| | Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica Credit: NOAA/Ovation Planetary K-index Now: Kp= 6 storm 24-hr max: Kp= 6 storm explanation | more data Interplanetary Mag. Field Btotal: 7.4 nT Bz: -6.5 nT south more data: ACE, DSCOVR Updated: Today at 2349 UT Coronal Holes: 07 Nov 17 Solar wind flowing from this northern coronal hole is expected to reach Earth on Nov. 7th, possibly sparking G1-class geomagnetic storms on Nov. 7th and 8th. Credit: SDO/AIA 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 Nov 07 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: 2017 Nov 07 2200 UTC Mid-latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 35 % | 35 % | MINOR | 30 % | 30 % | SEVERE | 15 % | 15 % | High latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 10 % | 10 % | MINOR | 25 % | 20 % | SEVERE | 60 % | 55 % | | | | | | | | | | | | 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 | | | VENUS-JUPITER CONJUNCTION: Set your alarm for dawn. Venus and Jupiter are about to have a spectacular conjunction in the early morning sky. On Nov. 13th, the two bright planets will converge just ahead of the rising sun only 0.3 degrees apart--so close that you can hide them together behind an outstretched pinky finger. A small telescope will show both planetary disks in the field of view at the same time. That's worth waking up for. Sky maps: Nov. 12, 13, 14. THE SOLAR WIND HAS ARRIVED: As predicted, Earth entered a stream of fast-moving solar wind on Nov. 7th, and this is causing geomagnetic storms around the poles. Forecasters expected minor G1-class storms, but this stream is sparking stronger-than-expected G2-class storms--a welcome bonus for sky watchers. First contact turned the evening sky over Lower Barrington, Tasmania, purple: "Bright auroras arrived on time as predicted and filled our deep twilight with Southern Lights," reports Peter Sayers. "This is what it looked like to my camera. By eye I could see beams and curtains with a prominent green glow to the south expanding from east to west." The solar wind is flowing from a wide hole in the sun's atmosphere, and Earth could be inside the gaseous stream for days. NOAA forecasters say there is a > 50% chance of continued storms (most likely G1-class) on Nov. 7th, 8th and 9th. Additional episodes of G2-class storming could push auroras across the Canadian border into northern-tier US states from Maine to Washington. Stay tuned! Free: Aurora Alerts. Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery SOLAR ECLIPSE CRYSTAL PYRAMID: On Aug. 21, 2017, during the Great American Solar Eclipse, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched 11 space weather balloons from the path of totality. The armada of balloons soared into the stratosphere, touching the shadow of the Moon more than 100,000 feet above Earth's surface. As a fundraiser, one of the balloons carried this pyramid, and you can have it for $139.95: With the sun, Earth, and Moon perfectly aligned, the faces of the 5-sided crystal caught the reflection of the eclipsed sun while wrapped in the space-cold shadow of our planet's gray cratered companion. Watch the video! The payload capsule contained more crystals just like it. Each pyramid comes with a unique gift card showing the crystal floating at the top of Earth's atmosphere and passing through the Moon's shadow. 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 GLOBAL RADIATION MONITORING: Since 2015, Spaceweather.com and the students of Earth to Sky Calculus have conducted an ambitious, ongoing campaign to measure atmospheric radiation around our planet. So far we have flown more than 200 space weather balloons in four countries and a dozen US states. This plot shows sample atmospheric radiation profiles from Norway, Chile, California, Oregon and Washington: The horizontal axis is altitude. Typical profiles range from ~sea level to more than 100,000 feet, deep inside the stratosphere. The vertical axis is X-ray/gamma-ray dose rate between 10 keV and 20 MeV. These energies span the range of medical X-ray machines and airport security scanners. Latitudes noted in parentheses are magnetic, not geographic. Most of the radiation we detect comes from deep space in the form of cosmic rays--but we are always on the alert for other sources, too, such as atmospheric nuclear tests or leaks from power plants. Frequent flights allow us to not only map the geographical distribution of radiation, but also to monitor how it changes with time. We're about to add a new country to our network: Mexico. On Nov. 8th we will travel to Mexico City to launch space weather balloons in collaboration with Prof. Juan Sumaya and students from the Universidad Autonoma del Estado de México. Stay tuned for reports from Mexico later this week. Realtime Space Weather 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 Nov. 7, 2017, the network reported 18 fireballs. (13 sporadics, 4 Northern Taurids, 1 Orionid) 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 November 7, 2017 there were 1853 potentially hazardous asteroids. | Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) | 2017 UD43 | 2017-Nov-01 | 4.7 LD | 8.8 | 7 | 2017 UL44 | 2017-Nov-03 | 13.3 LD | 15.4 | 64 | 2017 UX42 | 2017-Nov-05 | 10.5 LD | 2.6 | 7 | 2017 US7 | 2017-Nov-05 | 7.1 LD | 8.8 | 13 | 2017 UJ7 | 2017-Nov-05 | 16.8 LD | 13 | 28 | 2017 UJ43 | 2017-Nov-05 | 4.6 LD | 7.3 | 10 | 2013 BD74 | 2017-Nov-06 | 10.6 LD | 9 | 51 | 2017 TZ3 | 2017-Nov-09 | 10.3 LD | 8.7 | 39 | 444584 | 2017-Nov-17 | 8.7 LD | 14.8 | 324 | 2008 WM61 | 2017-Dec-03 | 3.8 LD | 4.7 | 16 | 2015 XX169 | 2017-Dec-14 | 9.7 LD | 6.3 | 11 | 2011 YD29 | 2017-Dec-19 | 17.6 LD | 7.7 | 20 | 2006 XY | 2017-Dec-20 | 6.5 LD | 5 | 56 | 2017 TS3 | 2017-Dec-22 | 18.2 LD | 10.2 | 132 | 418849 | 2017-Dec-22 | 15.3 LD | 17.4 | 257 | 2015 YQ1 | 2017-Dec-22 | 17.3 LD | 11.1 | 9 | 2017 QL33 | 2017-Dec-30 | 13.3 LD | 8.2 | 191 | 2015 RT1 | 2018-Jan-02 | 19.7 LD | 9 | 30 | 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. | |