Watch for the first, last, and only Supermoon of 2017 this coming Sunday, Dec. 3 !!! You'll spot the large moon over the horizon just after sunset. Here's a pic of a supermoon over the KU campus in Lawrence in December of last year.

 

How much warning would have before a catastrophic solar storm hit? Is 15 minutes enough warning?

 

'Doomsday' solar storm could devastate Earth at any moment | Daily Mail Online

Don't think it can't happen. Need I remind you what happened a little more than five years ago? Re-read my post from back in the summer.

 

July 23, 2012: A day that came ever so close to living in infamy. You didn't see it, you didn't feel it, you probably didn't even read about it in the paper. But what took place came very close to wiping out civilization as we know it and plunging us back into the 18th century, at best. No, this is not some astronomy geek musing melodramatically about some far out science fiction event.

 

What happened five years ago this month that almost brought utter chaos upon the earth??? No, it wasn't a North Korean dictator with his finger on nukes, not an asteroid like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, not a newly discovered rogue comet, no pole shift... none of that. It happened on our very own Sun, the ball of gases that sits at the center of our solar system, keeps us warm, and gives us life.

 

On July 23 five years ago, our sun let loose a massive eruption, one of the largest solar flares and coronal mass ejections ever recorded.(See pic in post #66) This solar storm started out with the massive flare and was followed by a colossal CME(Coronal Mass Ejection).

 

A solar flare is initiated by the sudden release of energy stored in the Sun’s corona, causing the Sun’s plasma to heat up to tens of millions of degrees, accelerating and kicking out all sorts of radiation, and often creating a solar prominence or filament (eruption). In a large solar storm, the same energy from the corona can also cause a coronal mass ejection — a much slower-moving billion-ton cloud of plasma (electrons and protons).

 

Do I need to tell you how bad of a day it would be if the energy and plasma from a gigantic CME hits Earth??? Well, let's just say, REALLY REALLY BAD !!! And folks, it almost happened. Had the solar storm and subsequent CME occurred JUST ONE WEEK EARLIER the earth would have been in the direct line of fire !!! When the energy and plasma from a massive CME strikes , the solar energetic particles strike the Earth with such force that it ionizes the atmosphere, creating a vast cloud of energetic electrons that bounce around inside the atmosphere destroying electronics and fusing conductive wires everywhere. It would probably take out a few satellites in Earth orbit, too.

 

Prior to the storm five years ago, the next largest solar storm occurred back in 1859 and is known by folks like me in the scientific community as the Carrington Event. The 2012 storm was at the very least on the scale of Carrington. The Carrington storm vanquished much of the Victorian telegraph network in Europe as well as North America. Consequences of a storm like the one in 2012 would be much more dire than Carrington. Econmically speaking, well in excess of 20 trillion dollars for starters. But that's just the beginning of the nightmare. Civilization would be changed and it would take a long, long time to recover. We would have been forced back into living like those in colonial times, at best. At worst, an anarchic post-apocalyptic Stone Age might have confronted us. Large parts of society would have been without power for years. Yes, I said years!!! The world's power grids just can't be replaced overnight.

 

I remember reading about one scientist who had studied extreme space weather events for decades saying that there is a 12% probability of a solar storm on the order of the 1859 Carrington Event before 2022. Stock up Doomsday Preppers!!!

 

I'm always trying to find a positive in the most nightmarish of scenarios. One positive: I may not be able to take a warm bath or go to a Reds game but dammit the Northern Lights will be something else!!!!

Watch for the first, last, and only Supermoon of 2017 this coming Sunday, Dec. 3 !!! You'll spot the large moon over the horizon just after sunset. Here's a pic of a supermoon over the KU campus in Lawrence in December of last year.

 

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How many had a chance to check out last night's supermoon?

Cosmic Snake is Pregnant... With Stars, of Course!!!

 

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image below reveals the Cosmic Snake, a distant galaxy peppered with clumpy regions of intense star formation that appear warped by the effect of gravitational lensing. This giant arc-like galaxy is actually behind the huge galaxy cluster MACSJ1206.2-0847, but thanks to the cluster’s gravity, we can see it from Earth.

 

I love pictures that put our little world in perspective. I particularly like pictures of Earth and our celestial mate, the Moon, together. Here are some of my favorites. Hope you enjoy.

 

In its final days exploring Saturn in April of this year, Cassini snapped this picture of the Earth and the Moon, seen as tiny points of light between the rings of the giant world . Cassini was , I believe, about 868,000,000 miles from Earth when the image was captured. Even a trip to Lenscrafters wouldn't help you from this distance, but the southern Atlantic is facing Saturn in this pic.

 

In this image taken in November 2016 from 127 million miles away by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Earth and the moon are pictured together.

 

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This photo was the world's first view of Earth taken near the moon. It was snapped by the U.S. Lunar Orbiter I on August 23, 1966, when the spacecraft was just about to pass behind the moon on its 16th orbit.

 

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In this rare image taken by the wide-angle camera of NASA's Cassini spacecraft on July 19, 2013, Earth and its moon are pictured with Saturn's rings in the foreground (Earth is denoted with an arrow). You may have to look really close to see the moon. It's the faint dot to our home planet's immediate left in the image.

 

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I love this picture!!! Can you imagine being on the moon and watching Earthrise?

In this photograph taken during the second successful mission to land on the moon, Apollo 12 astronauts captured the mystical scene of an Earthrise.

 

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The Galileo spacecraft, the first to visit an asteroid and to thoroughly document Jupiter's moons, captured this composite view of Earth and its moon on December 16, 1992, 3.9 million miles from Earth.

 

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The full moon appears to sink into Earth's atmosphere in a November 2013 photograph from the International Space Station. Any idea why the bottom of the moon appears distorted?

 

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The far side of the moon, never seen from Earth, passes between NOAA's DSCOVR satellite and Earth in a "lunar photobomb."

 

"There is no dark side of the moon really.

Matter of fact, it's all dark. " --- PINK FLOYD

 

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How many had a chance to check out last night's supermoon?

i did. Tried to take a few pics with my iPhone7 but they didn’t turn out too good.

Here are two images that I'm putting together for a reason. Both images were captured on the SAME DAY--- July 19,2013. Our own pale blue dot and our celestial neighbor, the moon , are photographed together in both images. The first image, zoomed-in to show both Earth and moon, was taken by Cassini from Saturn. The second image was captured by the Messenger spacecraft from Mercury. Two pictures of the Earth and moon together captured from two distant planetary outposts in our solar system on the exact same day- how about that! The Cassini photo was taken from 870 million miles away; the Messenger image from about 62 million miles away. That's us... seen from two different planets... on the very same day!!! Simply awe-inspiring!!! Hope you enjoy!

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