A Rare Type of Solar Storm Spotted by Satellite

Jason Major
Universe Today
Fri, 01 Jun 2012

© Simon Swordy/University of Chicago, NASA
Artist’s impression of solar cosmic rays striking Earth’s atmosphere.

When a moderate-sized M-class flare erupted from the Sun on May 17, it sent out a barrage of high-energy solar particles that belied its initial intensity. These particles traveled at nearly the speed of light, crossing the 93 million miles between the Sun and Earth in a mere 20 minutes and impacting our atmosphere, causing cascades of neutrons to reach the ground – a rare event known as a ground level enhancement, or GLE.

The first such event since 2006, the GLE was recorded by a joint Russian/Italian spacecraft called PAMELA and is an indicator that the peak of solar maximum is on the way.

The PAMELA spacecraft – which stands for Payload for Antimatter-Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics – is designed to detect high-energy cosmic rays streaming in from intergalactic space. But on May 17, scientists from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center convinced the Russian team in charge of PAMELA to grab data from the solar event occurring much closer to home.

© University of Oulu/NASA’s Integrated Space Weather Analysis System

This graph shows the neutrons detected by a neutron detector at the University of Oulu in Finland from May 16 through May 18, 2012.

The result: the first observations from space of the solar particles that trigger the neutron storms that make up a GLE. Scientists hope to use the data to learn more about how GLEs are created, and why the May 17 “moderate” solar flare ended up making one.

“Usually we would expect this kind of ground level enhancement from a giant coronal mass ejection or a big X-class flare,” said Georgia de Nolfo, a space scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

“So not only are we really excited that we were able to observe these particularly high energy particles from space, but we also have a scientific puzzle to solve.”

Fewer than 100 GLEs have been recorded in the last 70 years, with the most powerful having occurred on February 23, 1956. Like most energetic solar outbursts, GLEs can have disruptive effects on sensitive electronics in orbit as well as on the ground, and based on recent studies may even have adverse effects on cellular systems and development.

© Courtesy NASA/SDO and the AIA science team
The M-class flare from AR 1476 on May 17, 2012 (at right).

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/246183-A-Rare-Type-of-Solar-Storm-Spotted-by-Satellite

Electric Moon jolts the solar wind

PhysOrg
Wed, 30 May 2012 17:13 CDT

© NASA

With the Moon as the most prominent object in the night sky and a major source of an invisible pull that creates ocean tides, many ancient cultures thought it could also affect our health or state of mind – the word “lunacy” has its origin in this belief. Now, a powerful combination of spacecraft and computer simulations is revealing that the Moon does indeed have a far-reaching, invisible influence – not on us, but on the Sun, or more specifically, the solar wind.

The solar wind is a thin stream of electrically conducting gas called plasma that’s constantly blown off the surface of the Sun in all directions at around a million miles per hour. When a particularly fast, dense or turbulent solar wind strikes Earth’s magnetic field, it can generate magnetic and radiation storms that are capable of disrupting satellites, power grids, and communication systems. The magnetic “bubble” surrounding Earth also pushes back on the solar wind, creating a bow shock tens of thousands of miles across over the day side of Earth where the solar wind slams into the magnetic field and abruptly slows from supersonic to subsonic speed.

Unlike Earth, the Moon is not surrounded by a global magnetic field. “It was thought that the solar wind crashes into the lunar surface without any warning or ‘push back’ on the solar wind,” says Dr. Andrew Poppe of the University of California, Berkeley. Recently, however, an international fleet of lunar-orbiting spacecraft has detected signs of the Moon’s presence “upstream” in the solar wind. “We’ve seen electron beams and ion fountains over the Moon’s day side,” says Dr. Jasper Halekas, also of the University of California, Berkeley.

© Walt Feimer (HTSI)/NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab
This is an artist’s concept of the Earth’s global magnetic field, with the bow shock. Earth is in the middle of the image, surrounded by its magnetic field, represented by purple lines. The bow shock is the blue crescent on the right. Many energetic particles in the solar wind, represented in gold, are deflected by Earth’s magnetic “shield”.

These phenomena have been seen as far as 10,000 kilometers (6,214 miles) above the Moon and generate a kind of turbulence in the solar wind ahead of the Moon, causing subtle changes in the solar wind’s direction and density. The electron beams were first seen by NASA’s Lunar Prospector mission, while the Japanese Kaguya mission, the Chinese Chang’e mission, and the Indian Chandrayaan mission all saw ion plumes at low altitudes. NASA’s ARTEMIS mission has now also seen both the electron beams and the ion plumes, plus newly identified electromagnetic and electrostatic waves in the plasma ahead of the Moon, at much greater distances from the Moon. “With ARTEMIS, we can see the plasma ring and wiggle a bit, surprisingly far away from the Moon,” says Halekas. ARTEMIS stands for “Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon’s Interaction with the Sun.”

“An upstream turbulent region called the ‘foreshock’ has long been known to exist ahead of the Earth’s bow shock, but the discovery of a similar turbulent layer at the Moon is a surprise,” said Dr. William Farrell of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Farrell is lead of the NASA Lunar Science Institute’s Dynamic Response of the Environment At the Moon (DREAM) team, which contributed to the research.

Computer simulations help explain these observations by showing that a complex electric field near the lunar surface is generated by sunlight and the flow of the solar wind. The simulation reveals this electric field can generate electron beams by accelerating electrons blasted from surface material by solar ultraviolet light. Also, related simulations show that when ions in the solar wind collide with ancient, “fossil” magnetic fields in certain areas on the lunar surface, they are reflected back into space in a diffuse, fountain-shaped pattern. These ions are mostly the positively charged centers (nuclei) of hydrogen atoms, the most common element in the solar wind.

“It’s remarkable that electric and magnetic fields within just a few meters (yards) of the lunar surface can cause the turbulence we see thousands of kilometers away,” says Poppe. Other moons and asteroids in the solar system should have this turbulent layer over their day sides as well, according to the team.

“Discovering more about this layer will enhance our understanding of the Moon and potentially other bodies because it allows information about conditions very near the surface to propagate to great distances, so a spacecraft will gain the ability to virtually explore close to these objects when it’s actually far away,” said Halekas.

More information: The research is described in a series of six papers recently published by Poppe, Halekas, and their colleagues at NASA Goddard, U.C. Berkeley, U.C. Los Angeles, and the University of Colorado at Boulder in Geophysical Research Letters and the Journal of Geophysical Research. The research was funded by NASA’s Lunar Science Institute, which is managed at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., and oversees the DREAM lunar science center.

Provided by JPL/NASA

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/246174-Electric-Moon-jolts-the-solar-wind

Planet X And American Astronomical Society Cover-up

May 22, 2012

. Brazilian Astronomer claims there’s a rogue planet hidden behind Neptune.

. American Astronomical Society tried to censor the information by wiping out the name of the speaker from the list of invited speakers from their website.

Brazilian astronomer/astrophysicist Rodney Gomes, of the National Observatory of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, made a presentation at the meeting of American Astronomical Society in Timberline Lodge, Oregon, about his theory that there’s a rogue planet hidden behind Neptune, messing with the orbits of the objects of the Kuiper Belt.Rodney Gomes says the new planet could be anywhere from half to four times the size of Earth and is likely a rogue planet that floated over from another solar system.

Depictions of this supposed planet, based in the astronomical model of Gomes, put it as a serious candidate to be planet X.

Rogue planet:

A rogue planet — also known as an interstellar planet, nomad planet or orphan planet — is a planetary-mass object which has either been ejected from its system or was never gravitationally bound to any star, brown dwarf or other such object, and that therefore orbits the galaxy directly.Astronomers believe that either way, the definition of planet should depend on current observable state and not origin.

Larger planetary-mass objects which were not ejected, but have always been free-floating, are thought to have formed in a similar way to stars, and the IAU has proposed that those objects be called sub-brown dwarfs(an example of this is Cha 110913-773444 which may be an ejected rogue planet, or it may have formed on its own and be a sub-brown dwarf)

<br /> <br /> Later on the name of Rodney Gomes and his topic were just wiped off of the speakers list of the meeting in Oregon.

According to National Geographic he made his presentation in May 8 conveniently one day later the website of the meeting was updated and his name is seen nowhere in the list of invited speakers:

Source: dda.harvard.edu/meetings/2012/

Main Stream Media News Link : now.msn.com/living/0514-secret-planet.aspx

www.ufo-blogger.com/

http://beforeitsnews.com/story/2173/765/Planet_X_And_American_Astronomical_Society_Cover-up.html

100% Proof Of Alien Civilizations Exist On The Moon – Nasa Lies Uncovered In Colour

Uploaded by SECRETSPACETHEATRE on Jun 24, 2010

Secret Space Theatre Present’s 100% Proof Alien Civilizations Exist On The Moon In Colour. This Is An Update Video And Replaces Nasa Apollo Anomalies Video. I have managed to circle 99% of anomalies that I have found within These Images. However, looking at the video over and over again I have since spotted many more anomalies that I have missed, so I hope you manage to spot them. All I can say is, these anomalies found in these images are either Alien Civilizations or our own people. If they are our own, then how the hell did they build all these massive structures since the 1940′s??
All Images Presented In This Film Are From The Apollo Space Missions And Can Be Found In The Nasa Archives. The original Apollo Mission Moon Images Shot By The Astronauts Appear Black & White And Show No Detail. This Is How Nasa Have Presented These Images To The General Public For The Past 40 Years.

So, What I Have Done Is, Enhanced These Images Using Video Enhancing Techniques And Computer Software And Have Brought These Images To Life To Reveal The True Moon Surface.

More Colour Moon Video’s From Secret Industries Space Theatre:
Watch Video One: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w75zsCrcdB0
Watch Video Two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_Zv0ormAP8

My Channel And Subscribe!

Equipment I Use For Filming UFO’s And Satellites:
Yukon Ranger Night Vision Monocular
Pioneer Dvr Dvd Player/Recorder
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IBEX’s Slower Sun — and No Bow Shock

Note: It’s getting harder and harder to believe even the simplest things coming from NASA about the solar system, sun or galaxy when they’re constantly admitting they were wrong about some major subjects.

NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer has discovered that the Sun has no bow shock, overturning decades of scientific research.

Scientists used to think that the Sun flies through space like a supersonic jet, which creates a pileup air in front of it called a bow shock. The result is a sonic boom heard on the ground below as the jet passes overhead.

The heliosphere is a magnetic bubble that protects the solar system from interstellar space as the Sun plows its way through the galaxy. For decades, scientists believed that the bubble was moving quickly enough to form a bow shock, but that view has been revised in light of new data from the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX).

Southwest Research Institute

The Sun was thought to form a similar bow shock where the heliosphere, the vast magnetic bubble surrounding our planetary system, plows through the interstellar medium, the thin gas that floats between the stars. But a new study published online by Science this week turns that image on its head: now the Sun is looking less like a fighter jet and more like a tugboat.

First, some background: The heliosphere is created by the outflowing solar wind, which escapes from our star at 670,000 to 1.7 million mph (300 to 800 km/s). But the solar wind can only go so far before it bumps into the interstellar medium, which is likewise magnetized. Like oil and water, the differently aligned magnetic fields of the solar wind particles and the interstellar gas mean that the two cannot mix. The true “edge” of the solar system is where the solar wind slams into this interstellar gas, at a distance far beyond the distance to Pluto.

Since its launch in 2008, the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) has measured energetic neutral atoms (ENAs) from its orbit around Earth. These high-speed neutral atoms are created when charged particles in the solar wind interact with atoms coming from beyond the solar system. ENAs provide a unique way of imaging the shape of the magnetic bubble that surrounds the solar system.

So how does IBEX manage to see the edge of an invisible bubble that’s billions of miles away? Neutral atoms can freely cross magnetic field lines, penetrating the Sun’s magnetic bubble from interstellar space. Once these ENAs reach Earth, IBEX records them and the directions they came from.

IBEX’s novel imaging technique has unleashed one surprise after another. Now principal investigator David McComas (Southwest Research Institute) and 10 colleagues have turned IBEX’s attention to the Sun’s motion through space. It turns out that the Sun is moving through interstellar gas at 52,000 miles (84,000 km) per hour, about 12% slower than previously measured by the Ulysses spacecraft.

More here:

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/community/skyblog/newsblog/IBEX-Shows-a-Slower-Sun-150955205.html

Green Lifesaver Unidentified Space Objects found on google sky with Coordinates

Love this guys work, he comes up with some very interesting images that make it quite apparent NASA has been keeping secrets. Wouldn’t you love to have the job of getting paid to look for space anomaly’s all day? How fun would that be?!

Published on May 16, 2012 by planetkrejci

There are over 26 of these Objects all in the same vicinity. Not sure what they are. Here are the coordinates 0h33m36.82s 25 04’59.70″

Lights In The Sky – The Astronauts and the UFOs [FULL]

Link to activate video player:

http://www.disclose.tv/swf/player.swf

Description:
Read more: http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo/105037/Lights_In_The_Sky__The_Astronauts_and_the_UFOs_FULL/#ixzz1v2E9UOWX

Saturn’s Mysterious F Ring Objects Punching Holes around Saturn’s F Ring

Published on Apr 25, 2012 by ThePerfectMinds

Cassini “SOLSTICE” Mission views the mysterious F ring around Saturn and reveals something new.

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/video/videodetails/?videoID=242

Brown Dwarf Birthing May Explain Mystery Object

 

Analysis by Ray Villard
Tue May 1, 2012

Some of the most mysterious objects in our galaxy are also among the most numerous. And it turns out that there’s an estimated 100 billion mysterious brown dwarfs scattered among the stars.

They are so ubiquitous that there could be one closer to the Earth than the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri. If a brown dwarf is ever discovered nearby, it would likely be the target of our first interstellar mission.

WATCH VIDEO: Discovery News unlocks the mysteries of stars and finds out why a star’s age matters.

ANALYSIS: Do ‘Ultracool’ Brown Dwarfs Surround Us?

Brown dwarfs are smaller than the lowest-mass stars but can be dozens of times more massive than Jupiter. They are too low mass to sustain hydrogen fusion and so technically they are not stars by definition. (The term brown dwarf is also misleading because brown is not a color in the visible spectrum. Something like ultra-red dwarfs would be a more appropriate name.)

Among the biggest questions is why brown dwarfs aren’t commonly found orbiting normal stars. However, some tend to hang out together in binary pairs of dwarfs. That said, they are found in the vicinity of normal stars but not gravitationally bound to them, as seen in the above photo of the Pleiades star cluster.

A newly published set of dynamical simulations points to brown dwarfs being born as knots of gas in protoplanetary disks around normal stars. They are then rudely ejected into interstellar space as lone drifters.

“We conclude that gas clump ejection and the formation of low-mass and substellar objects is a common occurrence, with important implications for understanding the formation of stars,” writes Shantanu Basu of the University of Western Ontario and Eduard I. Vorobyov of the University of Vienna.

The team’s simulations show a lumpy, fragmenting gas disk whirling around a forming star (as seen here, arrow points to brown dwarf progenitor clump). Several other large gas clumps play a gravitational game of bumper cars. In a typical “three’s-a-crowd” interaction, a clump is gravitationally ejected from the system. The clumps left behind may fall into the star or get tidally shredded.

The runaway clump later forms its own separate accretion disk and gravitationally collapses down to a compact object ranging from one-tenth to one-third the mass of our sun. In some cases two brown dwarfs contract out of the clump to make a binary system.

I’m fascinated by this theoretical work because I wonder if it would help explain one of the most legendary and strangest space photos ever taken — of an unexplained object called TMR-1c:

In 1998, the Hubble Space Telescope made an infrared photo of a very red pinpoint object (seen at bottom right) that is at the end of a ghostly finger of illuminated dust stretching 135 billion miles from a young binary star system. The telltale finger was interpreted as being formed after a large, hot planet was gravitationally ejected from the binary.

ANALYSIS: Phantom Planet Comes Back From Oblivion

It was later dismissed as simply a chance juxtaposition of the dust-reddened light from an old background star with a foreground linear nebulous feature. However, ground-based telescopic observations in 2009 show that the mystery object had gotten brighter and bluer. This is something a normal main sequence star could never do.

The variability in brightness and color is interpreted as a young substellar object surrounded by a spinning thick disk of dust. The colors of TMR-1c could be explained by the presence of a condensed atmosphere, as commonly observed among brown dwarfs.

These detailed computer simulations underscore that star-making, planet-making and even brown dwarf birth is a much more chaotic and messy business than ever before imagined.

Photo credits: ESO, S. Basu, NASA

http://news.discovery.com/space/brown-dwarfs-birthing-may-explain-mystery-object-120501.html

The galactic Spirograph: Orbiting space probe ‘draws’ mysterious pattern as it watches the distant star Vela for two years

Magnificent geometric patterns!

By Rob Waugh

7 May 2012

When space-watching satellites orbit the Earth, they tumble over and over – not at random, but on carefully planned paths that allow them to survey the sky, while still absorbing power through their solar panels.

The results are beautiful pictures like this, showing the steady beam of the Vela Pulsar as the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope tumbles across the sky. The telescope orbits Earth every 90 minutes.

The results are beautiful pictures like this – showing the steady beam of the Vela Pulsar as the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope tumbles across our sky. The telescope orbits Earth every 95 minutes

The region of the sky where the Vela Pulsar is located – the pattern is created by the rotations of the Fermi-Gamma Telescope

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope orbits planet Earth every 95 minutes – and is built to watch high-energy objects such as the Vela pulsar.

Born in the death explosion of a massive star within our Milky Way galaxy, the Vela Pulsar is a neutron star spinning 11 times a second, seen as the brightest persistent source in the gamma-ray sky.
When stars much more massive than our Sun reach the end of their lives, their final demise is marked by a dramatic supernova explosion that destroys most of the star.

But many leave behind compact, incredibly dense remnants known as neutron stars. Those detected have strong magnetic fields that focus emission into two highly directional beams.

The neutron star rotates rapidly and if the beam points in the direction of the Earth we see a pulse of radiation at extremely regular intervals — hence the name pulsar.

By design, it rocks to the north and then to the south on alternate orbits in order to survey the sky with its Large Area Telescope (LAT).

The spacecraft also rolls so that solar panels are kept pointed at the Sun for power, and the axis of its orbit precesses like a top, making a complete rotation once every 54 days.

As a result of these multiple cycles the paths of gamma-ray sources trace out complex patterns from the spacecraft’s perspective, like this mesmerising plot of the path of the Vela Pulsar.

Centered on the LAT instrument’s field of view, the plot spans 180 degrees and follows Vela’s position from August 2008 through August 2010.

The concentration near the center shows that Vela was in the sensitive region of the LAT field during much of that period.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2140816/The-galactic-Etch-Sketch-Space-probe-draws-mysterious-pattern-watches-distant-star-Vela-years.html#ixzz1uGSUMFMl

Another great find, submitted by DP!