Listen to radar echoes from satellites and meteors, live on listener-supported Space Weather Radio. | | |
CHANCE OF EARTH-DIRECTED FLARES: Sunspot AR1974 is crossing the center of the solar disk and it is crackling with low-level flares. The active region has an unstable 'beta-gamma' magnetic field that harbors energy for Earth-directed eruptions. NOAA forecasters estimate a 30% chance of M-flares on Feb. 11th. Solar flare alerts: text, voice
ROMANTIC AURORAS: The Moon will be full on Feb. 14th, and what could be more romantic than full moonlight on Valentine's Day? The answer is moonlit auroras:
"This is what we saw on Sunday, Feb 9th from the Churchill Northern Studies Centre on the shore of Hudson Bay in Manitoba," says photographer Alan Dyer. "With the bright waxing Moon, auroras now have to be even brighter than usual to show up in our sky.'
Bright auroras are dancing around the Arctic Circle as Earth passes through a 450 km/s stream of solar wind. If the display continues for a few more days, Arctic couples will have a lovely view. Aurora alerts: text, voice
Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
'MAGICAL' ICE HALOS OVER CALGARY: On Sunday, sky watchers around Calgary, Canada, witnessed a magnificent display of ice halos around the sun. "It was magical--the best I've ever seen," reports photographer Dee Cresswell, who needed four exposures to capture all of the glowing arcs:
"The temperature was around -22 C, with a windchill in the mid minus thirties," she continues. "You could actually see the ice crystals shimmering in the air. There was a 22° halo, a 46° halo, infralateral arcs, tangent arcs, circumzenithal arc, a parhelic circle and more."
Atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley created a diagram labeling the halos: click here. He says they were created by a special kind of ice crystal called "diamond dust."
"Diamond dust--that is, low level ice crystals shaped as hexagonal plates and columns--make the very best halos because the crystals are large and of good optical quality," explains Cowley. "Plates made the bright sundogs and the circumzenithal arc while column crystals generated the upper tangent arc and the rarer supralateral and infralateral arcs. More peculiarly oriented columns gave the not often seen Parry arc. A few randomly tilted crystals produced the faint 22-degree halo and only a hint of the 46-degree circle. Supralateral arcs and the rarer 46° halo can be hard to tell apart."
"Even though wintry diamond dust is the king of halos,ordinary ice crystals in high clouds can give fine displays all year long," he says. "No matter where you live, or what time of year, keep an eye out for halos."
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
Realtime Comet 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 Feb. 11, 2014, the network reported 4 fireballs.
(4 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 February 11, 2014 there were potentially hazardous asteroids.
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. | 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 |
| the underlying science of space weather |