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Solar wind
speed: 321.2 km/sec
density: 7.5 protons/cm3
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 2347 UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: C5
1845 UT Mar14
24-hr: M1
0440 UT Mar14
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 2300 UT
Daily Sun: 14 Mar 15
Sunspot AR2297 has a 'beta-gamma-delta' magnetic field that harbors energy for X-class solar flares. Credit: SDO/HMI

Sunspot number: 87
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 14 Mar 2015

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 0 days
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%)

Update 14 Mar 2015


The Radio Sun
10.7 cm flux: 119 sfu
explanation | more data
Updated 14 Mar 2015

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: 6.2 nT
Bz: 2.2 nT south
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 2347 UT
Coronal Holes: 12 Mar 15

A stream of solar wind flowing from this coronal hole should reach Earth on March 14-15. Credit: SDO/AIA.
Noctilucent Clouds The southern season for NLCs has come to an end. The last clouds were observed by NASA's AIM spacecraft on Feb. 20, 2015. Now attention shifts to the northern hemisphere, where the first clouds of 2015 should appear in mid-May.
Switch view: Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctic Penninsula, East Antarctica, Polar
Updated at: 02-28-2015 02:55:03
SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts
Updated at: 2015 Mar 14 2200 UTC
FLARE
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
CLASS M
70 %
70 %
CLASS X
20 %
20 %
Geomagnetic Storms:
Probabilities for significant disturbances in Earth's magnetic field are given for three activity levels: active, minor storm, severe storm
Updated at: 2015 Mar 14 2200 UTC
Mid-latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
25 %
30 %
MINOR
05 %
10 %
SEVERE
01 %
01 %
High latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
15 %
15 %
MINOR
30 %
30 %
SEVERE
30 %
40 %
 
Saturday, Mar. 14, 2015
What's up in space
 

Come to Tromsø and share Marianne's passion for rural photography: Chasethelighttours.co.uk invites you to experience "Heaven on Earth" with an aurora, fjord, fishing, whale watching, photography or sightseeing tour.

 
Chase the Light Tours

WAITING FOR CMES: A series of minor CMEs expected to hit Earth on March 13th have not reached our planet. Nevertheless, analysts think they are still coming. NOAA forecasters estimate a 60% chance of G1-class geomagnetic storms on March 14th in response to a belated arrival. Aurora alerts: text, voice

HAPPY PI DAY: Today, March 14th (3.14), is day, and all around the world pi-philes are celebrating one of the most compelling and mysterious constants of Nature. Pi appears in equations describing the orbits of planets, the colors of auroras, the structure of DNA. The value of is woven into the fabric of life, the universe and ... everything.

Humans have struggled to calculate for thousands of years. Divide the circumference of a circle by its diameter; the ratio is . Sounds simple, but the devil is in the digits. While the value of is finite (a smidgen more than 3), the decimal number is infinitely long:

3.1415926535897932384626433832795
02884197169399375105820974944592307
81640628620899862803482534211706...more

Supercomputers have succeeded in calculating more than 2700 billion digits and they're still crunching. The weirdest way to compute : throw needles at a table or frozen hot dogs on the floor. Party time.

SOLAR RADIO BURST: For much of the week, space weather news has focused on how sunspot AR2297 is causing radio blackouts on Earth. On March 12th the sunspot did the opposite. It unleashed a shortwave radio burst. "It was super intense--one of the strongest bursts of the current solar cycle," reports amateur radio astronomer Thomas Ashcraft. Click on the image below to play a recording of the sounds he heard issuing from the loudspeaker of his radio telescope in rural New Mexico:

"The recording starts a little rough for a few seconds in that there was a ham transmission in progress on one channel (22 MHz) and the other channel (23 MHz) had a tiny bit of buzz," says Ashcraft. "But then the solar burst hit and the ham voices were entirely drowned out. For the next 3 minutes, the airwaves were dominated by solar static."

These radio sounds are caused by beams of electrons--in this case, accelerated by an M4-flare. As the electrons slice through the sun's atmosphere, they generate a ripple of plasma waves and radio emissions detectable on Earth 93 million miles away. Astronomers classify solar radio bursts into five types; Ashcraft's recording captured a mixture of Type III and Type V.

More bursts are in the offing. AR2297 has an unstable 'beta-gamma-delta' magnetic field that harbors energy for 'radio-active' explosions. NOAA forecasters estimate a 70% chance of M-class flares and a 20% chance of X-flares on March 14th. Solar flare alerts: text, voice

Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery

IMPORTANT SPACE WEATHER LAUNCH: Why do solar flares explode? On Thursday night, NASA launched a fleet of spacecraft to answer that question. Blasting off from Cape Canaveral, the four probes of the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission will spend the next 2 years flying in formation around Earth. Their mission: to study magnetic reconnection, the mysterious process that powers solar flares and geomagnetic storms. Photographer Ben Cooper watched the rocket roar into space from a remote viewing site in the Ponce de Leon Inlet, Florida:

"The Atlas 5 rocket streaked into the sky with NASA's four Magnetospheric Multiscale probes," says Cooper. "It was a beautiful view 40.7 miles north of launch Complex 41."

Shortly after launch, the rocket experienced an outgassing event. The resulting spherical cloud, which some observers are calling the "MMS Nebula" was visible to the naked eye as far away as Texas. Bryan Tobias of San Antonio took this picture from his front yard. Ed Cannon of Austin, Texas, says "it was about twice the size of the full Moon, generally circular, and very easy to see without any magnification. About two minutes later it had grown in size to several degrees in length." What created this cloud? A post on the NASA Spaceflight forum suggests that it may have been fumes from reaction control thrusters, which helped the MMS probes spin up just before deployment.

More photos of the launch and the MMS Nebula may be found in the realtime photo gallery:

Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery


Realtime Comet Photo Gallery


Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery


  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 Mar. 14, 2015, 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 March 14, 2015 there were potentially hazardous asteroids.
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:
Asteroid
Date(UT)
Miss Distance
Size
2015 EQ
Mar 12
3.4 LD
23 m
2015 EK
Mar 13
3.1 LD
24 m
2015 EP
Mar 13
7 LD
29 m
2015 EF
Mar 13
2.5 LD
19 m
2015 EO
Mar 15
2.8 LD
20 m
2063 Bacchus
Apr 7
76 LD
1.6 km
5381 Sekhmet
May 17
62.8 LD
2.1 km
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.
  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
Heliophysics
  the underlying science of space weather
Space Weather Alerts
   
  more links...
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