Welcome back to the Starcast for the week of March 22nd, 2026. I'm your host, Jay Shaffer, and with me is my co-host, Mike Lewinski. Howdy, Mike. Mike Lewinski: Good morning, Jay. Jay Shaffer: Well, so, uh, it's kind of… we've had a little bit of space weather over the last few days. What's going on? What's it looking like for the next couple days? Mike Lewinski: Yeah, Jay, we've got four sunspots that are facing the earth today, but they all have stable magnetic fields with a very low chance of further activity. There’s a 10% chance of M-class flares and a 1% chance of X-class flares over the next 48 hours. However, there's an active geomagnetic storm happening as we record this from a CME that erupted last week. Our planetary Kp index is currently at 6.67. I've caught a little bit of aurora in my time-lapse over the last two nights. Here at mid-latitudes, we still have a 40% chance of a minor geomagnetic storm today, dropping to 30% tomorrow. But at high latitudes, the chance of a severe storm is 80% today. Jay Shaffer: Yeah, just briefly, could you explain the Kp index to our viewers? What is the scale? Mike Lewinski: Right. So that scale is how we determine the level of activity. The range is that a Kp less than 5 is nothing. When we get to 5, we have a G1 storm; 6 is a G2 storm; 7 is a G3 storm; 8 and 9 are a G4 storm; and if we get above 9, we're calling that a G5. There is also the Hp30 index. The K index gets updated every 3 hours, and the Hp30 is updated every 30 minutes. If you’re standing out in minus 10 degrees hoping to see something, I look at Hp30 to see if it’s ticking up to a 5—then it’s time to go look. +1 Jay Shaffer: Okay, yeah, that remarkably great job explaining that. So… last week we had the new moon, an equinox, a geomagnetic storm, and a meteorite fall or two. Over the last couple evenings, we've been seeing a spectacular crescent moon and Venus together. Tonight and tomorrow night, March 22nd and 23rd, the waxing crescent moon will lie near the famous Pleiades star cluster, also known as the Seven Sisters. Also tonight, the moon will reach its perigee, its closest point to us, at 227,954 miles away. On the evening of March 24th, the thick waxing crescent moon will lie near Jupiter and stars like Capella and Betelgeuse. The first quarter moon falls on March 25th. +3 Mike Lewinski: Yeah, Jay, you know, our topic last week was on detecting and preventing the impact of large asteroids, and it turned out to be pretty timely. A massive sonic boom rocked Northeast Ohio and western Pennsylvania this past Tuesday morning. NASA has confirmed that a 7-ton meteor, roughly 6 feet in diameter, screamed across the sky at 45,000 miles per hour. The breakup unleashed energy equivalent to 250 tons of TNT. Professional meteorite hunters have already confirmed the recovery of several fragments in Medina County. Experts say these black stones are likely achondrites, rare space rocks that are older than Earth itself. +3 Mike Lewinski: And then just yesterday in the Houston area, another meteorite streaked over the sky at about 35,000 miles per hour. This one was a little smaller, weighing 1 ton. At least one fragment actually hit a house and landed in the kitchen. We’ll include a photo in our show notes showing the meteorite on the kitchen floor, approximately the size of a human hand. +1 Jay Shaffer: Yeah, and you know, the ethical thing to do is to turn those over to an educational institution rather than just putting them on the private market like eBay. The main thing to remember is the "charcoal briquette" look. +1 Mike Lewinski: That's right. In other news, SpaceX has just crossed a staggering milestone. As of this week, there are now more than 10,000 Starlink satellites orbiting the Earth. While these satellites provide high-speed internet, the volume of hardware is changing the night sky and interfering with both visual and radio telescopes. Experts are keeping a close watch on the Kessler syndrome, a theorized chain reaction of collisions that could make Earth's orbit a graveyard of debris. +3 Jay Shaffer: Dark Sky International is one of the organizations advocating against the million-plus satellites SpaceX is proposing for orbital servers. People can go to their site and sign a petition for public comment on the FAA and FCC approvals. Mike, I hear you added a new instrument to your home observatory? +2 Mike Lewinski: Sure thing, Jay. I set about building the first all-sky camera that I would operate on a permanent basis. I picked up a ZWO ASI676 with a 150-degree circular fisheye lens. I'm using the Indy All Sky software, which can track the ISS, other satellites, and even connect with my ADS-B receiver to track airplanes. I'm waiting on that Raspberry Pi 5 with 16 gigs to do the processing for timelapses. +4 Jay Shaffer: Why do you spend the money and the time and the headache doing all these science projects? Mike Lewinski: The longer I do this, the more skeptical I become that there are extraterrestrial crafts flying over the San Luis Valley. My cameras don't record anything of that sort; I can generally identify an airplane or a satellite. I’d be genuinely pleased to record something indisputably extraterrestrial, but night after night, I'm not seeing things I can't explain. +3 Jay Shaffer: I look at it as being a person of science—show me. I'll talk a bit about my projects. I was running TJ’s All Sky software with a Raspberry Pi HQ camera. This week I decided to upgrade to Indy All Sky as well. I also have my meteor cams, which are security cameras running the Global Meteor Network software. It uses plate solving to eliminate stars and aircraft to capture just meteors. These are part of the New Mexico Meteor Array, which uses triangulation to track them. +4 Jay Shaffer: We have Dark Sky Week coming up in April. There’s an art show in Taos highlighting astrophotography where I’ll be showing my timelapses. And I have to mention what I call "Aurora fishing"—putting out timelapses every night hoping to catch one. +2 Mike Lewinski: It sure was an interesting discussion. Thanks, Jay. Jay Shaffer: Thank you for checking out the podcast. Please be sure to comment, like, and subscribe. You can check out Mike's website at wilderness.com and mine at skylapser.com. From the Deep Sage 9 Observatory, this is Jay Shaffer and… +2 Mike Lewinski: Mike Lewinski wishing you all clear skies.