This is seriously off topic, but there was good viewing of comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS about an hour after local sunset here in Rhode Island tonight. It was fairly easy to find using a smartphone camera, but I had to wait a bit longer to see it with my naked eye. The full moon rising, even though on the other side of the sky, was so bright that it eventually washed out the comet.
Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS gets its name from the facilities that first spotted it back in 2023: the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Tsuchinshan means Purple Mountain) and the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS).
Solar Cycle 25 has been an exciting one for sure, with many X-level solar flares and a few excellent opportunities for those of us who live around 41 degrees latitude to see auroral activity.
This past week several notable flares corresponded with large Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) that were Earth effective. One of those flares impacted earth and produced a Major G4 Geomagnetic storm (in fact, it was just a tick below the level of Extreme G5). The CME impacted earth after 1500z Oct 10, causing the Interplanetary Magnetic Field (IMF/Bz) to point south, creating perfect conditions for aurora.
Here in RI, last light was around 6:45 PM local time and by 7:15 we were in a remote area with good views to the North, East, and West. The display was stunningly bright to the naked eye. At one point the red/pink color in the sky was so intense that I noticed the ground was reflecting the color. The photos below were taken between 23:20 and 23:30 UTC.
The Geomagnetic storm continued for almost 12 hours as shown in the Space Weather Prediction Center graph below.
As always two wonderful sources for Amateur Radio operators interested in solar condition are:
After making my first 10 contacts, I officially completed CWT #120 for 2024.
Completing CWT #120 was my last remaining goal for 2024.
Now I have to put some thought into goals for 2025!
Maybe it is the magic of a new month, or perhaps the cooler days, but today felt like an excellent day for an activation. Silver Springs park is just a few miles from my home, and has a couple of nice spots to park near the pond.
With a light mist falling, I was on the air just before 4 PM local time. I used my KH1 QRP rig, which puts out about 4 watts. less than a half-hour later I had 14 contacts in the log. The skies really opened up right as I was putting the antenna away (a mag-mounted 17′ quarter wave vertical).
Thanks to all the hunters who helped out!
There is a group of hams that have formed a global PBX called Hamshack Hotline, that allows hams to use VOIP phones to connect to each other. The service is free (donations are encouraged).
After checking their website, it appeared that a Cisco SPA525G2 was especially easy to provision. This phone is often available on the used market via eBay. Prices seem to run from the $30 to $50 range (shop around for sure). The provisioning process is simple: fill in a service ticket with a copy of your original license and a photo of MAC address of the phone. The most difficult part was discovering the internal network address assigned by my router. I expected it to identify it as Cisco, but it didn’t. In my case it began with the letters “spa” (the first three letters of the model name), and was followed by the MAC address. Within a few minutes I had a desk phone (great speaker phone too) on the Hamshack Hotline network.
I was surprised to find that Hamshack Hotline can connect to our club’s W1SYE repeater.
During the summer months, Bill Brown K4NYM, wasn’t on nearly as often as before – perhaps avoiding the heat, or dodging the many storms that Florida has endured. Even so, Bill and I worked each other 500 times. 100 of those contacts were at a single park, Florida Trail US-4559.