I barely passed freshman physics. I had literally no idea what real physics was, what profs did, or what research was at the time. 18 yo me thought the classes were just a legalized irrelevant form of torture. Undergrad research & mentoring opened my 👀, thanks
@nasa
scholarship!
Hundreds of reports of Northern Lights coming in from multiple locations across Europe. A G2 geomagnetic storm is ongoing currently. This footage is from Stanča, southeastern Slovakia.
Got home with some nasty AGU COVID, my 1st case. The science was great but the health risks are so large and unmitigated and normalized, I have very mixed feelings. Basically scientists are condoning a super spreader is what it feels like. I tried to mask but did not do enough.
@KateClancy
uggggg.... there should be levels for how bad these get. Metrics maybe. If they reach a certain level, they have to pay more for your self-care. Stickers you can give out that say 'I mean well but I am part of the problem'. Or maybe stickers with a secret color code... ???🤨
Continuing on the technical terms, ;) the main phase of this storm (according to the real-time Dst) is -231 nT. Nearly superstorm level (-250 nT) and not seen for *many* years I believe. read more about red aurora here:
Mother forking shirtballs, it's really kicking off at STEREO-A (which is a few hours ahead of Earth, in solar wind terms.)
Total field ~80nT, with a lot of that southward, maybe -75 nT?!. This is going to be big when it reaches Earth.
What's on tap for tonight? No one knows! Currently in the recovery phase of this historic storm which still means chances for significantly active aurora at times, esp in the northern half of the US... However, one of the Sun's many sneezes that are expected could hit anytme
Heads up for aurora chasers worldwide tonight, please check out and make reports for citizen science at
@TweetAurora
, and thank you! There are possibilities for a repeat of the major event like one month ago...
@FaiolaLabUCI
You could almost take it as a compliment, because you're so good that you've triggered them to respond. It's more about them needing to feel superior than your talk needing anything. The only person I tolerate this from is my actual dad. 😉
What a great trip! I am super fortunate to have visited, spoken about
@tweetaurora
& seen aurora in 3 countries this year. And, after studying it for 24 years my folks got to see it too. 💜💚Big thanks to
@CNLastro
for this shot!
For the history buffs, this is a very interesting account of a geomagnetic super storm back in 1941. - note I am still looking for a good basic "classic" explanatory article on geomagnetic storms for
@TweetAurora
, anyone have any tips?
WHY, oh why does citizen science data require 'extra scrutiny'??
We've shown it's abundant & high quality - why, don't you (traditional 👨🏼🔬) believe published new results & that the people who pioneered this technique can use it properly? So tired of this 🐔/🥚💰💩problem!
@TweetAurora
It's going to be an active next few days for aurora citizen science! You can help the scientists build better models and help each other catch the lights at !
@DoNASAScience
@SciStarter
Amazing aurora all night last night and a curious phenomena some folks observed - has anyone seen stars bob around while in a foreground of aurora?
@TweetAurora
@AlbertaAurora
Beyond grateful for the thousands of reports we have received at
@tweetaurora
. It's sinking in that this storm was probably the most photographed in history, & volunteers' contributions will be part of discoveries in heliophysics research for years to come
We're here to help during this historic solar storm! Sign up for free alerts at . Then make reports to help others near you get cluster alerts like TX and AL last night--especially powerful! With so many reports the site may be slow, please be patient.
Ladies, if he:
-shows up unexpectedly in the middle of the night
-has his head way above the clouds
-moves really fast from east to west
-creates a lot of excitement among electrons
-refuses to be characterized as your typical aurora
He's not your man. He's
@STEVEPhenomena
If you're a rare one w/ clear skies tonight, you might get lucky: give us a report at please & thank you. If it's cloudy, check out NODDAC or Maine cams online. It's about 1 hour to wait now that activity has hit nearby & will build gradually, probably.
Impact! One of the CMEs has just hit our upstream satellites at L1, and should be hitting Earth shortly.
Now, it;s time to cross our fingers for some prolonged southward Bz, and don't forget to check aurora webcams, Aurorasaurus, and social media for reports!
Good luck tonight!
Whoa, the power of STEVE continues to wow, as our
@nasagoddard
video (w me &
@tweetaurora
) is embedded in the NYT article.
Apparently that's super rare. Or maybe it was the earrings?
Steve, a Famous Northern Light, Stays Mysterious (and Keeps His Name)
Wow all of the amazing, free (to anyone!!!) live-streamed
#agu18
sessions from
@theagu
are already available!!! 😻
Just sign up here:
You can check out amazing sessions on citizen science, sexual harassment, implicit bias, climate, & the AGU Centennial
Just measured my rain gauge. It's comforting to continue a daily citizen science practice like
@CoCoRaHS
or
@inaturalist
while social distancing. Makes it seem more normal. Thanks to all the projects
@CitSciAssoc
@SciStarter
for making it accessible to all!
@StephEvz43
Thanks for sharing this. What works for me, is that I seriously take terrible notes, & can say so. You can too. I get bored and only note my judgement of important stuff. No one else should read my notes. Next job, take terrible notes. 😁
@KateClancy
@PenguinGalaxy
Or maybe you just get a bunch of stickers/business cards with backgrounds that range from 💚(true ally) to 🍋(daft) 🍊(garden variety sexist) 😡(warning!) 🏴(chivalrous pile of 💩) & say, check out the
#metooSTEM
site, we have more tailored info (including color code explanation)
@Indrajeet_Human
@DrLindzyONeal
Realized this in undergrad, with the twins who wore bowties on test days. Also my mentor's thesis acknowledgements, thanking her grandparents who all (4!) had math degrees. My parents just asked if there were jobs in my field when I told them I wasn't going to be an engineer. 🙏
@ZJAyres
Pomodoros & any procrastination techniques that work for you. Timed writing warmup (on any topic), then write without filtering yourself, edit in crayon, whatever it takes. Be kind to yourself. Therapy. Supportive advisor. All these things helped me, but I definitely struggled.
Among the many things we don't know about the stretchy auroral oval... Is it ever just one thin green line? How often, where, why and why not? What is the base state of the system? Thanks for inspiration
@AngryTheInch
p.s. usually I would just call this a quiet arc
CAVEATS: We won't know until about an hour before it hits how strong this really is, & even if the model prediction of a hit was correct or not, AND the model-predicted time of arrival has a LARGE error bar of ~+/- 10 hours. Watch Twitter and solar wind data for a confirmed hit
Direct hit! Coronagraph data & NOAA prediction model confirms the latest
#solarstorm
launch should indeed hit Earth! Impact near mid-afternoon May 11 (UTC). Expect
#emergency
,
#hamradio
&
#GPS
reception issues on Earth's night side.
#Aurora
possible down to mid-latitudes!
Hey
@TweetAurora
If I were near the US Canadian border tonight I would be salivating at the prospect of a comet AND aurora shot. Please report some beautiful citizen science to (web not app) and help others be successful! Thanks!
I've gotten severely behind on my Kp blanket, but have still been updating my spreadsheet with daily max Kp as a visual.
Despite a slow start to the year, activity started to pick up in March & May is now the most colorful/active thus far w/ still a third of the month to go!
Have you ever wondered what constellations are in your aurora photo
@TweetAurora
, or how to match the stars & calibrate your image for citizen science? The free tool can do that automatically & more! Give it a try, & let me know if you have questions.
What is the difference & definition of discrete and diffuse aurora? This is a question we are asked a lot at
@TweetAurora
. Would this classic review paper by T. Neil Davis would be a good group read? Could we update the figures with good 📷? Open access:
So much this!
🌟HOW OUR ASSUMPTIONS AND VOCABULARY CAN LIMIT OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE WORLD...
🌟WE CAN ONLY ASK QUESTIONS THAT WE HAVE IMAGINATION FOR...
🌟WE NEED EVERYONE TO ASK THE QUESTIONS & WE ALL NEED TO LISTEN!
Whether you study lichens or substorms, the same lesson👇
“We can only ask questions that we have imagination for." This is about a v. cool new lichen study. But it's also about how our assumptions and vocabulary can limit our understanding of the world--a lesson that lichens have repeatedly taught us.
A Montana State University-led ballooning project has confirmed that during a solar eclipse, the atmosphere undergoes significant cooling and changes in wind patterns. This supports a hypothesis about the atmospheric effects of eclipses, demonstrating that temperature drops and
Aurora was breathtaking last night. Here are my matching panorama shots from 8:11 and 7:30 UTC at Plumas, Manitoba for these satellite passes.
@TweetAurora
@TamithaSkov
@UWCIMSS
Excellent thread and modeling by all agencies! Wait and watch for aurora, and help report &
@donasascience
with (
@tweetaurora
). When can I see aurora, discussed here:
When are we going to talk about the many many many valid reasons to change the AGU fall meeting, esp. the time of year and size?
Anyone who missed out, you missed wisely and hopefully will get to enjoy your holidays.
Did you know comets have two tails, one from dust and one from ions?! The faint one follows the solar wind. More here () and in the new press release linked below. Go Parker!
We're really excited about this: on July 5th - less than two days after it's perihelion - our
@USNRL
WISPR camera on
@NASASun
#ParkerSolarProbe
captured this beautiful star-filled image of comet C/2020 F3 (
#NEOWISE
)! Check out them tails!
@FaiolaLabUCI
I definitely agree. Was suggesting a possible reframing so that it doesn't get internalized to undermine one's confidence. Btw a course on how not to be patronizing would be 💯
@betterallies
.
I totally learned about HUXT, a new open source experimental solar wind model (with stats!), from an amazing group today. Thanks to
@TanyaMelnik1972
& Upper Midwest Aurora Chasers
#spwx
community. Lots of CME's are close!
Very informative
@nwsswpc
press conference going on right now regarding the G4 Storm Watch (being recorded and will be released later I think). Good nuance regarding uncertainty on storm impact and timing!
#waitforit
SWPC is doing a a press briefing at 10am EDT pertaining to the forecasted solar storm and G4 Watch for the 11th.
Prior to this, for those that could be affected, "SWPC has notified the operators of these systems so they can take protective action.".
Black hole reconnection! I just heard about this new research and it's so exciting to me to learn that the physics of magnetic reconnection which we can study and simulate in our magnetosphere is now being *applied* to the rest of the universe where it is so desperately needed!
Press release on our new paper (with
@ProfSeraMarkoff
and
@Alf2508
) showing that magnetic reconnection can power flares from nearby the event horizon of a black hole!
This excellent paper by He et al. & this blog post by
@tweetaurora
describe many types of low latitude red auroral emissions. Rapid changes in COTS camera technologies now mean reports are very difficult to quantify or compare...
Sunday scientist thoughts: Like many things in life, aurora are never guaranteed, nor are they impossible. Just somewhere, in the grey area of chance. Their beauty is enhanced as delayed satisfaction enhances happiness. Welcome to the wait...
@TweetAurora
Saw an amazing substorm last night, right at midnight with fast motion overhead, so awesome to see aurora first drifting west & then after midnight racing east. First arcs start in the northeast from hot tub, builds south over the cabins, then explodes back north over the tipi.
¿Qué le espera a la
@NASA
en el 2019? Estamos preparando misiones tripuladas a la Luna, innovando tecnologías de vuelo, llevando experimentos en la Estación Espacial
@Space_Station
y haciendo descubrimientos sobre nuestro planeta, nuestro sistema solar y más allá.
👉What an amazing opportunity for a special somebody to work (part-time) on citizen science w/ a National Geographic fellowship:
Even more amazing would be w/ Aurorasaurus! Talk to us
@TweetAurora
if you're interested-due May 14 so don't delay! 🤩
#citsci
There's gonna be an open
@STEVEPhenomena
conference in October, and citizen scientists can present and maybe even get travel funding. If you are at all interested, please fill out the survey here, today: (I am just a messenger on this one)
✍️ Hot off an actual press, Big Data takes on the Universe in the new American Scientist
@amscimag
Spoiler alert, big data WINS in my article featuring STEVE, Aurorasaurus, citizen science, 📷 by
@JunWang71
@YEGHugo
& Krista Trinder
#myfirstmagazine
✨
'Aurora Chaser' - my newest timelapse film!
All of these clips were taken during my recent trip to Churchill, MB in September.
Please let me know what you think!
#aurora
#northernlights
Living the
@tweetaurora
Helio Big Year dream! Never thought we would see this in Washington state w/ Bz north. The night is young and just gonna get crazier. Please report to , your reports create clusters that alert people in Texas (new cluster - wow!)
Yes,
@TweetAurora
is back online thanks to Kaushal our new
@NASASpaceSciEdu
developer!!! Just in time for aurora! Much thanks to the citizen scientists whom we have missed while our maps were missing.
Wow, reunited with my 5th grade teacher after my Saturday Citizen Science talk! 😍 Hello again, Miss Wendler. Thanks to the WW Rural Library, "Imagine, Inform, and Inspire," the feeling is mutual.
PSA for
#AGU18
conveners: if your session has 25% women, your oral session should not have 1 woman out of 9 talks! 🤯
I🧡 that I can cite
@theAGU
's diversity policy to fix this.
#implicitbias
Frank Olsen took this amazing picture of the effects from the
#NASA
Azure rocket launches from
@AndoyaSpace
.
@romsenter
applauds this achievement with the Grand Challenge initiative.
Thanks to Tara for reminding me that virtual hugs can be felt in the mind. Sending virtual hugs to all.
Sheltering In Love (Part 1) - Tara Brach via
@TaraBrach
JUST IN: More than 40 South Bay school principals are in quarantine after being exposed to COVID-19 during an in-person meeting to plan the reopening of schools.
If you've ever wanted to capture the northern lights -- you've got to watch this! 🤩
Aurora chaser and photographer
@Vincent_Ledvina
joined
@IanOliverWX
and
@BrigitMahoneyTV
to talk about the best conditions and places to capture them!
Full video:
Absolutely fascinating talk
#ESWW15
by Delores Knipp on the 1972 Carrington-like storm that actually exploded 25 US Navy mines in the Haifong Sea. Big mystery, Dst was only -125 nT for this storm, but the mines were sensitive to dB/dt (a big fast change in magnetic field). 🧲🧭💣
@_Astro_Nerd_
Serious answer, someone who listens, inspires, and has vision for you even when you don't know where to go because they share their experience. More formally, you might like to check out the book "The Mentee's Guide", or this older free version:
What's happening in the sky this unusual night? Most striking in the featured 4.5-hour 360-degree panoramic video, perhaps, is the pink and purple aurora. That's because this night, encompassing May 11, was famous for its auroral skies around the world. As the night progresses,
OMG it's so PINK! I regret NOTHING! Quite pleased with
@TweetAurora
's 2nd ever printed 3d printable MAGNETOSPHERE model - now in my hands and coming soon to
#AGU21
. 💗💗💗 to
@bubblyplasma
for finding a shop & making this happen. More info:
😍 WOWZERS did this cool podcast
@wowintheworld
do a PHENOMENAL job explaining aurora &
@stevephenomena
with amazing shoutouts to CITIZEN SCIENCE.
Who explains subauroral ion drifts to kids?
@absolutelymindy
&
@guyraz
that's who!
An Aurora Named Steve
YES, it's August, best month on the
@NASA
calendar due to
@STEVEPhenomena
and citizen science feature (also the awesome ☀️🎈Bob Lin
@UCBerkeley
)! What an honor this is for all of us, and an incredible photo by Krista Trinder Get yours here:
So where is the
#starman
right now? We have some good real time estimates for what/where/how strong the radiation belts are from the Van Allen Probes measurements... Gonna check them out & share.
-268 nT and still dropping like a rock. I've seen solar wind going 800 km/s before, but don't think I've ever personally seen this strong of B fields (60 nT) in the solar wind near-Earth data!
Sigh, it should not take two female experts (with 40 years of experience between them) 3 tries and a video telecon to correct one dude (with less than 1 year of experience) out of his misunderstanding of their instrument... And sadly, that is one of the more self-aware 🛰️ dudes.
🤩 as a mere space plasma physicist and dark matter skeptic I really enjoyed
@skdh
's cool video on the topic's recent status... and I still submit quietly that plasma physicists need to be in the loop to help breakthrough the universe's invisible quagmires
Revived for day 6 of sciencing! Let me know if you're interested in a
@TweetAurora
lunch! 4 talks in a row by women about magnetosphere/ionosphere coupling!