Jackson

Shortwave radio signals can travel thousands of miles, bouncing between the ionosphere and the Earth’s surface to cross entire oceans. During solar maximum, that distance increases dramatically. Understanding why shortwave signals travel farther at solar maximum comes down to one chain of events: more sunspots produce more radiation, which ionizes the upper atmosphere more intensely, … Read more

Every time you turn on your HF transceiver, an invisible battle is happening 200 miles above your head. Solar radiation is slamming into Earth’s atmosphere, ionizing gas molecules, and creating the reflective layers that bounce your radio signals across continents. Learning how to read solar data to predict HF radio propagation transforms those numbers on … Read more

There is nothing quite like standing at the edge of a still lake on a freezing night, watching green ribbons of light dance across the sky and mirror themselves perfectly in the water below. Learning how to photograph the aurora and its reflection on a lake is one of the most rewarding challenges in all … Read more

Standing under a sky full of dancing green light is an experience that changes you. But capturing that moment with your camera in a way that actually matches what your eyes saw? That is where things get tricky, and the white balance setting you choose makes all the difference. After shooting the aurora borealis in … Read more

On February 3, 2022, SpaceX launched 49 Starlink satellites from Kennedy Space Center into a clear predawn sky. Everything looked routine. Within 48 hours, 38 of those satellites would be falling back to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere in one of the most expensive space weather lessons in history. The cause was a geomagnetic … Read more

Every time the Sun erupts in our direction, something invisible happens 200 miles above your head. Earth’s upper atmosphere puffs up like a balloon, and the satellites circling our planet suddenly find themselves flying through thicker air. This is why geomagnetic storms make low-orbit satellites fall faster, and the consequences are real. In February 2022, … Read more

In February 2022, SpaceX watched helplessly as up to 40 brand-new Starlink satellites failed to reach their target orbits after a geomagnetic storm. The cause was not a rocket malfunction or a software bug. It was something far more fundamental: the Sun had heated and expanded Earth’s upper atmosphere, increasing atmospheric drag on the satellites … Read more

On March 13, 1989, the entire province of Quebec went dark in less than 90 seconds. Six million people lost power. The cause was not a hurricane, a cyberattack, or equipment failure. It was a geomagnetic storm triggered by a coronal mass ejection that had left the sun three days earlier. A geomagnetic storm is … Read more

In November 2025, the most powerful solar storm in nearly 20 years slammed into Earth’s magnetic field, triggering widespread auroras and raising an important question for anyone flying that week: how much extra radiation do passengers actually absorb during a solar storm? The headlines were dramatic, and if you were boarding a transatlantic flight that … Read more

Imagine cruising at 38,000 feet over the North Atlantic, hours from the nearest land-based radio tower, when your high-frequency (HF) radio suddenly goes silent. No static, no atmospheric noise, just nothing. You switch frequencies, try backup bands, and still get nothing. This is not a equipment failure. The Sun has just unleashed a solar flare, … Read more