~Space Weather Update~ Growing New Sunspot~
LYRID METEOR SHOWER: Earth is approaching the debris field of ancient Comet Thatcher, source of the annual Lyrid meteor shower. Forecasters expect the shower to peak on April 21-22; a nearly-new moon on those dates will provide perfect dark-sky conditions for meteor watching. Usually the shower is mild (10-20 meteors per hour) but unmapped filaments of dust in the comet's tail sometimes trigger outbursts 10 times stronger. [video] [Lyrid chat] [more]
NO CME, NO PROBLEM: A CME expected to hit Earth on April 9th missed, but the Arctic lit up with auroras anyway. Yuichi Takasaka sends this report from the Northwest Territories of Canada: "Even though the CME missed, we had three outbreaks of Northern Lights at Prelude Lake." Here is one of them:
The source of the display was the IMF (interplanetary magnetic field), which tipped south on April 9th, opening a crack in Earth's magnetosphere. Solar wind poured in and fueled the auroras.
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