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Spaceweather.com on a Magnetosphere Psi Bank Thermal Leak

These are not auroras. This is a STEVE — Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement — is an aurora-like glow that often accompanies the northern lights, yet is a distinct phenomenon, according to the American Geophysical Union (AGU). 2 days ago. But they don’t understand it or know what causes it.

GEOMAGNETIC STORM WATCH (G1): Minor G1-class geomagnetic storms are possible on Nov. 8th and 9th when Earth enters a stream of fast-moving solar wind. The gaseous material is flowing from a southern hole in the sun’s atmosphere. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras. Aurora alerts: SMS Text

EARTH’S RING CURRENT JUST SPRANG A LEAK: During this past weekend’s strong G3-class geomagnetic storm, low-latitude events spread as far south as Texas and Arizona. Upon further review, most of those lights were not auroras. Everything red in this montage is an “SAR arc”:


Credits: Texas (Anita Oakley); Missouri (Dan Bush); New York (James Perez-Rogers); Arizona (Jeremy Perez)

“This was a new phenomenon to me,” says Jeremy Perez, who took the Arizona picture. “I had never heard of SARs before, but I kept shooting anyway.”

SAR arcs were discovered in 1956 at the beginning of the Space Age. Researchers didn’t know what they were and unwittingly gave them a misleading name: “Stable Auroral Red arcs” or SAR arcs. In fact, SAR arcs are neither stable nor auroras.

Auroras appear when charged particles rain down from space, hitting the atmosphere and causing it to glow. SAR arcs form differently. They are a sign of heat energy leaking into the upper atmosphere from Earth’s ring current system–a donut-shaped circuit carrying millions of amps around our planet.


An artist’s concept of Earth’s ring current, quiet (left) and active (right) [more]

“On Nov. 5th, the ring current was pumped up by hours of strong geomagnetic storming, with energy dissipating into these SAR arcs,” says Jeff Baumgardner of Boston University’s Center for Space Physics. “It was a global event. Our cameras registered SAR arc activity from Italy to New Zealand.”

Lisa’s piece Based on Maya Time

This was Nov. 5. It was a pivotal day. I remember it well.

My assessment is that it is a TIME pulse on the Hidden Wisdom on the day the STEVE occurred. The Hidden Wisdom is Red 11 Serpent or the Occult pulse for Red 3 Electric Serpent, which is kin 55 and extends the Red Galactic Spectrum. 11 + 3 in the same Red Serpent tribe makes it Occult 14. There is no 14 Red Serpent right now. But if the Red Serpent tribe uplevels and the Maldek dreamspell is absorbed into earth, there could be. It would be reconciliation of Maldek Karma which is completely possible. It would be a blessing.

This may be related, but the biggest AI prophet on the planet who is nuts for Mars/Maldek is White 3 Worldbridger Elon Musk. He is the antipode for this exact day and the theme is his antipode. On X platform, he is WAY into peace mode, wants a cease fire in the Middle East, is managing to ignore the media assaults on Tesla and is steering clear of me bc I don’t want to talk to him right now. He is using his mounting trilions to help improve the planet and I support that 100%. No one else is doing it. Dude is nuts.

Here is Sunday’s post, Yellow 3 Warrior. It is quite telling by how much I wrote and what I wrote about AI and Maldek without knowing until today, that this STEVE occurred. This was obviously a big activation of karma/dharma. We’ll see if it goes negative or positive. What I do know is Corey Goode said that the GGLN had decided that AI needs to be destroyed in the next two years. I told Mr. X that and gave him parameters like, it has to be used as JUST a tool until our brains uplevel to 10hz alpha. If he ignores me and doesn’t believe I’m working with the Universe, lets the chips fall where they will. I’m just doing my job.

True Time Update for Sunday, 3Warrior

Spaceweather Continued

Recent research has linked SAR arcs to another phenomenon that is not an aurora: STEVE. The mauve ribbon in the sky was not originally thought to have anything to do with Earth’s ring current. Yet in 2015, observers in New Zealand caught a bright red SAR arc transforming itself into STEVE like a caterpillar into a butterfly.

On Nov. 5th, Mark Savage may have witnessed the same metamorphosis over Northumberland, UK:

Visible to the naked eye, STEVE materialized from an overhanging red arc. “The entire process took about 10 minutes,” says Savage. This timescale roughly matches that of another SAR-to-STEVE transition observed over Canada in April 2022. Clearly, the two phenomena are linked, but researchers aren’t sure how.

“The connection is still elusive,” says Carlos Martinis, a leading researcher in the field at Boston University. “Sometimes SAR arcs evolve into STEVE–but not always. This is a very active field of research, involving citizen scientists and researchers.”

Did you see an SAR arc on Nov. 5th? Submit your pictures here.

more SAR images: from Greg Redfern of Shenandoah National Park, Virginia; from Dean Cosgrove near Stockville, Nebraska; from Chris Cook of Borrego Springs, California; from Todd Bush of Banner Elk, North Carolina; from Ronnie Sherrill of Troutman, North Carolina; from George Preoteasa of Milford, PA; from David Blanchard of Wupatki National Monument, Arizona; from Hunter Outten of Laurel, Delaware; from Caryl Bohn of West Oak, Nebraska; from Ken Sklute of Phoenix, Arizona; from Bernhard Deufel of Horgen, Switzerland; from Klaus Steinberg of Troisdorf, Germany; from Bernhard

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Spaceweather.com for Halloween

SUNSPOT NUMBERS ARE BOUNCING BACK: After a two week decline, which reminded some observers of Solar Minimum, sunspot numbers are bouncing back. The emergence of multiple new sunspots on the solar disk plus a new farside sunspot rotating over the sun’s eastern limb is driving the sunspot number back up to 100. This is a normal fluctuation en route to Solar Max. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text

20 YEARS LATER, THE HALLOWEEN STORMS: Imagine waking up to this headline: “Half of Earth’s Satellites Lost!” Impossible?  It actually happened during the Great Halloween Storms of 2003.

Turn back the clock 20 years. Solar Cycle 23 was winding down, and space weather forecasters were talking about how quiet things would soon become. Suddenly, the sun unleashed two of the strongest solar flares of the Space Age–an X17 flare on Oct. 28 followed by an X10 on Oct 29, 2003. Both hurled fast CMEs directly toward Earth.


A CME heading straight for Earth on Oct. 28, 2003. The source was an X17-flare in the magnetic canopy of giant sunspot 486. Image credit: SOHO. Movie

Traveling 2125 km/s and 1948 km/s, respectively, each CME reached Earth in less than a day, sparking extreme (G5) geomagnetic storms on Oct. 29, 30, and 31, 2003. Auroras descended as far south as Georgia, California, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and Oklahoma: photo gallery.

Onboard the International Space Station, astronauts took shelter in the hardened Zvezda service module to protect themselves from high energy particles. Meanwhile, airline pilots were frantically changing course. Almost every flight over Earth’s poles detoured to lower latitudes to avoid radiation, costing as much as $100,000 per flight. Many Earth-orbiting satellites experienced data outages, reboots and even unwanted thruster firings. Some operators simply gave up and turned their instruments off.

There’s a dawning awareness that something else important happened, too. Many of Earth’s satellites were “lost”–not destroyed, just misplaced. In a 2020 paper entitled “Flying Through Uncertainty,” USAF satellite operators recalled how “the majority of satellites (in low Earth orbit) were temporarily lost, requiring several days of around-the-clock work to reestablish their positions.”


Active sunspot 486 was the source of the 2003 Halloween storms

How did this happen? The Halloween storms pumped an extra 3 Terrawatts of power into Earth’s upper atmosphere. Geomagnetic heating puffed up the atmosphere, sharply increasing aerodynamic drag on satellites. Some satellites in low-Earth orbit found themselves off course by one to tens of kilometers.

Most satellite operators today have never experienced anything like the Halloween storms. That’s a problem because the number of objects they need to track has sharply increased. Since 2003, the population of active satellites has ballooned to more than 7,000, with an additional 20,000+ pieces of debris larger than 10 cm. Losing track of so many objects in such a congested environment could theoretically trigger a cascade of collisions, rendering low Earth orbit unusable for years following an extreme geomagnetic storm.

Now that’s scary.

Dear Elon and Starlink, @elonmusk ,

Happy Halloween! You need to know the positions of all of your satellites please.

Thanks. Your PIA bossy follower, @lisaktownsend13

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Spaceweather.com for 10/27/23

If solar maximum is next year, 2024, (see below) subtract 11.5yrs, and it takes us to the beginning of our new 26,000 year cycle of mid-2012. Good synchronicity.

GEOMAGNETIC STORM WATCH (G1): A minor G1-class geomagnetic storm is likely on Oct. 30th when a solar wind stream is expected to hit Earth’s magnetic field. The gaseous material is flowing from a double-lobed hole in the sun’s atmosphere. Arctic sky watchers should be alert for bright auroras. Aurora alerts: SMS Text

DRAMATIC M-CLASS EXPLOSION: A magnetic filament just beyond the sun’s northeastern limb exploded on Oct. 26th (2324 UT), causing a chain reaction of magnetic eruptions that spilled onto the Earthside of the sun. NASA’s SDO recorded the M1.4 category blast:

Coronagraphs onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) have since detected a fast-moving CME emerging from the blast site. Type II radio emissions from the leading edge of the CME suggest it is moving 1558 km/s (3.5 million mph). There is a hint of an Earth-directed component. It is too soon to know for sure, however; confirmation awaits additional data from SOHO.

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NOAA FORECASTS QUICKER, STRONGER SOLAR MAX: When Solar Cycle 25 began in 2020, leading forecasters thought it would be weak and slow to develop. Fast forward three years: NOAA is now predicting a quicker, stronger solar cycle. The revised forecast, published yesterday, shows Solar Max coming sometime between January and October 2024:

NOAA’s original prediction for Solar Cycle 25 is shown in pink (), the broad band indicating the uncertainty of the forecast. It has become clear in recent years that the original prediction was too low, which prompted NOAA to issue a new one. The magenta line () traces the new forecast, and takes into account recent high sunspot counts.

Uncertainties in the new forecast are bounded by different shades of magenta. There is roughly a 25% chance that the smoothed sunspot number will fall within the dark-shaded region; a 50% chance it will fall in the medium-shaded region; and a 75% chance it will fall in the lightest of the shaded regions.

If this new forecast is correct, Solar Cycle 25 could land in the ballpark of Solar Cycle 23, which peaked in 2000-2001, and produced the famous Halloween Storms of 2003. However, the odds still favor Solar Cycle 25 being a bit weaker than Solar Cycle 23. Either way, next year’s Solar Max could be potent.

NOAA plans to update this new forecast every month. Check out their Space Weather Prediction Testbed for the latest prediction.

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Spaceweather.com for 10Earth on Tuesday

This hit on Red 10 Planetary Earth mediated by Uranus

NOAA

A PURE SIGN WAVE IN THE MAGNETOSPHERE: In a quiet room, you can hear a pin drop. Norwegian citizen scientist Rob Stammes just heard a pin drop on Earth’s magnetic field.

“It was very quiet when it happened,” says Stammes, who runs a space weather observatory in Lofoten, Norway. On Oct. 17th, his magnetometer was monitoring Earth’s magnetic field as it does every night, and the instrument’s needle had settled itself into a straight line, indicating very low geomagnetic activity.  Suddenly, Earth’s magnetic field began to ring.

Planetary tone 10. 10 periods.

“A very stable ~25 second magnetic oscillation appeared in my recordings, and lasted for more than 20 minutes,” he says. “It was fantastic to see the magnetic field swing back and forth by about 0.1 degrees, peak to peak.”

This kind of pure tone is rare, but it has happened before. Researchers call it a “pulsation continuous” — or “Pc” for short. Pc waves are classified into 5 types depending on their period. The waves Stammes caught fall into category Pc3.

The “pin dropping” was a gentle gust of solar wind. Imagine blowing across a piece of paper, making it flutter with your breath. The solar wind can have a similar effect Earth’s magnetic field. Pc3 waves are essentially flutters propagating down the flanks of our planet’s magnetosphere excited by the breath of the sun.


A NASA animation of waves fluttering down the sides of Earth’s magnetosphere [more]

Stammes is a longtime observer of Pc waves. Usually he catches them during Solar Minimum when “the room is quiet” for months at a time. “Recording one now so close to Solar Max is unexpected,” he says. “Lately, my magnetometer traces have been too noisy for such delicate waves–so it came a surprise!”

Pc3 waves, which can only be heard in moments of quiet, can also bring the quiet to an end. The oscillations sometimes flow all the way around Earth’s magnetic field and cause a “tearing instability” in our planet’s magnetic tail. This, in turn, sets the stage for magnetic reconnection and geomagnetic storms.

That didn’t happen on Oct. 17th, though. The pin dropped, the magnetosphere rang, and quiet resumed. Stammes is already listening for more. Stay tuned!

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This is from NOAA and, in exact synchronicity with the Harmonic.

In the Maya Harmonic, we move from the North Polar Zone 5 kin to the Zone of Transformation 15 kin to the South Polar Zone 5 kin every 20 days. But the onus of alpha and omega points keeps moving with the 375 day solar year as the Harmonic calibrated True Time or Haab.

This is more proof that the time patterns I have figured out over 30 years are accurate in alignment with the sun and the rest of our local system. People need to put their thinking caps on and belly up to my table so they can know the time changes coming. Please share.

THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE OF THE SUN IS IN CHARGE: For the second month in a row, sunspot counts in the sun’s northern hemisphere are more than double the south. The assymetry is obvious in this summary of September’s sunspots compiled by astronomer Senol Sanli using data from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory:

According to the Royal Observatory of Belgium’s Solar Influences Data Analysis Center, in September the monthly sunspot number for the sun’s northern hemisphere was 90, the southern hemisphere was only 44; that’s a ratio of 2-to-1 in favor of the north. August was about the same. Looking back over an entire year, the north is leading the south by an average of 50%.

What’s going on? In fact, it’s not unusual for the sun’s northern and southern hemispheres to be out of synch. As long ago as the 19th century, solar cycle pioneers Spoerer (1889) and Maunder (1890) noted that there were often long periods of time when most sunspots were found preferentially in one hemisphere and not the other. This plot from the Royal Observatory of Belgium shows assymetries throughout the last 6 solar cycles:

Until recently, Solar Cycle 25 was pretty evenly matched, north vs. south. Sunspot counts from August and September, however, suggest that the northern hemisphere may be seizing control–at least temporarily. This has happened during the upslope of all four previous solar cycles (21-24).

One possible explanation for this phenomenon may be that the two hemispheres of the sun have their own solar cycles, one out of phase with the other by about a year. Indeed, Solar Max is often double peaked. You can see it in the hemispheric sunspot plot. In the three most recent cycles (22-24), north peaked before south, creating two surges of solar activity separated by a “Gnevyshev gap.” Solar Cycle 25 might continue this trend.

A complete discussion of sunspot asymmetries is included in David Hathaway’s excellent review article “The Solar Cycle.”

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Spaceweather.com

I think this comet may be some kind of solar droid on a solar mission to stimulate the 2 omega points and 1 alpha point solar cycle pivots that are scheduled in the harmonic, or the Psi Bank, or the magnetosphere. Different names, but they are all the same thing.

Today is the omega point initiation.

A WEIRD COMET JUST BUZZEDTHE SUN: Citizen scientists watching SOHO’s coronagraph feed on Aug. 21st weren’t sure what they had just seen. A point-like object emerged from the glare of the sun, quickly reversed course, then headed back from where it came. Time to call a Congressional hearing? See for yourself:

In fact, this was no UFO. It is a weird comet named “322P.” Every 3.9 years it buzzes the sun, making such a tight turn inside the orbit of Mercury that it looks like something is breaking the laws of physics. The fact that the comet has no tail, not even when it is being blasted by maximum solar heat, adds to its vibe of mystery.

“This is a very interesting object,” says Karl Battams of the US Naval Research Lab’s Solar and Heliospheric Physics Branch. “We are actively studying it, trying to learn what it is.”

Comet 322P has been discovered in SOHO coronagraph images at least three times before: 1999, 2003 and 2007. Eventually astronomers realized all three were the same object. Over the years, SOHO has found more than 4500 comets diving into the sun and disintegrating. This was SOHO’s first discovery of a *periodic* comet that routinely survives its close encounters.

In 2015, a team of astronomers led by Matthew Knight tracked the comet as it receded from the sun using the Very Large Telescope in Chile and NASA’s infrared Spitzer Space Telescope. They were looking for signs of a tail or other outgassing typical of comets. However, 322P remained pointlike and inscrutable:

“322P appeared inactive in all images,” they wrote. “Our results suggest that it may be of asteroidal origin and only active in the SOHO fields of view via processes different from the volatile-driven activity of traditional comets.”

According to their data, 322P is a dense object (1000 kg/m^3), measuring 150 to 320 meters in diameter, which spins every 2.8 hours. Its incredibly tough, losing no detectable mass when it approaches the sun. The researchers speculate that it may be an extinct comet, so thoroughly sun-baked that only an impervious skeleton of rock and metal remains.

“We still have lots to learn about the small bodies in our solar system,” says Battams. “322P is a fabulous example of one such quirky object.”

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Spaceweather.com for Wednesday-8/9/23

SYNCHRONICITY!! This ginormous solar storm occurred in HF44 headed up by Red 4 Self-Existing Skywalker on 3/22/1940. This harmonic just passed us recently on 7/25/23 around the Mayan New Year. You might want to search on Red 4 Skywalker on here.

The date on the newspaper below is assumed to be the day AFTER the storm so 3/24/40 was Blue 6 Eagle which is the birth gateway of Corey Goode, ruled by Jupiter and one with the Blue Avians. The 5GForce is Red 8 Galactic Serpent. Serine is the DNA nucleotide governing this harmonic so Reptilian influence.

The big deal is this harmonic is the Sunspot Cycle Pivot Point in the Tzolkin, which we just hit a few weeks ago. This occurs in the N. Polar Zone, Plate III of Earth, 60-90 degrees N-225-270 degrees East. As we know, history repeats itself and that’s because of the Harmonic. The problems come when time WARPS because people mindsets get stuck in Time is Money and they think this dimension is all there is. They forget about eternity in their bodies and lose touch with the truth in the universe.

Note that the atomic bombs were dropped to end WWII after this, for the first and LAST time in human history. The human contracts with GAIA were broken and the unvierse had to step in which they did with Valiant Thor, an E.T., visiting Eisenhower in the White House. Nobody listened. The Luciferian Cabal was entrenched and pretty much had been since WWI. Nukes are forbidden now and stopped by our Watchers because they harm the cosmic web.

They needed some humans to eat and a starting a war is a good excuse for getting some bodies. That was the motive for the World Wars. Draco Reptilian blood lust alive and well because they are dying off due to infestation of nanites in their bodies. I think it’s too late for them. They will likely be taken out of our DNA sequence. It will be interesting to see what happens to our bodies and reptilian brain when they are gone. I don’t think we have a choice.

Spaceweather.com

THE GREAT SOLAR STORM OF MARCH 1940: This story is shocking. On March 24, 1940, a solar storm hit Earth so hard it made copper wires in the United States crackle with 800 volts of electricity. A New York Times headline declared that a “sunspot tornado” had arrived, playing havoc with any signal that had to travel through metal wires.

“For a few hours it completely disrupted all long-distance communication,” wrote astronomer Seth B. Nicholson in a recap of the event for the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Radio announcers seemed to be “talking a language no one could understand.” The New York Times reported that more than a million telephone and teletype messages had been garbled: “Veteran electrical engineers unhesitatingly pronounced it the worst thing of its kind within their memory.”

So why have you never heard of this storm? Even in 1940 it was fairly quickly forgotten. World War II was underway in Europe, and the USA was on the verge of joining. People had other things on their minds.

Modern researchers, however, are paying attention. A team led by Jeffrey Love of the USGS Geomagnetism Program just published a new study of the event in the research journal Space Weather. Their work confirms that it was no ordinary solar storm.

“It was unusually violent,” says Love. “There were very rapid changes in Earth’s magnetic field, and this induced big voltages in long metal wires.” (Because human MINDSET was going the wrong way, toward splitting the atom, starting a very bloody war, and making nuclear bombs, all against previous agreements with the universe allowing humans to settle here after Tiamat. And there ya have it.

Love and colleagues learned about the voltages from old engineering reports. In 1940, the United States was criss-crossed by copper wires hundreds to thousands of miles long. They were not for power distribution; electrical systems were still mostly regional. Instead the wires were used for communications such as telephone calls and telegrams. When the “sunspot tornado” hit Earth, electricity began to move through the system. Technicians jotted down some of the voltages they saw–and the numbers were incredible.


Above: Solar storm voltages in March 1940 (red) vs. the Quebec Blackout of March 1989 (blue)

“Records show 400 V in Minnesota, 750 V in Missouri, and more than 800 V in Massachusetts,” says Love. “These are 10 times greater than long-wire voltages recorded during the Great Quebec Blackout in March 1989.”

What caused the high voltages? Love’s team examined old magnetogram records from the date of the storm and found evidence that two coronal mass ejections CMEs hit Earth only 1.82 hours apart. The double blow rattled Earth’s magnetic field in a complicated way most single CMEs do not.

“This could be a harbinger of things to come,” says Love. Modern studies show that as many as 5 CMEs leave the sun every day during Solar Maximum. With Solar Cycle 25 underway and intensifying, a double hit could definitely happen again.

A similar storm today might not significantly impact communications; we live in the wireless age of cell phones. Electricity is another matter. Modern power systems depend on long wires to shuttle electricity across the country. A repeat of 1940 could interfere with their operations. Love notes that the 1940 voltages exceed NERC power-grid industry benchmarks for 100-year storms. As a result, some modern power grids might not be ready to handle the shock of another 1940 event.

Read Love’s original research here: here.

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Synchronicity with the Head of Draco. Spaceweather.com

GEOMAGNETIC STORM WATCH (G2): Geomagnetic storms are possible on Aug. 1st when a CME is expected to hit Earth’s magnetic field. Minor G1-class storms are likely with a chance of escalating to category G2. The CME was hurled almost directly toward Earth by the eruption of a magnetic filament in the sun’s northern hemisphere on July 28th. Aurora alerts: SMS Text

Comet 12P is currently crossing the head of Draco not far from the north celestial pole. If you have a backyard telescope, take a look, and submit your images here.

This is a major synchronicity with the Tzolkin. Tomorrow is Red 12 Dragon, and we enter the N. Polar Zone. This is 1:1 exact synchronicity between 3D space and 4D Time.

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Spaceweather.com-7/27/23

BIG FARSIDE SUNSPOT: There’s a spot on the farside of the sun so large it is affecting the way the whole sun vibrates. Helioseismic echoes pinpoint the active region in the sun’s southern hemisphere not far behind the sun’s southeastern limb. It should rotate into view this weekend. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text

A FARSIDE CME JUST HIT SOLAR ORBITER: Two days ago, a bright CME rocketed away from the farside of the sun. Its plane-of-sky speed in SOHO coronagraph images exceeded 1,500 km/s (3.4 million mph):

If this CME had hit Earth, a strong (possibly severe) geomagnetic storm would have surely resulted. Instead, it flew in the opposite direction and hit Europe’s Solar Orbiter (SolO) spacecraft.

The CME reached SolO on July 26th (0200 UT), barely 32 hours after it left the sun. Considering that a typical CME would take two or three days to reach the spacecraft at its current location, a transit of only 32 hours confirms this CME was a fast-mover. (THE MAYAN NEW YEAR, WHITE 5 WIZARD)

“This was definitely a big event,” says George Ho of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, co-principal investigator for the Energetic Particle Detector suite onboard Solar Orbiter. Ho checked the data right after the initial explosion on July 24th and saw a 10,000-fold increase of 50 MeV ions reaching the spacecraft. “This indicates a strong incoming interplanetary shock.”

This plot shows two waves of energetic particles washing over Solar Orbiter:


Above: Data from Solar Orbiter’s EPD/Electron-Proton Telescope (Principal Investigator Javier Pacheco from University of Alcala, Spain).

The first wave (yellow) was accelerated by whatever unseen explosion launched the CME. Traveling close to the speed of light, these particles reached the spacecraft soon after the blast. A second wave (blue) traveled with the CME itself and hit the spacecraft 30+ hours later.

“During the 1989 Quebec blackout, it was this type of shock-driven particle increase during the CME arrival that knocked off the power,” notes Ho.

Launched in Feb. 2020, Solar Orbiter is on a mission to study solar storms at point blank range. Mission accomplished. This storm actually swallowed the spacecraft. Mission scientists will analyze the data from this storm and others to improve future forecasts of space weather. Stay tuned.

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SpaceX Punched a hole in the Psi Bank

Is that like punching a hole in a wall because they’re giving you a hard time? I’m bugging him too much. 😆 lol. I’m sick of all the fake Elon unverified accounts following me. It was 10 a day, and now I directly tweeted to him, asking that everyone on there be required to be verified. I don’t have time for this. It’s very controversial but all the spam and grifters on there are wasting time and $.

SPACEX JUST PUNCHED A HOLE IN THE IONOSPHERE: On the evening of July 19th, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Sky watchers from southern California to Arizona witnessed a magnificent exhaust plume. At the San Francisco Volcanic Field north of Flagstaff, photographer Jeremy Perez saw something extra:

“After the rocket passed overhead, a red fluorescent glow expanded southward and crossed over the Milky Way,” says Perez. “It was visible for almost 20 minutes.”

The red glow is a sign that the rocket punched a hole in the ionosphere–something SpaceX and others have been doing for years. One famous example occured on August 25, 2017, when a Falcon 9 rocket carrying Taiwan’s FORMOSAT-5 satellite created a hole four times bigger than the state of California. On June 19, 2022, another Falcon 9 punched a hole over the east coast of the USA, sparking a display of red lights from New York to the Carolinas that many observers mistook for aurora borealis.

“This is a well studied phenomenon when rockets are burning their engines 200 to 300 km above Earth’s surface,” explains space physicist Jeff Baumgardner of Boston University. “The red glow appears when exhaust gasses from the rocket’s 2nd stage cause the ionosphere to recombine quickly.”

Rocket engines spray water (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2) into the ionosphere, quenching local ionization by as much as 70%. A complicated series of charge exchange reactions between oxygen ions (O+) and molecules from the rocket exhaust produce photons at a wavelength of 6300 Å–the same color as red auroras.


Above: Electron density maps show a hole in the ionosphere formed by a SpaceX rocket in 2017. [more]

“I reviewed footage from the July 19th launch,” says Baumgardner. “It shows the second stage engine burning at 286 km near the ionosphere’s F-region peak for that time of day. So, it is quite possible that an ionospheric ‘hole’ was made.”

Once rare, ionospheric “punch holes” are increasingly common with record numbers of rocket launches led by SpaceX sending Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit. Ham radio operators may notice them when shortwave signals fail to skip over the horizon, shooting through holes instead of bouncing back to Earth. Sudden GPS errors can also result from the anomalies. These effects may be troublesome, but they are shortlived; re-ionization occurs as soon as the sun comes up again.

Readers, did you see a red glow from this week’s SpaceX launch? Submit your photos here.

more images: from David Blanchard of Flagstaff, AZ (he also saw the red glow); from Dennis Mammana of Borrego Springs, California; from Andrew Corkill of Riverside, California; from Chris Cook of Laguna Beach, California; from Art Brown of San Diego, California;

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