SpaceX Ionospheric Hole | 19 July 2023 | San Francisco Volcanic Field, Arizona, USA (Jeremy Perez)

Contains: Landscape

SpaceX Ionospheric Hole | 19 July 2023 | San Francisco Volcanic Field, Arizona, USA

A Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California left an exhaust trail that drifted across the Milky Way on the night of 19 July 2023. As the initial bluish-white sunlit display further to the west-southwest disappeared into the Earth's shadow, another unexpected phenomenon appeared southward. The camera started picking up a diffuse, bright red band. This part of the trail was not evident visually, especially over the Flagstaff light dome. Before I knew what it was, I figured that the red must be some sort of fluorescence that had separated itself from the main twilight display and didn’t need sunlight to illuminate it. After posting the image to Spaceweather.com, it was picked up and described as an ionospheric hole caused by the SpaceX launch firing engines through the F-layer of the ionosphere and causing a cascade of oxygen ions capturing electrons from the exhaust and fluorescing. The same effect occurred again a few nights later.

Please note: The following tables are updated every 24 hours.

Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	n/a
Started	n/a
Astrometry.net job	n/a
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

SpaceX Ionospheric Hole | 19 July 2023 | San Francisco Volcanic Field, Arizona, USA

SpaceX Ionospheric Hole | 19 July 2023 | San Francisco Volcanic Field, Arizona, USA

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Histogram

		...
You have no new notifications.

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

SpaceX Ionospheric Hole | 19 July 2023 | San Francisco Volcanic Field, Arizona, USA

SpaceX Ionospheric Hole | 19 July 2023 | San Francisco Volcanic Field, Arizona, USA

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Histogram

Notifications

AstroBin is in READ ONLY mode

Sorry :-(

Sorry :-(

Sorry :-(

Are you really sure?

Warning!

Warning!

Are you sure?

Report abuse

Slideshow settings

IOTD/TP stats (last [x] days)

Distribution of astrophotographers

Distribution of subject types

Distribution of data sources

Sorry

Sorry

Share

Upload new revision

Upload uncompressed source (XISF/FITS/PSD/TIFF)

Delete image and all its revisions?

Delete original image?

Delete all other versions?

Delete all revisions?

IOTD/TP stats

The following people like this image

The following people bookmarked this image

Warning

Flag malfunctioning thumbnails

Contains

Remove yourself as a collaborator

Plate-solving information