Lights Over Lapland is excited to announce that we now have TWO aurora webcams covering nearly a 200° view of Abisko National Park in Sweden! Watch the auroras dance live, all season long here. | | |
GEOMAGNETIC OUTLOOK: Earth's magnetic field is expected to be mostly undisturbed for the first three days of March. Geomagnetic activity might increase, however, on March 4th when solar wind flowing from a northern hole in the sun's atmosphere grazes our planet. Arctic sky watchers should be alert for auroras at that time. Free: Aurora Alerts
SUNSET PLANETS: This weekend, look west at sunset. If you have a clear view of the horizon, you can see Venus and Mercury beaming together through the rosy glow. Piotr Potępa sends this picture from Torun, Poland:
"The two planets were easy to find as they set behind the RT-4 radio telescope at the Center for Astronomy in Torun," says Potępa.
On Saturday, March 3rd, Venus and Mercury are just 1.1 degrees apart, and nearly as close on Sunday, March 4th. For some observers, only brilliant Venus may be visible to the naked eye. Mercury will show up in alongside, however, in digital cameras set for twilight exposures. Monitor the photo gallery for sightings.
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
POLAR STRATOSPHERIC CLOUDS: Earth's stratosphere is extremely dry--drier than the driest desert on Earth. For that reason, clouds in the stratosphere are rare. Nevertheless, observers in Iceland are reporting an outbreak of colorful clouds in the stratosphere:
"These were seen in Northern Iceland in the Akureyri area," says photographer Adrian Pearman, whose photo captured both ordinary tropospheric clouds (grey thick puffs scudding across the lower atmosphere) as well as the pastel stratospheric clouds some 20 km overhead. "They were very bright and covered most of the visible sky."
Icy polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) are a sign of very cold temperatures. For ice crystals to form in the arid stratosphere, temperatures must drop to around -85º C--so cold that sparse water molecules converge and stick together despite the great distance between them. High-altitude sunlight shining through tiny ice particles ~10µm across produce the characteristic iridescent colors.
Once thought to be mere curiosities, some polar stratospheric clouds are now known to be associated with the destruction of ozone. Indeed, an ozone hole formed over the UK in Feb. 2016 following an outbreak of ozone-destroying Type 1 PSCs.
Sky watchers around the Arctic Circle should be alert for these clouds. Outbreaks of PSCs often last for days, and their vivid iridescent colors are unforgettable.
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
CROWD-FUNDING SPACE WEATHER RESEARCH: Did you know that cosmic rays in Earth's atmosphere are intensifying? It's true, and we are monitoring the phenomenon with regular space weather balloon flights to the stratosphere. This student science program is not supported by any government grant or corporate sponsorship. Instead, we raise our research funds by selling these:
On Jan. 27, 2018, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus flew a payload-full of moonstone pendants 115,158 ft above Earth's surface. You can have one for $179.95.
Each necklace comes with a greeting card showing the jewelry in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space and back. Sales support the Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray ballooning program and hands-on STEM research.
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 Mar. 3, 2018, 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]
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 3, 2018 there were 1882 potentially hazardous asteroids.
|
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
2018 DR | 2018-Feb-25 | 2.3 LD | 7 | 12 |
2018 DB1 | 2018-Feb-25 | 10.2 LD | 5.7 | 22 |
2018 DU | 2018-Feb-25 | 0.7 LD | 4.6 | 8 |
2016 FU12 | 2018-Feb-26 | 13.2 LD | 4.5 | 15 |
2018 DA | 2018-Feb-26 | 11 LD | 12.8 | 56 |
2014 EY24 | 2018-Feb-27 | 14.8 LD | 8 | 54 |
2018 DT | 2018-Feb-27 | 4.2 LD | 2.6 | 13 |
2018 CU14 | 2018-Feb-27 | 5.5 LD | 4.4 | 11 |
2015 BF511 | 2018-Feb-28 | 11.7 LD | 5.7 | 39 |
2018 DW1 | 2018-Mar-01 | 3.9 LD | 12.2 | 15 |
2018 DE1 | 2018-Mar-01 | 15.3 LD | 6.5 | 29 |
2018 DV1 | 2018-Mar-02 | 0.3 LD | 6.6 | 7 |
2018 DU1 | 2018-Mar-02 | 5.1 LD | 6.3 | 10 |
2018 DS1 | 2018-Mar-03 | 16.4 LD | 16.3 | 37 |
2018 DC | 2018-Mar-03 | 9.3 LD | 8.2 | 40 |
2003 EM1 | 2018-Mar-07 | 16.6 LD | 8 | 45 |
2017 VR12 | 2018-Mar-07 | 3.8 LD | 6.3 | 290 |
2018 BK7 | 2018-Mar-09 | 10.2 LD | 8.7 | 74 |
2015 DK200 | 2018-Mar-10 | 6.9 LD | 8 | 27 |
2018 DH1 | 2018-Mar-27 | 9.2 LD | 14.3 | 218 |
2016 SR2 | 2018-Mar-28 | 18.7 LD | 7.3 | 20 |
2010 GD35 | 2018-Mar-31 | 15.5 LD | 11.6 | 45 |
2004 FG29 | 2018-Apr-02 | 4 LD | 14.9 | 22 |
363599 | 2018-Apr-12 | 19.3 LD | 24.5 | 224 |
2014 UR | 2018-Apr-14 | 9.3 LD | 4.4 | 17 |
2016 JP | 2018-Apr-20 | 12 LD | 12.7 | 204 |
2012 XL16 | 2018-Apr-23 | 15.8 LD | 6.1 | 28 |
2013 US3 | 2018-Apr-29 | 10.1 LD | 7.7 | 224 |
2002 JR100 | 2018-Apr-29 | 10.8 LD | 7.7 | 49 |
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 |
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