What plant will survive in an office with no windows? Peter will inform us when this is available. Making me jealous to be on the ground in Mountain View, Peter says that the aurora is “spectacular” – and they have some great video and stills of the aurora and meteors, so look forward to some stunning graphics soon. The plane will be making its turn in about 15 minutes to start heading back south, but of course observation will be continuing. After all, it only lasted 38 minutes! The team has witnessed a flurry of meteors in the last few minutes – the rate is still high, and the numbers still fluctuating up and down. They should be starting to view in about 15 minutes. Choose a destination folder for the downloaded image from the popup menu in the action view. Team members are taking their first break, crowding into the cockpit to view the amazing aurora, best seen off the right side of the plane. The ESA SPOSH camera recorded this stunning view of the Aurora near the turnaround point above the Arctic circle.

The actual flight path took us above the Arctic circle. The team is now “way up into the Northern Territories” according to the pilot, above the Arctic Circle. It is now dark enough for the team to start filming the sky – the instruments are in the final setting-up stage. The team is very excited and pleased with the mission – and the confirmation of many of the predictions and models. Happy New Year, and thanks for joining us in this mission! Peter reports that the visuals from this mission will be stunning. Jeremy has already obtained some beautiful digital photographs of some nice, long, slow meteors – Peter predicts another Astronomy Photo of the Day! We humans like to think of reality as a nice, stable place, where various stuff stays in the same place unless we want it to go somewhere else. Gyroscopic effects are also central to toys like yo-yos and Frisbees. It’s kind of like a cosmic bull’s-eye. Juergen Wolf and Karsten Schindler captured this Quadrantid amidst airglow low above the horizon. Juergen Wolf and Karsten Schindler captured this Quadrantid above the cloud deck. Juergen Wolf and Karsten Schindler captured this Quadrantid meteor amidst aurora. Jeremie Vaubaillon captured this Quadrantid meteor just above the wing of the aircraft.

Jeremie Vaubaillon recorded this sequence of images of the Aurora. This display may have been part of the very first sequence of Aurora in the new solar cycle, cycle 24. NOAA announced the start of the new solar cycle on January 5. See also: Aurora animation (5.18 Mbyte) from images taken by Jason Hatton using a Nikon D50 camera with allsky 10.5 mm f2.8 lens. Last year was the hottest year since modern records began, brought about in part by a strong El Niño event, a Pacific weather system that can affect sea and air temperatures around the world, but also by strong underlying trends. This preliminary report needs a few more hours of observing before it can be confirmed. Stay tuned for more on this. They have their first confirmed spectra, and there will be more. So far, no further great spectra, but they are still hoping to get more. They are still taking videos, and the rate is continuing to decrease. Aboard LADEE is the Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD), which achieved super-fast download speeds of 622 megabits per second (Mbps) and an upload rate of 20 Mbps.

We tend to be interested in the second definition, but that third one is interesting and unexpected — maybe that’s what all of the hype is about? One idea is to arrange your shelves so that the books you use the most are the easiest to access, while the ones you rarely need live on the highest, lowest and furthest-away-from-your-desk shelves. Why should I use a virtual office? It is believed that the peak was reached at 2:12 UT (6:12 PST), which explains why there was a delay in reporting! The team has been observing meteors for about half an hour now – this seems to indicate that the peak will be early, matching the model predictions. The peak recorded 110/hour, with a mean so far for the flight of 100/hour. The team is now seeing about 90/hour, but this may yet ramp up over the next few hours. The plane is now over southern Oregon, and the crew and scientists are enjoying a beautiful sunset in blue skies. The plane is now over the Northern Territories, heading for the Aurora Borealis, which can be seen in the distance already.