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FRIDAY THE 13TH AURORA WATCH: If NOAA forecasters are right, Friday the 13th could be a luck day for some sky watchers. A slow CME is expected to graze Earth on June 13th. The glancing-blow could spark minor G1-class geomagnetic storms with high-latitude auroras. Aurora alerts: SMS Text
HALF SLINKY, HALF SPIRAL GALAXY: Astronomers at the Big Bear Solar Observatory had a new toy and they *really* wanted to play with it.
In 2023, a team led by Dirk Schmidt developed a new adaptive optics system for the Goode Telescope in California's Big Bear Lake. Theoretically, it should be capable of taking the best pictures ever of the sun's atmosphere. With this in mind, the team started randomly patrolling the corona to see what they might find. Within minutes they made a discovery.
"We became astounded witnesses to a strange, short-lived object," the team writes in a Nature Astronomy article published May 27th. "We call it a twisted plasmoid."
The plasmoid is nothing like anyone has seen inside the sun's atmosphere before. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory was observing at the same time and saw almost nothing. The Big Bear adaptive optics system is so good at correcting the turbulent blur of Earth's atmosphere, it outperforms space telescopes.
A movie of the plasmoid shows a narrow stream of plasma racing outward from an erupting prominence. The front of the stream "suddenly stopped and collided with its own rear half," the researchers wrote. Visually, it seemed to be half-slinky, half double-armed spiral galaxy.
The 1.6-meter Goode Solar Telescope in Big Bear Lake. The steady temperature of the water surface helps keep the air around the telescope calm
It's not clear whether this is a significant discovery or just something idiosyncratic and weird. We'll soon find out. The researchers plan to install the same system on the giant Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii, where adaptive optics could reveal an even greater menagerie.
Let the plasmoid hunt begin!
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THE STRAWBERRY MOON: There's a full Moon today, June 11th, and it has a special name. According to folklore, it's the "Strawberry Moon." Alex Krivenyshev photographed it from Liberty State Park in Jersey City, NJ:
The term 'Strawberry Moon' comes from Native American culture, especially the Algonquin tribe, who used it to signal the start of June's wild strawberry picking season. Don't expect the low-hanging Strawberry Moon to appear pink or red like a actual strawberry, though. More often, it is orange, the color of sunsets and smoke from wildfires.
Realtime Full Moon Photo Gallery
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SOLAR SYSTEM STUD EARRINGS: These earrings have flown to the edge of space--and all eight planets are included! On May 21, 2025, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched the Solar System Stud Earrings to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon. At the apex of the flight, they floated 104,655 feet high:
You can have the complete set for $149.95. Only Pluto is omitted from the collection; the dwarf planet was too small for human earlobes. The earrings come with a greeting card showing the studs in flight and telling the story of their journey to the stratosphere and back again.
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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 Jun 10, 2025, the network reported 6 fireballs.
(6 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]
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 June 11, 2025 there were 2349 potentially hazardous asteroids.
 |
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: | Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
| 2020 LQ | 2025-Jun-06 | 17.3 LD | 11.8 | 34 |
| 2018 LE4 | 2025-Jun-07 | 12.2 LD | 13.3 | 62 |
| 2025 LN | 2025-Jun-07 | 0.6 LD | 8.9 | 6 |
| 2014 LL26 | 2025-Jun-08 | 8 LD | 5.2 | 31 |
| 2025 LK | 2025-Jun-08 | 0.3 LD | 10.3 | 15 |
| 2025 KP8 | 2025-Jun-08 | 13.6 LD | 13.7 | 53 |
| 2015 XR1 | 2025-Jun-12 | 18.1 LD | 12.6 | 81 |
| 2022 KQ5 | 2025-Jun-12 | 13.6 LD | 5.1 | 5 |
| 2025 KV4 | 2025-Jun-12 | 4.1 LD | 8 | 26 |
| 2025 KF1 | 2025-Jun-12 | 8.1 LD | 9.7 | 39 |
| 2023 XO15 | 2025-Jun-15 | 17.8 LD | 3.4 | 24 |
| 2025 HN6 | 2025-Jun-16 | 6.4 LD | 2.3 | 23 |
| 2000 LF3 | 2025-Jun-17 | 18.9 LD | 14.5 | 169 |
| 2023 XU2 | 2025-Jun-18 | 11.1 LD | 15.6 | 32 |
| 2025 KT6 | 2025-Jun-19 | 7 LD | 9.2 | 72 |
| 2003 AY2 | 2025-Jun-22 | 14.2 LD | 15.9 | 386 |
| 2014 DH | 2025-Jun-28 | 17.1 LD | 12.1 | 17 |
| 2019 JM | 2025-Jul-09 | 16.6 LD | 6.9 | 14 |
| 2019 NW5 | 2025-Jul-09 | 15.2 LD | 16.5 | 65 |
| 2005 VO5 | 2025-Jul-11 | 15.9 LD | 14.4 | 382 |
| 2022 YS5 | 2025-Jul-17 | 17.4 LD | 6.1 | 38 |
| 2018 BY6 | 2025-Jul-19 | 13.7 LD | 7.4 | 69 |
| 2019 CO1 | 2025-Aug-08 | 17.8 LD | 10.5 | 65 |
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 sharply 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.
| | The official U.S. government space weather bureau |
| | The first place to look for information about sundogs, pillars, rainbows and related phenomena. |
| | Researchers call it a "Hubble for the sun." SDO is the most advanced solar observatory ever. |
| | 3D views of the sun from NASA's Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory |
| | Realtime and archival images of the Sun from SOHO. |
| | information about sunspots based on the latest NOAA/USAF Active Region Summary |
| | current counts of failed and deployed Starlink satellites from Jonathan's Space Page. See also, all satellite statistics. |
| | Authoritative predictions of space junk and satellite re-entries |
| | from the NOAA Space Environment Center |
| | fun to read, but should be taken with a grain of salt! Forecasts looking ahead more than a few days are often wrong. |
| | from the NOAA Space Environment Center |
| | the underlying science of space weather |
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