Thursday 27 February 2014

Auroral storm

Kp value of 7. Aurora visible all across UK. Not here overlooking city of London. Everywhere though! 

Scotland

Norwich

Saturday 22 February 2014

Aurora borealis

Last night 143 students and teachers witnessed an amazing auroral show. This first picture shows the greens, pinks and yellows. More to come.



Tuesday 11 February 2014

Science Week at Nonsuch

Get out your planner... 

Book in Friday 1.05pm on the 21st March for a keynote speech from Dr. Nick Achilleos from the UCL Centre for Planetary Sciences. He has been working on the Cassini probe around Saturn and is currently designing a mission to Ganymede - the largest moon in the Solar System orbiting Jupiter every seven days. 

Artists's Conception of Cassini Saturn Orbit Insertion

Artists's Conception of Cassini Saturn Orbit Insertion


File:Ganymede g1 true 2.jpg

Image of Ganymede's anti-Jovian hemisphere taken by the Galileo probe. Lighter surfaces, such as in recent impacts, grooved terrain and the whitish north polar cap at upper right, are enriched in water ice.

http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucapnac/
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/search.php?q=Cassini
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganymede_(moon)


Monday 10 February 2014

Maunder Minimum link to the Little Ice Age?

There is still a very poor understanding of the correlation between low sunspot activity and cooling temperatures. During the period 1645–1715, in the middle of the Little Ice Age, there was a period of low solar activity known as the Maunder Minimum.

File:Sunspot Numbers.png
The Spörer Minimum has also been identified with a significant cooling period between 1460 and 1550. Other indicators of low solar activity during this period are levels of the isotopes carbon-14 and beryllium-10.

On the other hand, in a 2012 paper, Miller et al. link the Little Ice Age to an "unusual 50-year-long episode with four large sulfur-rich explosive eruptions and notes that "large changes in solar irradiance are not required."

What do you think?


More at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/frost-fair-of-london



article-image

Wednesday 5 February 2014

Solar Activity

Using helioviewer.org our Y10 students imaged the Sun in multi-frequencies last week. We're looking out for solar activity, hopefully a CME heading our way, ready for our trip to seek out the Northern Lights in two weeks.

Yasmin shared this video:


We are hoping for good solar activity and the magnetic field Bz aligning south. More at http://rossellet.com/aurora_tracker.htm