TWH – While there has been a lot of attention focused on the skies lately, most of it has concerned foreign objects like the Chinese spy balloon, and other items that have yet to be identified. Spoiler alert: the unidentified objects are not space aliens.
There is, however, a lot going on when it comes to celestial activity this week. Thanks to the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), recent activity on the sun’s surface was observed that had never been seen before.
The sun follows an 11-year cycle, and in the later portions of the cycle more surface activity, like solar flares, often occur. Solar flares are defined as massive eruptions of charged particles being emitted by the sun. Solar flares are classified as ranging from A-class (near background levels), followed by B, C, M, and X, smallest to largest. Each letter classification represents a 10-fold increase in energy output, similar to that of earthquake measurement by the Richter scale.
A medium-sized or M-class solar flare on February 7 temporarily blocked shortwave radio transmissions. A little less than a week before that, a solar plasma emission from the sun resulted in a filament of the plasma breaking away from its point of emission and then being pulled to the sun’s northern pole to create a whirling vortex.
While filaments of solar plasma emissions splinter off fairly regularly, this is the first time researchers have seen the formation of a vortex-like this. Whether this is new or unusual activity for the sun is hard to say. This type of activity may have been happening regularly and either simply occurred out of view or researchers lacked the technology to observe and record it.
On Saturday, February 11, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured an X1.1-class solar flare. The massive amount of energy output caused a shortwave radio blackout over parts of South America. While this activity is not necessarily new, our technology for observation continues to advance and allows for greater collection of data to be deciphered and understood–like the NASA Parker Solar Probe and the European Space Agency (ESA) Solar Orbiter.
How solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) of the sun impact earth can vary and depends on the size and strength of the activity. M- and X-class eruptions can increase solar winds which can impact the earth’s geomagnetic field, interfere with shortwave radio transmissions, and disrupt electronic communications.
CMEs are the result of roughly a billion tons of solar plasma being released during an eruption on the sun’s surface. While the X-class eruption on Saturday did not include a CME, another smaller M-class flare a few days before did. It takes several days for the energy released by a CME to reach the earth, and depending on its intensity, can trigger what is known as a geomagnetic storm as it impacts the planet’s magnetic field.
For sky watchers and stargazers, these eruptions of solar energy have a visible impact in the range and intensity of the aurora borealis often referred to as the Northern Lights.
NOAA maintains predictions for space weather that includes a variety of data and observations. EarthSky.org issued its own forecast for aurora borealis displays based on the information from the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center.
It has been just a little over a year since the launch of the JWST and the amount of information and images the telescope has recorded continue to amaze researchers and stargazers alike. The most recent discoveries which range from a direct image of an exoplanet to the most detailed images of the Pillars of Creation to finding the most distant galaxies, continue to make news around the world. As the JWST continues its journey and observations more amazing images and data can be expected.
In addition to all of the solar activity, on Monday night, images of an asteroid entering the earth’s atmosphere lit up the light sky over Europe.
It was only the seventh time that an asteroid was detected in space and before it entered the atmosphere according to ESA. The 3.2-foot (one-meter) meteoroid, called SAR 2667 entered the atmosphere around 10:00 pm (EST) Feb. 12 (0300 GMT Feb. 13) and produced an incredibly bright flash of light before burning up and extinguishing.
February has a number of celestial events happening, in addition to the “green comet” C/2022 E3 (ZTF) that made its closest pass to the earth at the beginning of the month.
Tonight the planets of Venus and Neptune will make a visible conjunction within the evening sky just above the horizon to the southwest at around 5:47 pm EST (22:42 GMT), beginning at roughly 20 degrees above the horizon before they descend and disappear from view around 7:43 pm EST (0143 GMT). If it is overcast or just too cold tonight for some erstwhile stargazers, the celestial event can be viewed either on the Virtual Telescope Project web page or on their YouTube channel.
As if all of these other celestial events are not enough, also visible in the evening sky this month, Jupiter and Venus are setting up for coming within .05 degrees of each other in the night’s sky on March 1. While in reality, they are much farther apart than that, from earth’s view they will appear to be about the space of the moon’s width in distance.
Overall, February seems to have a little bit of everything going on for those who love the nature of our dark skies.
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