Night shining

look up at dusk or dawn and enjoy the beauty

Dear word explorer,

I have not mentioned solar activity recently, but our sun is continuing to seethe as it hits its solar maximum.

Check out this image, from amateur astronomer Eduardo Schaberger Poupeau, which summarises what’s been happening so far this year:

Six months of sunspots in 2024 by Eduardo Schaberger Poupeau.

He says (via a translation):

Using images obtained by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), I have created a composition of 182 images (one for each day of these six months) in which you can see all the sunspots that have transited the disk of our star from January 1 to January June 30th.

It’s useful to remember that the sun is approximately 109 times the size of Earth, and some of the sunspots are larger than our planet!

Since the beginning of the year, the sun has been working like a popcorn machine, flinging flares and shooting CMEs across our system from those sunspots. Sometimes the plasma emissions graze Earth’s magnetosphere, and sometimes they wallop Mercury, Venus or Mars.

The sun: the lifegiver of our world, and at times, our rudest relative. Its fiery burps and farts are difficult disruptions for the family members in closest orbit.

Although, when the sun goes on a plasma pelting spree, we are gifted with spectacular Northern or Southern Lights. The last sublime lightshow was around 10 May, but if you look up at the dusk sky at the moment you might spot something just as beautiful: noctilucent clouds (also known as polar mesospheric clouds).

Photo by Joshua Humpfer on Unsplash. Taken on 31 July, 2019.

First off, let’s enjoy that beautiful word, noctilucent, or 'night shining'. These formations occur every year during the summer in the northern hemisphere, but during a solar maximum period they are usually not as visible. Yet, this weekend there have been extraordinary displays across Europe. Why is that?

Noctilucent clouds (NLCs) are formed in the mesosphere — roughly 50 to 86 kilometres (30 to 54 miles) above the surface of Earth — when it becomes so cold that ice clings to circulating dust particles. Thanks to NASA’s Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) satellite, launched in 2007, scientists have begun to understand fully how these clouds are created.

The NLCs are best viewed in northerly locations with a clear, wide patch of sky. Around thirty minutes after sunset look west, or in the morning check high up in the north-east as the sun is rising. They appear as electric blue-white tendrils that shimmer because the ice is reflecting the sun from below the horizon.

During a solar maximum period the heating of Earth’s magnetosphere should affect the creation of these fragile clouds. It’s been theorised that two factors might be contributing to their stability at the moment.

In January 2022 the undersea volcano, Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai, located in the Tongan archipelago in the southern Pacific Ocean, erupted.

The seamount produced the biggest atmospheric explosion ever recorded by modern instrumentation - far bigger even than any nuclear bomb test conducted after WWII.

It displaced some 10 cubic km of rock, ash and sediment, much of it exiting through the volcano's mouth, or caldera, to shoot straight up into the sky, like a "shotgun blast" as one geologist called it.¹

This vapour may remain in the mesosphere where NLCs form. Plus, since January, 124 rockets (mostly thanks to SpaceX) have been launched, and the water from their exhausts may also be lodging in the mesosphere. This is the first time there have been so many launches during a solar maximum period.

If it is a contributing factor, it’s a good example of the unintended environmental impacts of our technology. Is it alerting us to a potential long-term problem? We shall find out eventually…

‘Life Saving Patrol’ by Edward Moran, 1893.

In Ireland, the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) is the executive agency tasked with the responsibility for nature conversation, wildlife protection and the presentation and preservation of Irish National Parks and Nature Reserves. Crazy as it may seem, our country has only seven National Parks, but we have seventy-seven Nature Reserves.

Long-term readers of this newsletter will know that I’m a regular visitor to the Coole Park Nature Reserve. I dropped by for a walk last week and bumped into an acquaintance I haven’t seen in several years. It turns out she now works for the NPWS and we chatted in its Visitor Centre. I don’t go in often since I’ve seen the exhibits multiple times, and I have most of the available literature (being a fiend for information booklets and historical pamphlets about the area and wildlife).

So I immediately noticed a beautifully illustrated art book called Tarraingthe chuig an Dúlra (Drawn to Nature).

The book contains reproductions of watercolours and line drawings by Alarnagh Barrett Mc Ginley (Education Guide at the Glenveagh National Park²) and has plenty of blank space if you wish to add your own notes or drawings. It’s available for free at any of the NPWS sites.

It seems that Mc Ginley drew these pieces depicting Irish wildlife and fauna during her free time, and somehow, magically, the idea of collecting them into an educational art book for the public was mooted and implemented.

A note at the beginning says:

‘The illustrations in this book encourage us to pause and notice nature around us. Add your own notes, illustrations and observations, building your knowledge and connection with Irish wildlife and habitats. It is our hope that by creating this deeper connection to nature you will be encouraged to actively protect our precious natural heritage.’

I certainly approve of this initiative!

Finally, a reminder that my Moon Hook fiction series continues every Thursday, delivered via this newsletter.

Samples of Mc Ginley's artwork.

1. ‘Tonga volcano eruption continues to astonish’ by Jonathan Amos for the BBC web site.

2. I visited the Glenveagh National Park in Co. Donegal last year, and it was breath-taking. I highly recommend it!