| | Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica Credit: NOAA/Ovation Planetary K-index Now: Kp= 1 quiet 24-hr max: Kp= 2 quiet explanation | more data Interplanetary Mag. Field Btotal: 3.4 nT Bz: -0.3 nT south more data: ACE, DSCOVR Updated: Today at 2352 UT Coronal Holes: 06 Jan 18 Solar wind flowing from this northern coronal hole should reach Earth on Jan. 8th, causing geomagnetic unrest around Earth's polar regions. Credit: SDO/AIA Noctilucent Clouds Our connection with NASA's AIM spacecraft has been restored! New images from AIM show that the southern season for noctilucent clouds (NLCs) is underway. Come back to this spot every day to see AIM's "daily daisy," which reveals the dance of electric-blue NLCs around the Antarctic Circle.. Switch view: Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctic Peninsula, East Antarctica, Polar Updated at: 01-06-2018 15:55:03 SPACE WEATHER NOAA Forecasts | | Updated at: 2018 Jan 05 2200 UTC FLARE | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | CLASS M | 01 % | 01 % | 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: 2018 Jan 05 2200 UTC Mid-latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 10 % | 10 % | MINOR | 01 % | 05 % | SEVERE | 01 % | 01 % | High latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 15 % | 15 % | MINOR | 20 % | 20 % | SEVERE | 10 % | 20 % | | | | | | | | | | | | All-inclusive Northern Lights trips in Tromsø, Norway. Small groups, big experiences! Highly qualified guides ensure unique and unforgettable adventures with a personal touch. Visit Explore the Arctic | | | GEOMAGNETIC UNREST EXPECTED: A stream of solar wind is expected to reach Earth on Jan. 8th, passing mainly north of our planet's magnetic field. The grazing encounter could spark auroras around the Arctic Circle, albeit not a full-fledged geomagnetic storm. The gaseous material is flowing from a northern hole in the sun's atmosphere. Free: Aurora Alerts. WEEKEND CONJUNCTION: Set your alarm for dawn. This weekend, Mars and Jupiter are in conjunction, side by side, shining through the twilight glow of sunrise. Andrea Aletti photographed them on Jan. 6th from a hotel in the Swiss Alps: "An incredible conjunction!" Aletti says. "The planets were so clear, I could see them through gaps in clouds, and I was able to take their picture using only a simple and not expensive smartphone." If you missed the show on Saturday morning, try again on Sunday, Jan. 7th. The two worlds will be little more than a quarter of a degree (1/4o) apart--half the width of a full Moon. They won't be this close together again until March of 2020. [sky map] Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery SPACE STATION VISITS THE BAY OF RAINBOWS: Sometimes, the best astronomy happens in a fraction of a second. On Jan. 5th, astrophotographer Maximilian Teodorescu experienced one of those moments. "I took a short trip outside Bucharest for a much shorter astro-event: the transit of the International Space Station (ISS) over the Moon." "The station passed in front of the large lava-filled crater Sinus Iridum (Bay of Rainbows)," he says. "This short video shows the transit happening about 10 times slower than real time." Lunar transits by the ISS are not rare, but they are challenging to observe because the space station traveling 17,000 mph crosses the 0.5o face of the Moon in a split second. Usually the human behind the camera sees nothing until a later search through video frames reveals the fleeting silhouette. Teodorescu knew when to look, and where, thanks to predictions from Calsky.com. Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery VALENTINE'S DAY IS ONLY 6 WEEKS AWAY: Christmas is over. Next up: Valentine's Day. If you are looking for a far-out Valentine's gift, consider this: On Dec. 29, 2017, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus flew a payload-full of these 18k rose gold plated Valentine's pendants to the stratosphere onboard a high-altitude helium balloon. The necklaces traveled alongside an array of cosmic ray sensors, which the students use to monitor deep-space radiation penetrating Earth's atmosphere. You can have one for $119.95. Each glittering pendant comes with a greeting card showing the jewelry in flight and telling the story of its journey 36 km (118,110 feet) above the Sierra Nevada mountains of central California. 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 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 Jan. 6, 2018, the network reported 28 fireballs. (20 sporadics, 5 Quadrantids, 3 December Leonis Minorids) 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 January 6, 2018 there were 1872 potentially hazardous asteroids. | Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) | 2017 YL5 | 2017-Dec-31 | 16.4 LD | 19.6 | 61 | 2017 YD | 2018-Jan-01 | 19.1 LD | 4.1 | 29 | 2015 RT1 | 2018-Jan-02 | 20 LD | 9 | 30 | 2017 YD7 | 2018-Jan-03 | 4.7 LD | 10.5 | 12 | 2017 YJ7 | 2018-Jan-07 | 11.9 LD | 5.7 | 20 | 2017 YK7 | 2018-Jan-07 | 10.6 LD | 10.7 | 43 | 2017 YX4 | 2018-Jan-08 | 15 LD | 7.3 | 66 | 2017 XT61 | 2018-Jan-08 | 11.3 LD | 10.8 | 84 | 2004 FH | 2018-Jan-10 | 20 LD | 8.5 | 26 | 2017 YU3 | 2018-Jan-14 | 18.3 LD | 13.1 | 57 | 306383 | 2018-Jan-22 | 14.4 LD | 17.4 | 178 | 2002 CB19 | 2018-Feb-02 | 10.5 LD | 15.6 | 36 | 276033 | 2018-Feb-04 | 11 LD | 34 | 646 | 2015 BN509 | 2018-Feb-09 | 12.9 LD | 17.7 | 257 | 1991 VG | 2018-Feb-11 | 18.4 LD | 2.1 | 7 | 2014 WQ202 | 2018-Feb-11 | 15.1 LD | 19.8 | 62 | 2016 CO246 | 2018-Feb-22 | 15.3 LD | 5.4 | 21 | 2017 DR109 | 2018-Feb-24 | 3.7 LD | 7.4 | 11 | 2016 FU12 | 2018-Feb-26 | 13.2 LD | 4.5 | 15 | 2014 EY24 | 2018-Feb-27 | 14.8 LD | 8 | 54 | 2015 BF511 | 2018-Feb-28 | 11.7 LD | 5.7 | 39 | 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! | | | | | | | | | | | | ©2017 Spaceweather.com. All rights reserved. This site is penned daily by Dr. Tony Phillips. | |