Marianne's Heaven On Earth Aurora Chaser Tours Chasethelighttours.co.uk invites you to join them in their quest to find and photograph the Aurora Borealis. Experience the winter wonderland in the Tromsø Area. | | | WAITING FOR THE CME: A CME expected to reach Earth during the late hours of Feb. 14th has not yet arrived. NOAA forecasters believe it is still coming. Estimated time of arrival: Feb. 15th. There is a 60% chance of G1-class geomagnetic storms during the next 24 hours. Aurora alerts: text or voice WORKING DOGS ... AND PHOTOGRAPHERS: Huskies are well known as working dogs. But is it "working" when you're having fun? "Not sure if I dare to call my photo guiding a job," says Peter Rosén of Abisko, Sweden. "To be standing on the dogsled as the aurora dances above you is almost unreal. Even the dogs seemed to enjoy the dancing sky yesterday night." The entire team paused for a photo beneath the mesmerizing lights: "We have had auroras for 3 out of the past 3 nights, and the forecast looks extremely good for the coming 2 nights as well," he says. Indeed, Sweden's Abisko National Park is one of the best places in the world to see Northern Lights. The reason is Abisko's location beneath Earth's persistent auroral oval. A gentle rain of solar wind electrons, guided to Earth by our planet's curved magnetic field, creates a polar ring of Northern Lights that intersects the latitude of Abisko. Aurora tour guides and photographers naturally gravitate toward the Park because of its frequently-green skies. Sled dogs seem to like it, too.... Browse the gallery for more sightings: Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery CORONAL CANYON: Solar wind is spewing out of a canyon in the sun's atmosphere. Researchers call the opening a "coronal hole." It's the dark blue chasm in this extreme ultraviolet image taken today by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory: Coronal holes are places in the sun's outer atmosphere where magnetic fields spread apart and allow solar wind to escape. The outward flow is traced by white arrows in the image. These magnetic openings form about once a month--sometimes more often. Solar wind flowing from today's coronal hole should reach Earth on Feb. 17th or 18th, possibly sparking auroras when it arrives. Stay tuned. Realtime Spaceweather 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. 15, 2016, 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 February 15, 2016 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. | Cosmic Rays in the Atmosphere | Situation Report -- Oct. 30, 2015 | Stratospheric Radiation (+37o N) | Cosmic ray levels are elevated (+6.1% above the Space Age median). The trend is flat. Cosmic ray levels have increased +0% in the past month. | Sept. 06: 4.14 uSv/hr (414 uRad/hr) | Sept. 12: 4.09 uSv/hr (409 uRad/hr) | Sept. 23: 4.12 uSv/hr (412 uRad/hr) | Sept. 25: 4.16 uSv/hr (416 uRad/hr) | Sept. 27: 4.13 uSv/hr (413 uRad/hr) | Oct. 11: 4.02 uSv/hr (402 uRad/hr) | Oct. 22: 4.11 uSv/hr (411 uRad/hr) | These measurements are based on regular space weather balloon flights: learn more. 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. Our measurements show that someone flying back and forth across the continental USA, just once, can absorb as much ionizing radiation as 2 to 5 dental X-rays. For example, here is the data from a flight on Oct. 22, 2015: Radiation levels peak at the entrance to the stratosphere in a broad region called the "Pfotzer Maximum." This peak is named after physicist George Pfotzer who discovered it using balloons and Geiger tubes in the 1930s. Radiation levels there are more than 80x sea level. Note that the bottom of the Pfotzer Maximim is near 55,000 ft. This means that some high-flying aircraft are not far from the zone of maximum radiation. Indeed, according to the Oct 22th measurements, a plane flying at 45,000 feet is exposed to 2.79 uSv/hr. At that rate, a passenger would absorb about one dental X-ray's worth of radiation in about 5 hours. 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 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 | |