Lights Over Lapland is excited to announce that our Customizable Aurora Adventures are available for immediate booking! Reserve your adventure of a lifetime in Abisko National Park, Sweden today! | | |
OCTOBER IS A GOOD MONTH FOR AURORAS: According to 75 years of data, October is the 2nd best month of the year for auroras. Only March is better, statistically speaking. Polar sky watchers should be alert for equinox auroras in the nights ahead. October has begun, and the odds favor Northern Lights. Free: Aurora Alerts
SOLAR ECLIPSE IN THE STRATOSPHERE: On Aug. 21st during the Great American Solar Eclipse, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched 11 space weather balloons from the path of totality. They aimed to photograph the Moon's shadow from the stratosphere--and they succeeded. This GoPro video recorded more than 100,000 feet above Earth's surface shows the inky-black shadow of the Moon darkening a 70-mile-wide patch of Wyoming and Nebraska:
This video was assembled and edited by filmmaker Ginger Perez, a founding student member of Earth to Sky Calculus. The payload was sponsored by the Southern Maine Community College with Maine students joining the launch team as space weather balloon "trainees."
Our next solar eclipse mission is already set: We plan to launch space weather balloons from Chile into a total eclipse on July 2, 2019. That one will be a sunset eclipse with the sun low on the horizon during the flight. The teams are looking forward to photographing the Moon's stretched-out shadow fringed by lovely sunset colors. Stay tuned for that!
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All proceeds support hands-on STEM education
STEVE, THE MYSTERIOUS AURORAL ARC: A strong geomagnetic storm was brewing in the skies above Alberta, Canada, on Sept. 27th when photographer Alan Dyer looked up and saw a ribbon of purple light arcing cross the sky. It was the mysterious aurora known as "Steve":
"The Steve arc appeared for only about 20 minutes, starting at 10:45 pm MDT, during a lull in the main display," says Dyer, who captured the arc in a 6-shot, 360o panorama.
For many years, northern sky watchers have reported this luminous form occasionally dancing among regular auroras. It was widely called a "proton arc" until researchers pointed out that protons probably had nothing to do with it. So members of the Alberta Aurora Chasers group gave it a new name: "Steve."
"We seem to be ideally located in the Canadian Prairies for sighting Steve, as we often get the main aurora to our north, placing Steve overhead or to our south," notes Dyer.
No one fully understands the underlying physics of the purple ribbon. One of the European Space Agency's Swarm satellites flew straight through Steve during a previous apparition. Data revealed a relatively hot river of gas, about 25 km wide, flowing rapidly through Earth's outer atmosphere. "Steve seems to be a thermal emission from hot flowing gas rather than from precipitating electrons," says Dyer, "but his origin and nature are still mysterious."
Realtime "Steve" Photo Gallery
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
ROSE QUARTZ CRYSTAL ECLIPSE PENDANTS: On Aug. 21st during the Great American Solar Eclipse, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched 11 space weather balloons from the path of totality. As a fundraiser, some of the balloons carried jewelry, such as this rose quartz crystal pendant floating inside the Moon's shadow more than 90,000 feet above Oregon's Malheur National Forest:
During the 2.5 hour flight, the pendants were wrapped in the Moon's shadow for more than two minutes, experiencing a spooky darkness colder than -50 C.
You can have one for $149.95. Each crystal pendant comes with a unique gift card showing the jewelry passing through the Moon's shadow and floating at the top of Earth's atmosphere. The interior of the card tells the story of the flight and confirms that this gift has been to the edge of space and back again.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All proceeds support hands-on STEM education
Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
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 Oct. 2, 2017, the network reported 13 fireballs.
(12 sporadics, 1 Southern Taurid)
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 October 2, 2017 there were 1803 potentially hazardous asteroids.
|
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
2017 SZ19 | 2017-Sep-27 | 11.5 LD | 3.2 | 11 |
2017 SS10 | 2017-Sep-27 | 10 LD | 11.7 | 33 |
2017 SQ10 | 2017-Sep-27 | 16.2 LD | 7.4 | 19 |
2017 SA21 | 2017-Sep-27 | 1.5 LD | 10.1 | 8 |
2017 RY17 | 2017-Sep-27 | 16.6 LD | 5 | 14 |
2017 SQ14 | 2017-Sep-28 | 13.9 LD | 7.5 | 16 |
2017 SQ12 | 2017-Sep-29 | 17.2 LD | 7 | 28 |
1989 VB | 2017-Sep-29 | 7.9 LD | 6.3 | 408 |
2017 RP15 | 2017-Sep-30 | 14.8 LD | 5.6 | 18 |
2017 SH16 | 2017-Sep-30 | 9.2 LD | 13.7 | 32 |
2017 SK14 | 2017-Oct-01 | 19.2 LD | 8.3 | 24 |
2017 OD69 | 2017-Oct-01 | 13.2 LD | 7.6 | 213 |
2017 SG20 | 2017-Oct-02 | 15.3 LD | 11.4 | 32 |
2017 SX17 | 2017-Oct-02 | 0.2 LD | 7.3 | 8 |
2017 SK20 | 2017-Oct-02 | 12.4 LD | 9.8 | 24 |
2017 SS16 | 2017-Oct-03 | 5.4 LD | 16.3 | 17 |
2017 SJ19 | 2017-Oct-04 | 17.2 LD | 5.5 | 12 |
2017 SO10 | 2017-Oct-04 | 16.7 LD | 8.4 | 40 |
2004 RE84 | 2017-Oct-04 | 15.3 LD | 16.1 | 129 |
2017 ST14 | 2017-Oct-04 | 16 LD | 17.3 | 73 |
2017 SB20 | 2017-Oct-11 | 9 LD | 7.1 | 38 |
2017 RV1 | 2017-Oct-12 | 17.8 LD | 10.9 | 347 |
2012 TC4 | 2017-Oct-12 | 0.1 LD | 7.6 | 16 |
2005 TE49 | 2017-Oct-13 | 8.5 LD | 11.2 | 16 |
2013 UM9 | 2017-Oct-15 | 17 LD | 7.8 | 39 |
2006 TU7 | 2017-Oct-18 | 18.7 LD | 13.3 | 148 |
2017 SY20 | 2017-Oct-20 | 18.9 LD | 7.1 | 54 |
2017 SH14 | 2017-Oct-20 | 15.3 LD | 6.8 | 43 |
171576 | 2017-Oct-22 | 5.8 LD | 21.2 | 677 |
2003 UV11 | 2017-Oct-31 | 15 LD | 24.5 | 447 |
444584 | 2017-Nov-17 | 8.7 LD | 14.8 | 324 |
Notes: LD means "Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance between Earth and the Moon. 1 LD also equals 0.00256 AU. MAG is the visual magnitude of the asteroid on the date of closest approach. | Cosmic Rays in the Atmosphere |
Readers, thank you for your patience while we continue to develop this new section of Spaceweather.com. We've been working to streamline our data reduction, allowing us to post results from balloon flights much more rapidly, and we have developed a new data product, shown here:
This plot displays radiation measurements not only in the stratosphere, but also at aviation altitudes. Dose rates are expessed as multiples of sea level. For instance, we see that boarding a plane that flies at 25,000 feet exposes passengers to dose rates ~10x higher than sea level. At 40,000 feet, the multiplier is closer to 50x. These measurements are made by our usual cosmic ray payload as it passes through aviation altitudes en route to the stratosphere over California.
What is this all about? Approximately 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 radiation sensors that detect cosmic rays, a surprisingly "down to Earth" form of space weather. Cosmic rays can seed clouds, trigger lightning, and penetrate commercial airplanes. Furthermore, there are studies ( #1, #2, #3, #4) linking cosmic rays with cardiac arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death in the general population. Our latest measurements show that cosmic rays are intensifying, with an increase of more than 13% since 2015:
Why are cosmic rays intensifying? The main reason is the sun. Solar storm clouds such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) sweep aside cosmic rays when they pass by Earth. During Solar Maximum, CMEs are abundant and cosmic rays are held at bay. Now, however, the solar cycle is swinging toward Solar Minimum, allowing cosmic rays to return. Another reason could be the weakening of Earth's magnetic field, which helps protect us from deep-space radiation.
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.
The data points in the graph above correspond to the peak of the Reneger-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 Reneger 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. |
| 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 |
| Reviews here can help you to pick up best memory foam mattresses. |
| These links help Spaceweather.com stay online. Thank you to our supporters! |
| | | | | |