Spotless Days Current Stretch: 0 days
2025 total: 0 days (0%)
2024 total: 0 days (0%)
2023 total: 0 days (0%)
2022 total: 1 day (<1%)
2021 total: 64 days (18%)
2020 total: 208 days (57%)
2019 total: 281 days (77%)
2018 total: 221 days (61%)
2017 total: 104 days (28%)
2016 total: 32 days (9%)
2015 total: 0 days (0%)
2014 total: 1 day (<1%)
2013 total: 0 days (0%)
2012 total: 0 days (0%)
2011 total: 2 days (<1%)
2010 total: 51 days (14%)
2009 total: 260 days (71%)
2008 total: 268 days (73%)
2007 total: 152 days (42%)
2006 total: 70 days (19%)
Updated 30 Mar 2025
Thermosphere Climate Index
today: 24.83x1010W Warm
Max: 49.4x1010 W Hot (10/1957)
Min: 2.05x1010 W Cold (02/2009) explanation | more data:gfx, txt
Updated 29 Mar 2025
Cosmic RaysSolar Cycle 25 is intensifying, and this is reflected in the number of cosmic rays entering Earth's atmosphere. Neutron counts from the University of Oulu's Sodankyla Geophysical Observatory show that cosmic rays reaching Earth are slowly declining--a result of the yin-yang relationship between the solar cycle and cosmic rays.
Oulu Neutron Counts Percentages of the Space Age average:
today: -6.6% Low
48-hr change: +0.5%
Max: +11.7% Very High (12/2009)
Min: -32.1% Very Low (06/1991) explanation |more data
Updated 30 Mar 2025 @ 0700 UT
Planetary K-index
Now: Kp=
2.67 quiet
24-hr max: Kp= 2.67 quiet explanation | more
data
Interplanetary Mag. Field
Btotal: 5.88 nT
Bz: -0.29 nT south more data: ACE, DSCOVR Updated: Today at 1152 UT
Coronal Holes: 30 Mar 25
Earth is inside a stream of solar wind flowing from this large southern coronal hole. Credit: NASA/SDO | more data
Polar Stratospheric Clouds
Colorful Type II polar stratospheric clouds (PSC) form when the temperature in the stratosphere drops to a staggeringly low -85C. NASA's MERRA-2 climate model predicts when the air up there is cold enough:
On Mar 30, 2025, the Arctic stratosphere is much too hot for Type II clouds. | more data.
Noctilucent Clouds
The southern season for noctilucent clouds (NLCs) is finished. The first clouds were detected over Antarctica on Nov. 19, 2024, and they vanished again on Feb. 21, 2025. The action will shift to the north pole in late May 2025. Until then, the map will remain blank. Updated: Feb. 21, 2025
An instrument onboard NOAA 21 (OMPS LP) is able to detect NLCs (also known as "polar mesospheric clouds" or PMCs). In the daily map, above, each dot is a detected cloud. As the season progresses, these dots will multiply in number and shift in hue from blue to red as the brightness of the clouds intensifies.
SPACE WEATHER NOAA Forecasts
Updated at: 2025 Mar 29 2200 UTC
FLARE
0-24
hr
24-48
hr
CLASS M
40
%
40
%
CLASS X
10
%
10
%
Geomagnetic Storms: Probabilities for significant
disturbances in Earth's magnetic field are given for three activity levels: active, minor
storm, severe
storm
Updated at: 2025 Mar 29 2200 UTC
Mid-latitudes
0-24
hr
24-48
hr
ACTIVE
35
%
10
%
MINOR
15
%
01
%
SEVERE
01
%
01
%
High latitudes
0-24
hr
24-48
hr
ACTIVE
10
%
20
%
MINOR
25
%
20
%
SEVERE
45
%
10
%
Sunday, Mar. 30, 2025
What's up in space
This is an AI Free Zone: Text created by Large Language Models is spreading across the Internet. It's well-written, but frequently inaccurate. If you find a mistake on Spaceweather.com, rest assured it was made by a real human being.
ANOTHER BIG SUNSPOT: A large and complex sunspot is emerging over the sun's southeastern limb. Numbered 4048, the active region is crackling with M-class solar flares. At the moment it appears to be a greater threat for X-flares than sunspot 4046, which did unleash a dramatic X1.1-flare on March 28th. Solar activity is increasing again! Solar flare alerts: SMS Text.
SOLAR ECLIPSE MIRAGE: Savvy photographers know the best time and place to catch a mirage: Early morning on the beach when temperature inversions over open water distort the shape of the rising sun. Joerg Schoppmeyer is a very savvy photographer. On March 29th, he positioned himself at Pointe Lebel (Baie-Comeau), Canada, to video record a mirage of a solar eclipse:
"This was my 65th eclipse--a cold but very special one," says Schoppmeyer, who traveled to Canada to watch the New Moon pass in front of the sun less than a degree above the St Lawrence River.
During Schoppmeyer's video, about 85% of the sun was covered, turning the solar disk into a narrow crescent. Watch the video again. There are actually two crescents: One above the clouds, and another upside down below the clouds. That upside down crescent is not a reflection from the ocean water. It's an "omega mirage."
This eclipse was widely observed from eastern Canada, Iceland, Greenland, and western Europe. If you have a photo from the eclipse zone, please submit it here.
THE VULCAN EASTER BUNNY: It's the weirdest/coolest Easter gift ever: The Vulcan Easter Bunny. On March 14, 2025, this flop-eared explorer traveled to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon:
You can have it for $99.95. This is a plush bunny riding inside a Mr. Spock koozie, which displays a "Live Long and Prosper" salute and a Star Trek tricorder. It flew to the edge of space on Pi Day and Einstein's birthday--the logical launch date for any Vulcan Bunny.
The students of Earth to Sky Calculus are selling far-out gifts to pay the helium bill for their cosmic ray ballooning program. 100% of the items in the Earth to Sky Store have been to the stratosphere, touching the edge of space for at least 2 hours. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the gift in flight and telling the story of its trip to the stratosphere and back again.
Every night, a network
of NASA
all-sky cameras scans the skies above the United
States for meteoritic fireballs. Automated software
maintained by NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office
calculates their orbits, velocity, penetration depth
in Earth's atmosphere and many other characteristics.
Daily results are presented here on Spaceweather.com.
On Mar 28, 2025, the network reported 8 fireballs.
(8 sporadics)
In this diagram of the inner solar system, all of the fireball orbits intersect at a single point--Earth. The orbits are color-coded by velocity, from slow (red) to fast (blue).
[Larger image] [movies]
Near
Earth Asteroids
Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs)
are space rocks larger than approximately 100m that
can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU. None of the
known PHAs is on a collision course with our planet,
although astronomers are finding new
ones all the time.
On March 30, 2025 there were 2349 potentially hazardous asteroids.
Notes: LD means
"Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance
between Earth and the Moon. 1 LD also equals 0.00256
AU.
Cosmic Rays in the Atmosphere
SPACE WEATHER BALLOON DATA: Almost once a week, Spaceweather.com and the students of Earth to Sky Calculus fly space weather balloons to the stratosphere over California. These balloons are equipped with sensors that detect secondary cosmic rays, a form of radiation from space that can penetrate all the way down to Earth's surface. Our monitoring program has been underway without interruption for 10 years, resulting in a unique dataset of in situ atmospheric measurements.
Latest results (Nov. 2024): Atmospheric radiation is decreasing in 2024. Our latest measurements in November registered a 10-year low:
What's going on? Ironically, the radiation drop is caused by increasing solar activity. Solar Cycle 25 has roared to life faster than forecasters expected. The sun's strengthening and increasingly tangled magnetic field repels cosmic rays from deep space. In addition, solar coronal mass ejections (CMEs) sweep aside cosmic rays, causing sharp reductions called "Forbush Decreases." The two effects blend together to bring daily radiation levels down.
.Who cares? Cosmic rays are a surprisingly "down to Earth" form of space weather. They can alter the chemistry of the atmosphere, trigger lightning, and penetrate commercial airplanes. According to a study from the Harvard T.H. Chan school of public health, crews of aircraft have higher rates of cancer than the general population. The researchers listed cosmic rays, irregular sleep habits, and chemical contaminants as leading risk factors. A number of controversial studies (#1, #2, #3, #4) go even further, linking cosmic rays with cardiac arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death.
Technical notes: The radiation sensors onboard our helium balloons detect X-rays and gamma-rays in the energy range 10 keV to 20 MeV. These energies span the range of medical X-ray machines and airport security scanners.
Data points in the graph labeled "Stratospheric Radiation" correspond to the peak of the Regener-Pfotzer maximum, which lies about 67,000 feet above central California. When cosmic rays crash into Earth's atmosphere, they produce a spray of secondary particles that is most intense at the entrance to the stratosphere. Physicists Eric Regener and Georg Pfotzer discovered the maximum using balloons in the 1930s and it is what we are measuring today.
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