A new type of aurora is rippling across Arctic skies. Citizen scientists who discovered it nicknamed it "The Dunes" because of its resemblance to desert sand dunes. A paper published in the Jan. 28th issue of AGU Advances describes the new form and the unexpected physics that causes it.

Dune-shaped auroras form in a narrow altitude range 80 km to 120 km above Earth's surface. Turns out, this is an extremely hard-to-study layer of Earth's atmosphere. It's too high for weather balloons, and too low for rockets.

"Due to the difficulties in measuring atmospheric phenomena between 80 and 120 km, we sometimes call this region 'the ignorosphere'," says Minna Palmroth, Professor of Computational Space Physics at the University of Helsinki and the lead author of the study.

Sky watchers in the Arctic have been seeing Dunes for years without understanding what they were. A breakthrough came on Oct. 7, 2018, when multiple groups photographed the dunes from widely separated locations in Finland. Maxime Grandin, a postdoctoral researcher in Palmroth's team, analyzed the images, using triangulation techniques to decipher the Dune's geometry.

Conclusion: Dunes are located ~100 km high--smack-dab in the middle of the ignorosphere--and have a pure, monochromatic wavelength of about 45 km.

Above: An artists' concept of a mesospheric bore trapped in a high-altitude waveguide. [more]

The research team believes the Dunes are a "mesospheric bore"--a type of atmospheric gravity wave that springs up from the surface below and gets caught in a thermal waveguide ~100 km high. When solar wind particles rain down on the bore, they illuminate its rippling structure.

The discovery of Dunes may allow researchers to study the ignorosphere as never before. Monitoring Dunes can reveal previously hidden waves and waveguides at the boundary between Earth and space. Aurora photographers, have you seen a Dune? Submit your photos here.
www.spaceweather.com

Andrew Liptak : The Verge : 16 Jan 2017

The Japanese probe Akatsuki has observed a massive gravity wave in the atmosphere of Venus. This is not the first time such a wave was observed on the Solar System's second planet, but it is the largest ever recorded, stretching just over 6,000 miles from end to end. Its features also suggest that the dynamics of Venus' atmosphere are more complex than previously thought.

An atmospheric gravity wave is a ripple in the density of a planet's atmosphere, according to the European Space Agency. (This isn't a gravitational wave, which is a ripple in space-time.) We have these waves in Earth's atmosphere, too; they interfere with weather and cause turbulence. Scientists have observed atmospheric gravity waves on Venus before: the European Space Agency's Venus Express spotted several before the end of its mission in 2014. Since its initial observations, Akatsuki has spotted several smaller structures with its infrared cameras in April and May 2016.

Akatsuki spotted this particular gravity wave, described in a paper published today in Nature Geoscience, when the probe arrived at the planet on December 7th, 2015. The spacecraft then lost sight of it on December 12th, 2015, because of a change in Akatsuki's orbit. When the probe returned to a position to observe the bow-shaped structure on January 15th, 2016, the bright wave had vanished.

What sets the huge December wave apart from previously discovered ones is that it appeared to be stationary above a mountainous region on the planet's surface, despite the background atmospheric winds.

The study's authors believe that the bright structure is the result of a gravity wave that was formed in the lower atmosphere as it flowed over the planet's mountainous terrain. It's not clear how the wave exactly propagates to the planet's upper atmosphere, where clouds rotate faster than the planets itself — four days instead of the 243 days it takes Venus to rotate once.

The massive gravity wave might mean that the atmospheric conditions closer to the planet's surface are more variable than predicted.

Powerful Hurricane Matthew is scouring the islands of the Caribbean with 120 mph winds.  Orbiting high above the tempest in the darkness of space, the NOAA/NASA Suomi NPP satellite has observed the storm's ripple effect on the upper atmosphere:

These ripples are called "gravity waves"--essentially, waves of pressure and temperature excited by the upward motion of air from the storm below. Gravity does not vary inside these waves; instead, they get their name from the fact that gravity acts as a vertical restoring force that tries to restore equilibrium to up-and-down moving air. Similar patterns have been observed above powerful thunderstorms. 

Matthew's gravity waves are visible from the ground as well.  Frankie Lucena of Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, captured them in his recent snapshots of sprites above the hurricane:

"Steven Miller of Colorado State University was kind enough to prepare these images for me to confirm that my sprite photo did contain gravity waves," says Lucena. "My location in southwestern Puerto Rico is noted in the satellite image above. By pointing my camera at the lightning, I also caught the waves."

Left to themselves, gravity waves would be invisible to the human eye. We see them, however, because they impress their patterns upon a luminous phenomenon called "airglow." Learn more about that in the next article, Amazing Airglow over Easter Island.
www.spaceweather.com

On Sept. 1st, astrophotographer Yuri Beletsky hiked into the Atacama Desert of Chile for a deep exposure of the Milky Way. He got that and much more. "There was a stunning display of red airglow," he says. It surrounded the [centre of the] Milky Way like a celestial bulls-eye:

Airglow is aurora-like phenomenon caused by chemical reactions in the upper atmosphere. Human eyes seldom notice the faint glow, but It can be photographed on almost any clear dark night, anywhere in the world.

The curious thing about Beletsky's photo is not the presence of airglow, but rather its color--red. Airglow is usually green, the color of light from oxygen atoms some 90 km to 100 km above Earth's surface. Where does the red come from? Instead of oxygen, OH can produce the required color. These neutral molecules (not to be confused with the OH- ion found in aqueous solutions) exist in a thin layer 85 km high where gravity waves impress the red glow with a dramatic rippling structure.

"It was a truly special night," says Beletsky. "Pure tranquility."
www.spaceweather.com

Illustris Simulation: Most detailed simulation of our Universe
Mark Vogelsberger

Published on 6 May 2014
The Illustris simulation is the most ambitious computer simulation of our Universe yet performed. The calculation tracks the expansion of the universe, the gravitational pull of matter onto itself, the motion of cosmic gas, as well as the formation of stars and black holes. These physical components and processes are all modeled starting from initial conditions resembling the very young universe 300,000 years after the Big Bang and until the present day, spanning over 13.8 billion years of cosmic evolution.

The simulated volume contains tens of thousands of galaxies captured in high-detail, covering a wide range of masses, rates of star formation, shapes, sizes, and with properties that agree well with the galaxy population observed in the real universe.

The simulations were run on supercomputers in France, Germany, and the US. The largest was run on 8,192 compute cores, and took 19 million CPU hours. A single state-of-the-art desktop computer would require more than 2000 years to perform this calculation.

Find out more at:
http://www.illustris-project.org

Publication:
"Properties of galaxies reproduced by a hydrodynamic simulation", Vogelsberger, Genel, Springel, Torrey, Sijacki, Xu, Snyder, Bird, Nelson, Hernquist, Nature 509, 177-182 (08 May 2014) doi:10.1038/nature13316

Music:
moonbooter (http://www.moonbooter.de/)

Institutes:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies, University of Cambridge, Institute for Advanced Study Princeton, Space Telescope Science Institute

Some thunderstorms are so powerful that they create ripples in the atmosphere 80 to 90 km high, at the edge of space itself. In satellite images such storms look like a giant atmospheric bulls-eye. It turns out these ripples are also visible from the ground. Amateur astronomer Thomas Ashcraft recently photographed them over New Mexico:

"Over the past few years I have been photographing sprites above distant thunderstorms using an infrared camera," says Ashcraft. "It turns out that the strong thunderstorm systems that generate sprites often also perturb the mesosphere and create gravity waves."

"This near infrared image from June 05, 2014, shows gravity waves above a powerful thunderstorm cell over western Kansas. The storm was about three hundred miles away from my observatory so the thunderstorm itself was below my horizon."


"There are many stills of this phenomenon but not many time-lapses that show their complex motions," he says. "I posted a movie extract of the storm on vimeo. Note also the sprites that pop up sporadically."

"The mesosphere is not well studied and it holds much Nature yet to be discovered," concludes Ashcraft. "To me it is a vast ecological zone full of beauty."               http://spaceweather.com/

Phys Org :  Wed, 11 Jun 2014

© NASA, Holland Ford (JHU), the ACS Science Team and ESA

Material stripped from a galaxy during its collision with a smaller galaxy (seen in the upper left corner of the larger interaction partner) forms a long tidal tail. Young blue stars, star clusters and tidal dwarf galaxies are born in these tidal debris. These objects move in a common direction within a plane defined by the orientation and motion of their tidal tail. A similar galaxy interaction might have occurred in the Local Group in the past, which could explain the distribution of dwarf galaxies in co-rotating planes.

Satellite dwarf galaxies at the edges of the Milky Way and neighboring Andromeda defy the accepted model of galaxy formation, and recent attempts to pigeon-hole them into the model are flawed, an international team of scientists reports.

The mismatch raises questions about the accuracy of the standard model of cosmology, which is the widely accepted paradigm for the origin and evolution of the universe, the astrophysicists say.

A preprint of the research paper, accepted for publication by the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, is online here.

The standard model, also called the "lambda cold dark matter model," says that satellite dwarf galaxies in the Milky Way and Andromeda are expected to behave a certain way: The galaxies would form in halos of dark matter, be widely distributed and would have to move in random directions, said Marcel Pawlowski, a postdoctoral researcher in the astronomy department at Case Western Reserve University and lead author of the new study.

"But what astronomers see is different," Pawlowski said. "We see the satellite galaxies are in a huge disk and moving in the same direction within this disk, like the planets in our solar system moving in a thin plane in one direction around the sun. That's unexpected and could be a real problem."

"There's a very serious conflict, and the repercussion is we do not seem to have the correct theory of gravity" said Pavel Kroupa, a co-author of the study and a professor at the University of Bonn in Germany.

Read more at : http://www.sott.net/article/280362-We-do-not-seem-to-have-the-correct-theory-of-gravity-says-professor

January 18, 2014 – SPACE – The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) is teaming up with a company that manufactures fishing equipment to create a net that will sweep the heavens of the man-made debris orbiting our planet. The first test of the equipment is scheduled to start in late February, when a rocket will be launched and a satellite developed by researchers at Kagawa University will be deployed. Once in orbit, the satellite is designed to unreel a wire net some 300 metres long that will then generate a magnetic field and – theoretically – attract some of the debris that is circulating beyond our atmosphere.

And there is a growing need for outer space to undergo a good clean-up, with experts estimating that 100 million bits of man-made junk are zipping around the earth. Of that total, some 22,000 are believed to measure 10 cm or larger and are therefore considered dangerous. The majority of the debris is in a band between 700 kilometers and 1,000 kilometers above the surface of the planet, mostly parts of obsolescent and degrading satellites and rockets. Out of control and impossible to accurately monitor, even the smallest piece of detritus – a single bolt, for example – could have a catastrophic result if it collides with a functioning satellite or the International Space Station, which has a permanent human crew aboard. A recent study in the U.S. suggested that a collision between two satellites could trigger an “uncontrolled chain reaction” that could destroy the communications network on earth.

“We started work on this project about five years ago and we are all excited to see the outcome of this first test,” Koji Ozaki, the engineer who heads the development team at Hiroshima-based Nitto Seimo, told the South China Morning Post. The net is a mere 30cm wide when it is unspooled and made of three strong and very flexible lengths of metal fiber, Ozaki said. Taking advantage of the company’s experience in the fishing industry, a net measuring 1 kilometer long has already been fabricated at Nitto Seimo’s factory. “Fishing nets need to be extremely strong because they need to be able to hold a large number of fish, but our tether does not have to be that strong,” he said. “It is more important that it is flexible.”

Reports first emerged about the project three years ago, but there were no confirmations about it being tested. The upcoming test is designed to confirm that when a magnetic field is passed through the net, it is able to attract pieces of orbiting debris. Gradually, over the space of about one year, the net and the junk that it has collected will descend closer to Earth and burn up in the frictional heat generated when it reaches the atmosphere. In the future, Jaxa plans to use space craft to attach nets to larger pieces of space junk – rocket engines or satellites that are no longer operational – and let gravity and the atmosphere complete the task of eradicating the threat. Jaxa is planning further trials next year and a functioning system could be deployed as early as 2019. –SCMP

C(Lie)mate #3 - What Doesn't Make The News
(Fading solar magnetics affecting earth/solar system)

Suspicious0bservers·975 videos

Published on 15 Nov 2013
For More: http://www.suspicious0bservers.org  (Music - "Mindless" followed by "Can't Stop" - by Nemes1s)

Primary Citations:

'The Magnetics of the Solar System'   (from channelling "The Recalibration of the Universe")
Live Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll, January 27, 2012  [paraphrased]

There is a shift going on in this planet.  The magnetic field of the earth is critical to your consciousness. Magnetics is a quantum energy. So is gravity, and so is light. You are surrounded by a quantum field - the magnetic field of the earth. If Human consciousness is going to change, magnetics will change …. your magnetics has moved greatly since 1989.  The magnetics of your entire planet has to recalibrate and it's going to need help. Your solar system is the engine of magnetic change for this planet.  In your solar system, the core is the sun. It sends out the solar wind, which is almost entirely magnetic. It's a magnetic energy that blasts out from the sun. That magnetic energy - the heliosphere - "blows" that magnetic wind against the magnetics of your own earth, and that changes your planet.

Watch for changes in your sun, they're a recalibration for you. Watch the sun, for it is in the process of shift. It is happening through intelligent design, the love of God and the Creator, changing things for your consciousness. It is a new way of thinking that is developing, literally touching the very DNA field of each Human. This changes the information within the DNA and allows the Human Being to capture and enhance attributes of a new reality it never had before.

Something has been on the way for a very long time. The magnetics of your solar system itself is changing. As your solar system moves through space it intersects certain attributes of space and this is changing some of the magnetics, which then become different from the way they ever were before. This then changes the sun. Do you see the cycle? One enhances the other in a fractal of circular reality. Your movement around the [galactic] center changes your solar system. The solar system's new position changes the sun's attributes. The sun's attributes are sent to the planet via the heliosphere and this affects your DNA.

Read the entire channelling "The Recalibration of the Universe" at :
http://www.kryon.com/k_channel11_Patagonia%201-12.html

Note:  Entire channelling can be read and listened to at :
http://www.ascensionnow.co.uk/the-recalibration-of-the-universe---kryon.html

Scientist Dr Rupert Sheldrake gave a TED Talk on the dogmas of scientific materialism. TED didn't like it too much and removed it from its Youtube channel. Thankfully it has been re-uploaded...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKHUaNAxsTg

http://www.sheldrake.org/

Follow this link for TED's statement on the matter and Dr. Sheldrake's response.

Published on 15 Dec 2012

From "Thrive: What on Earth Will it Take?"
To see full movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEV5AF...
Featured: Nassim Haramein, Steven Greer, Duane Elgin, Adam Trombley, Nikola Tesla, James Gilliland, Jack Kasher.

Peter Brown of the University of Western Ontario reports an ourburst of Daytime Craterid meteors on August 28th. "The Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar is detecting about 20 meteors per hour (ZHR)," he says. "This is the first time in five years this has happened."

The source of the shower is Comet Boattini (C/2007 W1). Because the comet's debris stream comes close to Earth, Jupiter and Saturn, it experiences gravitational perturbations which make the shower highly variable. Try listening to the Daytime Craterids on Space Weather Radio.
www.spaceweather.com

Scientists have discovered that our solar system is very unique. Earth is located in a star system that is by no means the norm in space. As a matter of fact, our solar system appears to be the exception. A stunning exception, in the way it’s laid out to actually foster the very conditions on Earth which makes life possible. In the universe at large, chaos, explosions, and mind-bending collisions between massive celestial bodies appear to be commonplace. After you watch this video, you may never see our little blue planet quite the same again.

http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2013/07/31/how-the-universe-works-clockwork-and-creation

THE UN BRACES FOR STORMY SPACE WEATHER: Forecasters say solar maximum is due in 2013. To prepare, the United Nations is taking steps to organize an international response to stormy space weather. Get the full story from Science@NASA.

VALENTINE'S DAY MAGNETIC STORM: Valentine's Day in Scandinavia began with a magnetic storm. Rob Stammes of the Polar Light Center in Lofoten, Norway, reports: "Our instruments recorded 2 degree swings in the local magnetic field, which induced strong electrical currents in the ground outside our lab." The needles on his chart recorder were swinging wildly.  "Overhead we saw some fantastic auroras," he adds.

 The storm was caused by a region of south-pointing magnetism in the solar wind that wafted past Earth during the early hours of Feb. 14th. The solar wind's south-pointing magnetic field partially canceled Earth's north-pointing magnetic field, opening a crack in our planet's magnetosphere. Solar wind poured in to fuel the storm.

ASTEROID FLYBY: At 9:30 am on Friday, Feb. 15th, asteroid 2012 DA14 will fly past Earth only 17,200 miles above our planet's surface. This will put it well inside the orbit of geosynchronous satellites, closer than any asteroid of the same size has come since regular sky surveys began in the 1990s. Researchers speculate that Earth's gravity might even cause seismic activity on the 50m-wide space rock. Go to www.spaceweather.com to view a computer simulation of the flyby, courtesy of NASA:

During the hours around closest approach, the asteroid will brighten until it resembles a star of 8th magnitude. Theoretically, that’s an easy target for backyard telescopes. The problem is speed. The asteroid will be racing across the sky, moving almost a full degree (or twice the width of a full Moon) every minute. That’s going to be hard to track. Only the most experienced amateur astronomers are likely to succeed. For the rest of us, NASA will broadcast the asteroid's flyby on NASA TV.

Asteroid 2012 DA14 is about the same size as previous asteroids responsible for the Meteor Crater in Arizona and the Tunguska Event in Siberia. Unlike those objects, however, 2012 DA14 will not hit Earth. Even if seismic activity breaks the asteroid apart, there is no danger; the fragments would continue along the same non-intersecting path as the original asteroid.
www.spaceweather.com