| | Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica Credit: NOAA/Ovation Planetary K-index Now: Kp= 2 quiet 24-hr max: Kp= 3 quiet explanation | more data Interplanetary Mag. Field Btotal: 4.6 nT Bz: -3.4 nT south more data: ACE, DSCOVR Updated: Today at 2352 UT Coronal Holes: 03 Sep 17 Earth is exiting a stream of solar wind flowing from the indicated coronal hole. Credit: NASA/SDO. Noctilucent Clouds Latest images from NASA's AIM spacecraft show that the 2017 northern summer season for noctilucent clouds has finished. Switch view: Europe, USA, Asia, Polar Updated at: 09-03-2017 01:55:03 SPACE WEATHER NOAA Forecasts | | Updated at: 2017 Sep 03 2200 UTC FLARE | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | CLASS M | 20 % | 20 % | CLASS X | 01 % | 01 % | Geomagnetic Storms: Probabilities for significant disturbances in Earth's magnetic field are given for three activity levels: active, minor storm, severe storm Updated at: 2017 Sep 03 2200 UTC Mid-latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 20 % | 15 % | MINOR | 05 % | 05 % | SEVERE | 01 % | 01 % | High latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 15 % | 15 % | MINOR | 25 % | 20 % | SEVERE | 25 % | 20 % | | | | | | | | | | | | Lights Over Lapland is excited to announce that our Customisable Aurora Adventures are available for immediate booking! Reserve your adventure of a lifetime in Abisko National Park, Sweden today! | | | EXITING THE SOLAR WIND STREAM: Earth is exiting a solar wind stream that turned Arctic skies green earlier this weekend. As a result, geomagnetic storm probabilities are subsiding to ~20%, according to NOAA forecasters. Free: Aurora Alerts SUNSPOT SURPRISE: Two huge sunspot groups are facing Earth. Behemoth AR2674 has been growing for days, while newcomer AR2673 has suddenly quadrupled in size, with multiple dark cores breaching the surface of the sun in just the past 24 hours. This movie from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows sunspot genesis in action: The rapid pace of change in these sunspot groups could destabilize their magnetic fields, resulting in Earth-directed solar flares. AR2674 has a 'beta-gamma' magnetic field that harbors energy for moderately strong M-flares. AR2673 is a wild card; it is changing so rapidly we don't know its magnetic classification or potential for explosions. Amateur astronomers with safe solar telecopes are encouraged to monitor developments. Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery EDGE OF SPACE 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. They aimed to photograph the Moon's shadow from the stratosphere--and they succeeded. As a fundraiser, some of the balloons carried pendants into the eclipse. Here's one dipping in and out of the Moon's shadow more than 86,000 feet above the Malheur National Forest in eastern Oregon: 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 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 BIG FROTHY SUNSPOT: Sunspot AR2674 is huge. It has three dark cores larger than Earth and sprawls across more than 140,000 km of the sun's surface. "Active region 2674 is becoming a very photogenic archipelago of sunspots," says Alan Friedman who took this picture yesterday using a safely-filtered solar telescope in Buffalo, NY: Friedman used a "Calcium K" (CaK) filter that passes violet-colored light from singly-ionized calcium atoms in the sun's atmosphere. CaK filters are excellent detectors of magnetic froth--the bubbly, turbulent sea of magnetism that surrounds many large sunspot groups. AR2674 is very frothy, indeed. AR2674 has been growing every day since it first appeared on Aug. 30th, and it now has an unstable 'beta-gamma' magnetic field that harbors energy for moderately strong M-class solar flares. Any such explosions this weekend will be geoeffective as the sunspot is turning to face Earth. Free: Solar Flare Alerts Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery Solar Eclipse Photo Gallery 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 Sep. 3, 2017, the network reported 11 fireballs. (10 sporadics, 1 alpha Aurigid) 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 September 3, 2017 there were 1803 potentially hazardous asteroids. | Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) | 2017 QN1 | 2017-Aug-30 | 5.5 LD | 10.5 | 17 | 2017 QR35 | 2017-Aug-30 | 6.4 LD | 6.9 | 31 | 2017 QP2 | 2017-Aug-30 | 10.1 LD | 7.5 | 33 | 2017 QQ1 | 2017-Aug-31 | 4.8 LD | 10.2 | 39 | 3122 | 2017-Sep-01 | 18.5 LD | 13.5 | 5376 | 2017 QT17 | 2017-Sep-01 | 17.3 LD | 10 | 55 | 2017 QG18 | 2017-Sep-01 | 4.4 LD | 6.6 | 13 | 2017 QV32 | 2017-Sep-02 | 12 LD | 11 | 21 | 2017 QR32 | 2017-Sep-02 | 2.8 LD | 18 | 17 | 2017 QB35 | 2017-Sep-03 | 0.9 LD | 4.1 | 5 | 2017 RB | 2017-Sep-06 | 3.8 LD | 5.2 | 9 | 2017 OP68 | 2017-Sep-10 | 20 LD | 11.7 | 287 | 2017 QK18 | 2017-Sep-11 | 14.8 LD | 7.8 | 46 | 2014 RC | 2017-Sep-11 | 15.1 LD | 8.9 | 16 | 2017 PR25 | 2017-Sep-23 | 17.9 LD | 13.5 | 241 | 1989 VB | 2017-Sep-29 | 7.9 LD | 6.3 | 408 | 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 | 171576 | 2017-Oct-22 | 5.8 LD | 21.2 | 677 | 2003 UV11 | 2017-Oct-31 | 15 LD | 24.5 | 447 | 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 | | a proud supporter of science education and Spaceweather.com | | 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! | | | | | | | | | | | | ©2017 Spaceweather.com. All rights reserved. This site is penned daily by Dr. Tony Phillips. | |