During such storms, auroras may be seen and photographed all the way down to mid-latitudes in Europe and the United States.
https://spaceweather.com/ 
https://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/ 
 

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