| | 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: 4.6 nT Bz: -0.3 nT south more data: ACE, DSCOVR Updated: Today at 2349 UT Coronal Holes: 07 Jul 17 Solar wind flowing from the indicated coronal hole should reach Earth on July 9th. Credit: NASA/SDO. Noctilucent Clouds NASA's AIM spacecraft, which monitors NLCs from space, recent moved into a new orbit around Earth. Daily data are currently unavailable while the spacecraft's pointing settles. Switch view: Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctic Peninsula, East Antarctica, Polar Updated at: 02-24-2017 17:55:02 SPACE WEATHER NOAA Forecasts | | Updated at: 2017 Jul 07 2200 UTC FLARE | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | CLASS M | 15 % | 15 % | 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 Jul 07 2200 UTC Mid-latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 10 % | 35 % | MINOR | 05 % | 25 % | SEVERE | 01 % | 10 % | High latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 15 % | 10 % | MINOR | 15 % | 25 % | SEVERE | 15 % | 60 % | | | | | | | | | | | | Lights Over lapland is excited to announce that Autumn Aurora Adventures are available for immediate booking! Reserve your adventure of a lifetime in Abisko National Park, Sweden today! | | | CHANCE OF STORMS THIS WEEKEND: NOAA forecasters say there is a 60% chance of minor G1-class geomagnetic storms on July 9th when a high-speed solar wind stream is expected to hit Earth's magnetic field. The stream of gas is flowing from a large hole in the sun's atmosphere, now facing Earth. Unfortunately, bright moonlight will interfere with the visibility of auroras, which might otherwise be seen at high latitudes. Free: Aurora Alerts SUNSPOT GROWING RAPIDLY: New sunspot AR2664, which appeared just yesterday, has already more than doubled in size. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory documented the sunspot's rapid development in this 36-hour time lapse movie: So far the sunspot has not produced any strong solar flares, but this could change if the sunspot's breakneck growth destabilizes its magnetic field. Amateur astronomers are encouraged to monitor this expanding sunspot. With one dark core twice as wide as Earth and many more cores larger than the Moon, AR2665 is an easy target for backyard solar telescopes. Free: Aurora Alerts Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery SOLAR ECLIPSE SPACE PENDANTS: Would you like to support our Solar Eclipse Balloon Network? Here's one way: Buy a space pendant. This solar eclipse-themed necklace flew to the stratosphere on July 2, 2017, attached to the payload of an Earth to Sky Calculus space weather balloon: The payload contained more just like it. If you buy one now for $79.95, we will fly it back to the stratosphere during the Great American Solar Eclipse on August 21, 2017, where it will be enveloped by the Moon's cool shadow above our launch site in Oregon. No additional charge! Just make a note in the COMMENTS BOX of the shopping cart: "Please fly my pendant into the eclipse!" Each 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 items from the edge of space may be found in the Earth to Sky Store. All proceeds support atmospheric radiation monitoring and hands-on STEM education. Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store All proceeds support hands-on STEM education 'TIGER ELVE' SIGHTED OVER ITALY: For years, Martin Popek of Czechia has been monitoring the skies above intense thunderstorms in Europe. His cameras frequently capture images of exotic 'space lightning'--strange forms that lance upward from the electrical tempest below. Most often he sees sprites; occasionally he catches an ELVE. On June 25th, for the first time, he spotted an elusive 'tiger ELVE': "My cameras were trained on a distant storm, 700 km away in Italy, when the tiger ELVE briefly appeared," he explains. "It was gone again in a split second." A tiger ELVE is ... you guessed it ... an ELVE with stripes. Regular ELVEs appear when a pulse of electromagnetic radiation from cloud-to-ground lightning propagates up toward space and hits the base of Earth's ionosphere. A faint ring of deep-red light marks the broad 'spot' where the EMP hits. Sometimes ELVEs light up a region of Earth's atmosphere corrugated by gravity waves, alternating bands of thin and thick air that fan out in the sky like ripples in a pond. These gravity waves can modulate the brightness of an ELVE giving it unusual stripes. Realtime Noctilucent Cloud 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 Jul. 7, 2017, the network reported 26 fireballs. (25 sporadics, 1 phi Piscid) 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 July 7, 2017 there were 1803 potentially hazardous asteroids. | Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) | 2017 NB | 2017-Jul-02 | 3.5 LD | 10 | 37 | 2017 MC3 | 2017-Jul-02 | 6.5 LD | 13.2 | 57 | 2017 MO8 | 2017-Jul-03 | 4.1 LD | 10.9 | 22 | 2017 ME4 | 2017-Jul-03 | 5.4 LD | 6.8 | 20 | 2017 MB5 | 2017-Jul-05 | 19 LD | 9.5 | 113 | 2017 MQ7 | 2017-Jul-06 | 17.6 LD | 10.9 | 84 | 2017 MA5 | 2017-Jul-06 | 14.9 LD | 7.9 | 28 | 2017 MP7 | 2017-Jul-08 | 11 LD | 8.2 | 29 | 2017 MC4 | 2017-Jul-11 | 7.6 LD | 20.7 | 147 | 2017 NH | 2017-Jul-12 | 16.6 LD | 7.8 | 163 | 2017 MR8 | 2017-Jul-15 | 3.3 LD | 6.9 | 35 | 2007 MB4 | 2017-Jul-16 | 14.5 LD | 9.6 | 107 | 2017 BS5 | 2017-Jul-23 | 3.1 LD | 5.8 | 54 | 2014 OA339 | 2017-Aug-13 | 12.3 LD | 10 | 47 | 3122 | 2017-Sep-01 | 18.5 LD | 13.5 | 5376 | 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 | | Beautyz for top beauty products reviews and their buying guides | | 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. | |