| | 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: 2.5 nT Bz: 0.4 nT north more data: ACE, DSCOVR Updated: Today at 2352 UT Coronal Holes: 10 Jan 18 Solar wind flowing from this coronal hole will reach Earth and cause polar geomgnetic activity on Jan. 13th. 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: 01-10-2018 18:55:03 SPACE WEATHER NOAA Forecasts | | Updated at: 2018 Jan 10 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 10 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 % | 20 % | SEVERE | 10 % | 20 % | | | | | | | | | | | | Lights Over Lapland is excited to announce that we now have TWO aurora webcams covering nearly a 200° view of Abisko National Park in Sweden! Watch the auroras dance live, all season long here. | | | SOLAR MINIMUM IS COMING: As 2018 unfolds, sunspot numbers continue to plummet, signaling the approach of a deep Solar Minimum. The sun's extreme UV and X-ray output has flatlined, sharply reducing the ionization of Earth's upper atmosphere. Shortwave radio operators experience this when they try (and often fail) to skip long-distance signals off of Earth's thinning ionosphere. Meanwhile, cosmic rays are intensifying in a yin-yang relationship with the solar cycle. Stay tuned. SOLAR WIND STREAMS: Today, Jan. 10th, Earth is exiting a stream of solar wind that sparked a night of lovely auroras around the Arctic Circle. Another stream of solar wind is on the way. It is flowing from this hole in the sun's atmosphere: This is a "coronal hole"--a region in the sun's atmosphere where the magnetic field peels back and allows solar wind to escape. Gaseous material is emerging from the gap faster than 500 km/s (1.1 million mph). Estimated time of arrival: Jan. 13th. Another outbreak of Arctic auroras is likely on that date. Free: Aurora Alerts. Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery STRANGE BLUE COMET: Beyond the orbit of Mars, blue Comet PanSTARRS (C/2016 R2) is behaving strangley. Active jets of gaseous material are spewing from the comet's core, feeding a chaotic tail marked by rough swirls and an unusual rectangular "knee." Michael Jäger photographed it from St. Oswald, Austria, on Jan. 6th: "I took 30 shots in 90 minutes, which allowed me to make a nice animation," says Jäger. What's happening to this comet? Blue is the telltale clue. That's the color of ionized carbon monoxide (CO+) fluorescing in the the near-vacuum of interplanetary space. Comet PanSTARRS has abundant stores of CO. Last month, astronomers K. Wierzchos and M. Womack of the University of South Florida used the Arizona Radio Observatory's 10-m Submillimeter Telescope at Mount Graham to detect as many as 4.7 x 1028 CO molecules emerging from the comet's core every second. "This comet appears to be very CO-rich," they wrote in International Astronomical Union telegram CBET 4464. Carbon monoxide can make a comet behave strangely because it is extremely volatile. CO can sublimate (change suddenly from solid to gas) at temperatures as low as -248 C (25 K). Only a little bit of sunlight is therefore required to turn deposits of frozen CO into wild jets and billowing clouds. "The last notable comet with high CO was Comet Humason in 1962, so this is quite a rare sight," notes veteran comet observer Michael Mattiazzo of Australia. "It will be very interesting to watch Comet PanSTARRS as it makes its closest approach to the sun (2.6 AU) in May 2018." Stay tuned! Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery NOTHING SAYS "I LOVE YOU" LIKE A SPACE PENDANT: 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 $139.95. 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. 10, 2018, the network reported 7 fireballs. (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 January 10, 2018 there were 1872 potentially hazardous asteroids. | Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) | 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 | 83 | 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 | 2018 AJ | 2018-Jan-23 | 4.6 LD | 5.5 | 41 | 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 | 2003 EM1 | 2018-Mar-07 | 16.6 LD | 8 | 45 | 2017 VR12 | 2018-Mar-07 | 3.8 LD | 6.3 | 285 | 2015 DK200 | 2018-Mar-10 | 6.9 LD | 8 | 27 | 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. | |