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SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids
 
Solar wind
speed: 411.8 km/sec
density: 3.5 protons/cm3
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 2348 UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: B1
2007 UT Oct08
24-hr: B5
0647 UT Oct08
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 2300 UT
Daily Sun: 08 Oct 17
The face of the sun is almost blank as AR2683 approaches the sun's western limb and prepares to begin a 2-week trip around the backside of the sun. Credit: SDO/HMI

Sunspot number: 11
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 08 Oct 2017

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 0 days
2017 total: 56 days (20%)
2016 total: 32 days (9%)
2015 total: 0 days (0%)

2014 total: 1 day (<1%)
2013 total: 0 days (0%)
2012 total: 0 days (0%)
2011 total: 2 days (<1%)
2010 total: 51 days (14%)
2009 total: 260 days (71%)

Updated 08 Oct 2017


The Radio Sun
10.7 cm flux: 80 sfu
explanation | more data
Updated 08 Oct 2017

Current Auroral Oval:
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: 3.6 nT
Bz: -2.9 nT south
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 2348 UT
Coronal Holes: 08 Oct 17

Solar wind flowing from the indicated coronal hole could reach Earth late on Oct. 10th. 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 Oct 08 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 Oct 08 2200 UTC
Mid-latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
10 %
15 %
MINOR
01 %
05 %
SEVERE
01 %
01 %
High latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
15 %
15 %
MINOR
15 %
25 %
SEVERE
10 %
25 %
 
Sunday, Oct. 8, 2017
What's up in space
       
 

Lights Over Lapland is excited to announce that our Customizable Aurora Adventures are available for immediate booking! Reserve your adventure of a lifetime in Abisko National Park, Sweden today!

 

DRACONID METEOR SHOWER: This weekend, Oct. 7th and 8th, Earth is passing through a network of dusty filaments shed by Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner, source of the annual Draconid meteor shower. Forecasters say sky watchers could see a few slow meteors per hour on Saturday and Sunday nights while the head of Draco the Dragon is above the horizon. Hours between sunset and midnight are good times to look. Sky map.

MOONLIT AURORAS: A minor stream of solar wind brushed Earth's magnetic field on Oct. 7th. The resulting auroras were expected to be no match for the luminous Harvest Moon ... except that they were. "What a display!" says Colin Palmer, who sends this picture from Tromso, Norway:

"Moonlit clouds framed the auroras very nicely," he says. "The Moon was 94% illuminated, but lunar glare was not a problem."

Tromso, Norway is just that kind of place. Located inside the Arctic Circle, almost directly underneath Earth's auroral oval, Tromso and its residents witness flickering outbursts of Northern Lights even when no geomagnetic storm is underway. Minor solar wind streams can spark major displays. (Take that, Harvest Moon.) Free: Aurora Alerts

Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery

SOLAR WIND STREAM APPROACHES EARTH: A hole has opened in the sun's atmosphere and solar wind is spewing from the ragged gap faster than 600 km/s. The structure stretches more than 350,000 km southward from the sun's north pole:

This is a coronal hole, a region where the sun's magnetic field opens up and allows solar wind to escape. The emerging stream of gaseous material is expected to reach Earth during the late hours of Oct. 10th or Oct. 11th, bringing with it a chance of polar geomagnetic storms. Arctic sky watchers should be alert for auroras mid-week. Free: Aurora Alerts

Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery

SOLAR ECLIPSE IN THE STRATOSPHERE: 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. Looking down from a point more than 100,000 feet above Earth's surface, this GoPro video shows the inky-black shadow of the Moon darkening a 70-mile-wide patch of Wyoming and Nebraska:

This video was assembled and edited by filmmaker Ginger Perez, a founding student member of Earth to Sky Calculus. The payload was sponsored by the Southern Maine Community College with Maine students joining the launch team as space weather balloon "trainees."

Our next solar eclipse mission is already set: We plan to launch space weather balloons from Chile into a total eclipse on July 2, 2019. That one will be a sunset eclipse with the sun low on the horizon during the flight. The teams are looking forward to photographing the Moon's stretched-out shadow fringed by lovely sunset colors. Stay tuned for that!

Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All proceeds support hands-on STEM education


  All Sky Fireball Network
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 Oct. 8, 2017, the network reported 8 fireballs.
(8 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]

  Near Earth Asteroids
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 October 8, 2017 there were 1842 potentially hazardous asteroids.
Note to readers: A software bug that froze our daily asteroid count in recent months has been found and corrected. The scary numbers are increasing again!
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:
Asteroid
Date(UT)
Miss Distance
Velocity (km/s)
Diameter (m)
2017 SS16
2017-Oct-03
5.4 LD
16.3
19
2017 SJ19
2017-Oct-04
17.2 LD
5.5
12
2017 SO10
2017-Oct-04
16.7 LD
8.4
41
2017 TF1
2017-Oct-04
10.9 LD
2.4
18
2004 RE84
2017-Oct-04
15.3 LD
16.1
129
2017 ST14
2017-Oct-04
16 LD
17.3
73
2017 SO21
2017-Oct-04
16 LD
5.7
33
2017 TB
2017-Oct-05
1.1 LD
6
5
2017 TH1
2017-Oct-06
16.9 LD
8.9
33
2017 TA
2017-Oct-06
2.7 LD
11.3
39
2017 SN21
2017-Oct-10
9 LD
7.6
22
2017 SB20
2017-Oct-11
9 LD
7.1
39
2017 RV1
2017-Oct-12
17.8 LD
10.9
348
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
2017 SY20
2017-Oct-20
18.9 LD
7.2
56
2017 SH14
2017-Oct-20
15.3 LD
6.8
43
171576
2017-Oct-22
5.8 LD
21.2
677
2003 UV11
2017-Oct-31
15 LD
24.5
447
444584
2017-Nov-17
8.7 LD
14.8
324
2008 WM61
2017-Dec-03
3.8 LD
4.7
16
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.

  Essential web links
NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center
  The official U.S. government space weather bureau
Atmospheric Optics
  The first place to look for information about sundogs, pillars, rainbows and related phenomena.
Solar Dynamics Observatory
  Researchers call it a "Hubble for the sun." SDO is the most advanced solar observatory ever.
STEREO
  3D views of the sun from NASA's Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory
Solar and Heliospheric Observatory
  Realtime and archival images of the Sun from SOHO.
Daily Sunspot Summaries
  from the NOAA Space Environment Center
NOAA 27-Day Space Weather Forecasts
  fun to read, but should be taken with a grain of salt! Forecasts looking ahead more than a few days are often wrong.
Aurora 30 min forecast
  from the NOAA Space Environment Center
Heliophysics
  the underlying science of space weather
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