Upside down rainbows and other unusual sights

[Maria]

GIANTS PLAYING IN THE SNOW?

No, they are just trees. cf. www.spaceweather.com for Friday, March 9, 2018.

ARCTIC WINTER MIXES WITH SPRING: Seasons are changing on Earth as the March equinox approaches, now less than two weeks away. Last night in Enontekiö, Finland, Thomas Kast captured the transition in this rare photo of falling snowflakes and Northern Lights:

In his photo, spring is represented by green. Researchers have long known that auroras love equinoxes. During the weeks around the onset of spring, even gentle fluctuations in the solar wind can fill Arctic skies with verdant lights. The reason for this sensitivity has to do with the seasonal orientation of the sun's magnetic field--a phenomenon known as the "Russell-McPherron effect," named after the researchers who first studied and explained it .

Winter, of course, is represented by white. The snowy streaks in Kast's exposure signal that spring is nigh--but has not yet arrived.

[Luke]

Whew. At first look, I thought it was a meteor shattering over everything.

[Maria]

Whew. At first look, I thought it was a meteor shattering over everything.

At first it looked like a giant snowball fight to me.

[Maria]

Today, a glorious picture emerged of angel wings escorting Christ.

This particular aurora is called the "Hem of His Garment" and refers to the Robe of Christ.

03-11-2018_Kristin-Berg_Norway_Hem of His Garment.jpg (17.69 KiB) Viewed 11704 times

A CRACK IN EARTH'S MAGNETIC FIELD: This morning, during the early hours of March 10th, a crack opened in Earth's magnetic field. Solar wind poured in and "the sky exploded with auroras," reports Kristin Berg who sends this picture from Tromsø, Norway ...

The "crack" was pried opened by the solar wind itself. Magnetic fields in the solar wind interacted with Earth's magnetic field, partially cancelling our planet's defenses against the oncoming gas. In the jargon of space weather forecasters, "B sub z tipped south."

NASA and European spacecraft have been detecting these cracks for years. Some are as large as California, and sometimes they grow wider than the whole planet. They tend to form most often during weeks around equinoxes--a seasonal phenomenon known as the "Russell-McPherron effect," named after the researchers who first studied and explained it.

Please see this website to view the aurora in greater detail: http://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php ... &year=2018

[Maria]

NOCTILUCENT CLOUDS INTENSIFY OVER EUROPE: NASA's AIM spacecraft is seeing electric-blue noctilucent clouds (NLCs) spread across the Arctic Circle. Observers on the ground are beginning to see them, too. Over the weekend we received reports of sightings from England, Scotland, Norway, Northern Ireland--and this incredible shot from Denmark:

I love those wildflowers. Such a glorious photo. Noctilucent clouds are the wispy electric blue cloud, but in this case, they have almost taken on a purple hue.

"The noctilucent clouds were intense over Northern Jutland on June 3rd," says photographer Ruslan Merzlyakov. "I was totally amazed, how bright they were compared to their first appearance just 3 days earlier."

What are NLCs? You can think of them as frosted meteoroids. Noctilucent clouds form when summertime wisps of water vapor waft up to the top of Earth's atmosphere and crystallize around specks of meteor smoke. The resulting swarms of tiny ice crystals glow electric blue when struck by high altitude sunlight.

Read more at http://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php ... &year=2018

[Barbara]

Thanks for explaining that, Maria. It was not really quite clear which were the noctilucent clouds.
What a gorgeous scene, indeed ! Do you have any idea what kind of wildflowers those are ?
The color scheme of the picture is soothing to the nerves and refreshing. Thanks for posting all these photos, each more incredible than the next.

[Maria]

Thanks for explaining that, Maria. It was not really quite clear which were the noctilucent clouds.
What a gorgeous scene, indeed ! Do you have any idea what kind of wildflowers those are ?
The color scheme of the picture is soothing to the nerves and refreshing. Thanks for posting all these photos, each more incredible than the next.

Below is a picture of the alpine lupins (from Wikipedia). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lupinus

Lupinus, commonly known as lupin or lupine (North America), is a genus of flowering plants in the legume family, Fabaceae. The genus includes over 200 species, with centers of diversity in North and South America.[2] Smaller centers occur in North Africa and the Mediterranean.[2][3] They are widely cultivated, both as a food source and as ornamental plants.

Beware as these beautiful lupins are in the same family as peanuts, so people with allergies to peanuts can become allergic to all beans and peas.

One of my neighbors planted some lupins in her yard. Soon we found them in our yard. They were the bluebonnets of Texas as shown below: