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CME IMPACT POSSIBLE ON MAY 10TH: On May the 4th, unstable magnetic fields in the sun's atmosphere shifted and hurled a CME into space. The cloud's velocity was relatively low; indeed, it appears that it will take 6 whole days to cross the sun-Earth divide. NOAA forecasters expect it to arrive on May 10th. Polar geomagnetic activity is therefore possible next week. Free: Aurora Alerts
"RADIO-ACTIVE" METEOR SHOWER: This weekend's eta Aquarid meteor shower, caused by debris from Halley's Comet, is causing strong radar echoes over Europe. On May 6th, "we had very dense fog in Radebeul, Germany, so no visual observations of the Eta Aquarids were possible," report amateur astronomers Thomas Böhme, Heiko Ulbricht, and Mario Ludwig. "So we listened to their radar echoes instead."
As the meteors passed over Europe, they were illuminated by signals from France's GRAVE space surveillance radar, used by the French government to track Earth-orbiting satellites. The meteors added an extra set of echoes not normally present. Using a Yagi antenna and a radio receiver tuned to 143 MHz (the operating frequency of the radar), the astronomers in Germany listened to the activity.
"We detected very powerful echoes, very much stronger after midnight," says Böhme. "The Doppler effect (caused by the rapid motion of the meteors) was very good to hear." They also detected radar reflections from the Moon. "Coincidentally, the Moon was within the beam of our antenna and we could receive 'moon-bounce' echoes as well."
Meanwhile in Puerto Rico, amateur astronomer Frankie Lucena experienced the shower the old-fashioned way--by looking. "I was facing south from Cabo Rojo at 4:56am on May 5th when I saw this meteor," says Lucena. "It was a beauty."
The display should continue on May 6th and possibly the 7th as Earth continues its passage through a broad stream of debris from Halley's Comet. Forecasters expect 10 to 30 meteors per hour in the northern hemisphere, and perhaps twice that many in the southern hemisphere. The best time to look, no matter where you live, is during the dark hours before local sunrise.
Realtime Meteor Photo Gallery
MOTHER'S DAY AT THE EDGE OF SPACE: These pendants have touched space--and returned to Earth in time for Mother's Day. On April 15, 2017, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus flew a payload-full of heart-shaped Venus pendants to the stratosphere onboard a high-altitude helium balloon. Here's one, 111,550 feet above the Sierras of central California:
These blue jewels make great Mother's Day gifts--and you have have one for $129.95. Each glittering pendant comes with a greeting card showing the jewelry in flight and telling the story of its journey to the stratosphere and back again.
More far-out Mother's Day gifts may be found in the Earth to Sky Store. All proceeds support atmospheric radiation monitoring and hands-on STEM education.
BLUE MOON OVER BEIJING: "Once in a blue moon" is supposed to mean "seldom" or "absurd." On May the 4th in Beijing, China, it meant that a dust storm was in progress. With little warning, massive clouds of desert dust from Mongolia swept through the city, choking residents and changing the appearance of the sky. A Spaceweather.com reader in the metropolis watched the waxing gibbous moon turn blue:
Blue moons are not as rare as folklore would have us believe. They usually appear after volcanic eruptions or major forest fires fill the air with ash and dust. If the airborne particles are just the right size--about 1 micron (one millionth of a meter) wide--they act like a color-filter, tinging the moon blue. Clouds of fine-grained Mongolian sand can do the same thing.
China is increasingly affected by dust storms as its cities expand towards nearby deserts, which in turn have been
spreading due to climate change. Are
more blue moons in the offing? The ongoing storm in Beijing is expected to last at least one more day.
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
Realtime Comet 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 May. 6, 2017, the network reported 17 fireballs.
(10 eta Aquariids, 7 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 May 6, 2017 there were 1801 potentially hazardous asteroids.
|
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
2017 FE157 | 2017-Apr-29 | 18.4 LD | 8.6 | 63 |
2017 HU3 | 2017-Apr-30 | 6.1 LD | 8.9 | 32 |
2017 HA5 | 2017-May-01 | 9.8 LD | 4.1 | 12 |
2017 JA | 2017-May-02 | 0.3 LD | 16 | 6 |
2017 HK1 | 2017-May-05 | 16.9 LD | 2.7 | 35 |
2015 VD1 | 2017-May-07 | 18.2 LD | 10.5 | 34 |
2017 HX4 | 2017-May-08 | 3.7 LD | 12 | 20 |
2017 HZ49 | 2017-May-09 | 15 LD | 5.4 | 29 |
2017 HP3 | 2017-May-10 | 19.6 LD | 17.4 | 181 |
2017 HU49 | 2017-May-11 | 5.6 LD | 1.8 | 20 |
2012 EC | 2017-May-16 | 19.5 LD | 4.5 | 74 |
2017 CS | 2017-May-29 | 8 LD | 9.1 | 468 |
418094 | 2017-Jun-01 | 8 LD | 23.2 | 490 |
2017 HV4 | 2017-Jun-10 | 19.5 LD | 4 | 52 |
2010 VB1 | 2017-Jun-16 | 10.3 LD | 8.3 | 81 |
471984 | 2017-Jun-18 | 19.1 LD | 7.7 | 102 |
441987 | 2017-Jun-24 | 7.9 LD | 12.7 | 178 |
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 12% 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.
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