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What's Up: May 2024 Skywatching Tips from NASA - NASA Science
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MODIS | Terra
All plants bombarded with light begin to glow, or fluoresce, but in wavelengths that our eyes cannot see. The more plants fluoresce, the less energy they are using for photosynthesis. Thus, MODIS not only maps the distribution of phytoplankton, it also helps us gauge its health.
Another MODIS instrument flies aboard Terra’s sister ship—Aqua.
 
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What's Up: May 2024 Skywatching Tips from NASA - NASA Science
But for those on the East Coast of the U.S. – south of Delaware and down through the whole state of Florida – you'll actually observe the Moon pass in front of Antares – an event called an occultation. Over a couple of hours as the pair rise into the night sky, the Moon will move slightly in its orbit, first obscuring and then revealing Antares. And finally, on May 31st, planet Saturn rises in the wee hours of the morning with the crescent Moon in tow. If you're up early on the final day of May, you'll find the pair toward the southeast. They'll be close enough to appear in the same field of view if observing through binoculars.Meteor ShowersSky chart showing the radiant, or apparent point of origin, of the eta Aquariid meteor shower 2 hours before sunrise on May 6. While all of the meteors appear to radiate from this region, meteors can appear anywhere on the sky. NASA/JPL-CaltechMay brings one of two annual meteor showers that are attributed to Halley's comet. The eta Aquariid meteors are seen each year in May, whereas the Orionid meteors streak through our skies in October. This situation occurs because Earth crosses through Comet Halley's orbit twice every year, in May and October. Along Halley's path is a meteor stream – lots of little grains of rock and dust cast off by the comet, and these strike our atmosphere and burn up as meteors.The shower peaks overnight on May 5th and into the morning of the 6th. You can see meteors from this shower the whole week centered around the peak night, though. The place on the sky where the meteors appear to originate, the radiant, is in the constellation Aquarius, so you'll have a chance to see meteors as long as the radiant is above the horizon, with more meteors the higher that point rises in the sky. This time of year, Aquarius rises after midnight, so the time to watch this shower is in the few hours before dawn.This is a great shower for observers in the Southern Hemisphere.
Watch the Skies -
The Moon will dim very slightly over those few nighttime hours, which can make for an interesting timelapse, even if it can be difficult to notice by just a glance at the sky.
Happy skywatching!
By Lauren Perkins
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center
 

Author Beth RidgewayPosted on March 20, 2024March 20, 2024Categories UncategorizedTags lunar eclipse, solar eclipseLeave a comment on March’s Lunar Eclipse Before April’s Solar Spectacle 

View Nova Explosion, ‘New’ Star in Northern Crown 

A star system, located 3,000 light-years away from Earth, is predicted to become visible to the unaided eye soon. This could be a once-in-a-lifetime viewing opportunity as the nova ouburst only occurs about every 80 years. T Coronae Borealis, or T CrB, last exploded in 1946 and astronomers believe it will do so again between February and September 2024.
A red giant star and white dwarf orbit each other in this animation of a nova. The red giant is a large sphere in shades of red, orange, and white, with the side facing the white dwarf the lightest shades. The white dwarf is hidden in a bright glow of white and yellows, which represent an accretion disk around the star. A stream of material, shown as a diffuse cloud of red, flows from the red giant to the white dwarf. The animation opens with the red giant on the right side of the screen, co-orbiting the white dwarf. When the red giant moves behind the white dwarf, a nova explosion on the white dwarf ignites, filling the screen with white light. After the light fades, a ball of ejected nova material is shown in pale orange. A small white spot remains after the fog of material clears, indicating that the white dwarf has survived the explosion.Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
The star system, normally magnitude +10, which is far too dim to see with the unaided eye, will jump to magnitude +2 during the event. This will be of similar brightness to the North Star, Polaris.
News Archive | Night Sky Network
For normal galaxies, we think of the total energy they emit as the sum of the emission from each of the stars found in the galaxy. But what about active galaxies? Learn more with November's Night Sky Network webinar.
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December's Night Sky Notes: A Flame in the Sky - the Orion Nebula

It's that time of year again: winter! Here in the Northern Hemisphere, the cold, crisp sky offers spectacular views of the Orion Nebula!
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November's Night Sky Notes: Spy the Seventh Planet, Uranus

Spot this green-blue ice giant mid-November, between the gas giant Jupiter, and the seven sisters of the Pleiades!
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Monthly Webinar Series - October 2023: Life as a Space Weather Analyst

Heliophysics Big Year is here! Learn more about Helio Big Year, and what it takes to study space weather with October's Night Sky Network webinar.
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October's Night Sky Notes: From Galileo to Clipper, Exploring Jupiter's Moons

On January 7, 1610, Galileo famously chronicled the four moving dots near Jupiter and surmised that they were orbiting the distant world. 414 years later, NASA's Europa Clipper mission will take us closer than ever before.
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Looking Beyond the Stars: September's Night Sky Notes

What lies between the stars and why can't we see it?
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Super Blue Sturgeon Moon of August 2023

Follow a full Moon cycle over the month of August and catch a rare blue supermoon at the end of the month.
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July's Night Sky Notes: Find a Ball of Stars - M55

Find the Summer Rose "Star" as it rises in the south. Messier 55 is a special summer treat and Hubble just imaged it beautifully.
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Night Sky Notes: Look Up In the Sky - It's a Swan

Summer skies are great for viewing one of the few constellations to resemble its namesake - Cygnus the swan. Find treasures both visible and invisible in this guidepost to the Milky Way.
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Cloudy With a Chance of Eclipse
Cloudy With a Chance of Eclipse

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Cloudy With a Chance of Eclipse

April 8, 2024JPEG

For many people who traveled long distances and faced epic traffic jams to reach the path of totality of the April 8, 2024, total solar eclipse, clouds loomed as the potential spoiler. The wrong type of cloud in the wrong location at the wrong time could easily ruin the ethereal view of the Sun’s corona shimmering around the silhouette of the Moon that eclipse watchers sought.
But for thousands of people who collected data for GLOBE Eclipse, a NASA citizen science project, clouds were a phenomenon to catalog and study in their own right. “Total solar eclipses are rare enough that the observational record of clouds and eclipses is still sparse,” said Marilé Colón Robles, the project scientist for GLOBE Clouds. “There are still plenty of unanswered questions about clouds and total solar eclipses.”
Among them: How does the magnitude of the brief temperature decline vary depending on cloud conditions? And to what extent, if any, might the eclipse contribute to changes in convective clouds that are observable from the ground or with satellites?
Clouds & Radiation Fact Sheet
The balance between the cooling and warming actions of clouds
is very close although, overall, averaging the effects of all the clouds
around the globe, cooling predominates.
The Earth's climate system constantly adjusts in a way that tends toward
maintaining a balance between the energy that reaches the Earth from the
sun and the energy that goes from Earth back out to space. Scientists refer
to this as Earth's "radiation budget." The components of the Earth
system that are important to the radiation budget are the planet's surface,
atmosphere, and clouds. The energy coming from the sun to the Earth's surface
is called solar energy. Most of it is in the form of radiation from the
"visible" wavelengths, i.e., those responsible for the light detected
by our eyes. Visible radiation and radiation with shorter wavelengths, such
as ultraviolet radiation are labeled "shortwave." Both the amount
of energy and the wavelengths at which energy is emitted by any system are
controlled by the average temperature of the system's radiating surfaces,
plus the emission properties. The temperature of the sun's radiating surface,
or photosphere, is more than 5500°C (9900°F). However, not all of
the sun's energy comes to Earth. The sun's energy is emitted in all directions,
with only a small fraction being in the direction of the Earth.

Energy goes back to space from the Earth system in two ways: reflection
and emission. Part of the solar energy that comes to Earth is reflected
back out to space in the same, short wavelengths in which it came to Earth.
The fraction of solar energy that is reflected back to space is called the
albedo. Different parts of the Earth have different albedos. For example,
ocean surfaces and rain forests have low albedos, which means that they
reflect only a small portion of the sun's energy. Deserts, ice, and clouds,
however, have high albedos; they reflect a large portion of the sun's energy.
NASA - Sun-Earth Day 2010
This year, it is predicted that the Earth will pass through a relatively dense part of 55P Temple-Tuttle's debris field and observers in dark locations could see ZHRs (Zenith Hourly Rates) of 500 meteors per hour or more, peaking sometime around 22:00 UT though peak activity could occur as much as an hour later than this.
How to observe
To view a meteor shower, you won't need a telescope or binoculars. Although I sometimes bring binoculars just to have something else to do since watching meteors can take several hours. First, try to find a relatively dark site. The darker the site, the more meteors you will see, Dress warmly. You might bring a sleeping bag or even a reclining lounge chair and something to drink. Bring a watch to tell time. Then just lie down and watch the sky. You may also see satellites and if you stay out long enough, you will notice the sky shifting as new constellations rise and others set. You can try counting meteors to get your own ZHR. Paper and pencil are good for this. Just make a mark each time you see one over the course of an hour. 

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Earth at Night

 Satellite images of Earth at night have been a curiosity for the public and a tool of fundamental research for at least 25 years. They have provided a broad, beautiful picture, showing how humans have shaped the planet and lit up the darkness.
 

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Kuwait City at Night
The patterns and colors of lighting reveal the urban geography of the capital city.
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Isaac, a slow-moving storm, hit the Gulf Coast as a category 1 hurricane on August 28, 2012. 
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In honor of our site anniversary, we offer a selection of some of the most beautiful, newsworthy, interesting, and scientifically important images from 23 years online — one image for each day of the calendar year.
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Power Outages in Puerto Rico
The images above were acquired in the early morning hours of September 22 and June 29, 2022—nights with few clouds and similar Moon phases. The observations were made by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the NOAA–NASA Suomi NPP satellite. VIIRS has a low-light sensor—the day/night band—that measures light emissions and reflections.
According to unofficial estimates, roughly 950,000 of Puerto Rico’s 1.5 million business and residential customers were without power on the afternoon of September 22. While outages were spread across the island, Ponce, Arecibo, Caguas, and Mayagüez counties (in the south, central, and western regions) had the highest percentages of power losses.

August - September 22, 2022

August - September 22, 2022

August - September 22, 2022

June 29 - September 22, 2022

These images focusing on the cities of Ponce, San Juan, Mayagüez, and Arecibo were created by scientists from the Black Marble Project at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Science Systems and Applications, Inc., the University of Maryland College Park, and the Leidos Civil Group. The images show nighttime light emissions before and after Fiona passed through the city. The team processed and analyzed VIIRS data, comparing a pre-storm composite (August) to conditions after the hurricane. These data were then overlaid on a base map of landcover data collected by Landsat 9.
VIIRS day/night band makes it possible to distinguish the intensity of lights and to observe how they change. (Sometimes they also can decipher sources and types of light.) Nighttime imagery can be used by relief agencies to identify areas that are most in need of aid and support.
Precision is critical for studies with night lights. Raw, unprocessed images can be misleading because moonlight, clouds, pollution, seasonal vegetation—even the position of the satellite—can change how light is reflected and can distort observations. The processing by the Black Marble team accounts for such changes and filters out stray light from sources that are not electric lights.
Sun-Earth Days 2013: Articles
We see this most clearly in increased infrared emissions from atmospheric carbon dioxide and nitric oxide. As 10's of billions of kWH of electromagnetic and particle radiation from a flare or CME heats up the atmosphere, these molecules expel most of the added energy as infrared energy which is detectable from Earth orbiting satellites like SABER and TIMED. The added energy expands the thermosphere resulting in increased drag on low orbiting satellites which degrades their orbits and poses risks for untimely reentry. Of course, other orbiting objects such as the plethora of space junk orbiting the Earth are affected in the same way, so solar storms provide a means to sweep debris out of low Earth orbit.
Radiation Exposure

Figure 17: Click to Enlarge

We are protected on Earth from the hazardous space radiation environment by our atmosphere which absorbs almost all high energy radiation (UV, X-Ray, Gamma Ray) and by our magnetosphere which deflects most of the sun's high energy solar wind particles. However, astronauts in space are exposed to much higher levels of both EM and particle radiation. Astronauts on extended missions to the moon, planets, or asteroids would be at risk of much greater exposure due to the length of the mission as well as extensive exposure outside the Earth's protective magnetosphere. Solar storms during these missions pose even greater risks to astronaut safety. This is one of the biggest problems that must be solved if we intend to send humans into the solar system.

Figure 18: Click to Enlarge

Even at altitudes of around 35,000 feet where commercial airlines fly, pilots and frequent flyers are exposed to increased doses of hazardous radiation, as much as 50 to 100 times as much as we experience on the ground. Increased exposure to high energy cosmic rays can result in health problems including cancer. Flights over the poles increase this radiation risk. This is why some airlines prohibit pregnant airline attendants from flying.
Power Grids
Remembering that moving magnetic fields generate current, geomagnetic storms around the Earth from CMEs can jar the magnetosphere enough to produce "Geomagnetically Induced Currents" or GICs in electrical power grids. The added current can cause transformers to overload and create large scale power outages.
Skywatching FAQ
This is true for Venus as well, but it has several factors in its favor: it's closer to the Sun than all but Mercury, its orbit is closer to Earth's, and it's as big as Earth (that is, it's larger than Mercury).Skywatching ResourcesDo you offer skywatching resources in Spanish? Yes, our monthly What's Up videos are closed captioned in Spanish via the NASA-JPL YouTube Channel. You can also find great skywatching resources for kids in Spanish at NASA Space Place: https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/sp/Where can I find more NASA resources about skywatching?NASA provides a variety of skywatching resources to help you make a personal connection with the amazing place we study and explore. These include: > "What's Up" monthly skywatching highlights video> Night Sky Network (astronomy clubs & events)> Eclipses (NASA's hub for solar and lunar eclipse info)> Watch the Skies blog (meteors & meteor showers)> Spot the Station (see the International Space Station pass overhead)How can I involve my children in skywatching?Parents can prepare to involve their children in skywatching by learning some of the basics, like the phases of the Moon, the names of a few easy to recognize constellations, and knowing how to identify bright stars and planets using a favorite astronomy app. Staying up to date with the month's skywatching highlights, with resources like NASA's What's Up video series, makes it easy to know what there is to observe, and provides some fun facts to share when out under the stars. If you don't have easy access to a safe place for the family to stargaze, most local astronomy clubs host public viewing nights, where children can enjoy telescope views of the sky's wonders.You can also look for astronomy clubs and events in your areas with NASA's Night Sky Network.NASA's Space Place also offers skywatching resources for kids, including these articles:> What are Constellations?> What is a Solar Eclipse?> What is a Meteor Shower?Where do you find the photos and videos featured in the What's Up videos?The photos and video clips featured in What's Up come from a variety of sources.