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SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids
 
Solar wind
speed: 278.2 km/sec
density: 2.3 protons/cm3
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 2348 UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: B1
1910 UT Aug15
24-hr: C1
0023 UT Aug15
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 2300 UT
Daily Sun: 15 Aug 16
Not one of these sunspots has the type of unstable magnetic field that poses a threat for strong flares. Credit: SDO/HMI

Sunspot number: 61
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 15 Aug 2016

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 0 days
2016 total: 20 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 15 Aug 2016


The Radio Sun
10.7 cm flux: 87 sfu
explanation | more data
Updated 15 Aug 2016

Current Auroral Oval:
Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica
Credit: NOAA/Ovation
Planetary K-index
Now: Kp= 0 quiet
24-hr max: Kp= 2
quiet
explanation | more data
Interplanetary Mag. Field
Btotal: 5.2 nT
Bz: 0.4 nT north
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 2348 UT
Coronal Holes: 15 Aug 16

There are no large coronal holes on he Earth-facing side of the sun. Credit: NASA/SDO.
Noctilucent Clouds Images from NASA's AIM spacecraft are once again appearing on Spaceweather.com. Check back daily for space-based sightings of noctilucent clouds.
Switch view: Europe, USA, Asia, Polar
Updated at: 08-06-2016 16:55:02
SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts
Updated at: 2016 Aug 15 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: 2016 Aug 15 2200 UTC
Mid-latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
35 %
25 %
MINOR
25 %
10 %
SEVERE
05 %
01 %
High latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
15 %
15 %
MINOR
20 %
30 %
SEVERE
20 %
40 %
 
Monday, Aug. 15, 2016
What's up in space
       
 

Directly under the Arctic Circle! Marianne's Arctic Xpress in Tromsø offers fjord, whale and wildlife tours by day, aurora tours by night. Book Now and get a 10% discount on combo day and night adventures.

 

SOLAR WIND: NOAA forecasters say that a high-speed (700 km/s) stream of solar wind might hit Earth's magnetic field on Aug. 15-16. Its arrival could spark G1-class geomagnetic storms and high-latitude auroras. Glare from the nearly full Moon will, however, mitigate visibility. Aurora alerts: text or voice

SPACE LIGHTNING OVER CHINA: For the past few nights, people around the world have been pointing their cameras at the night sky hoping to catch Perseid meteors.  Phebe Pan was one of them, and on Aug. 13th he saw something more amazing any meteoroid. "To observe the shower I went to Shi Keng Kong, the highest mountain peak in the Guangdong province of China," Pan says. "I was using a fisheye lens to capture as much of the sky as possible. Suddenly we saw a flash of blue and purple ejected from the top of a nearby thundercloud." 


"It just looked like a tree with branches, and grew up very fast. It lasted just less than one second. So awesome!"

Oscar van der Velde, a member of the Lightning Research Group at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, explains what Pan saw: "This is a very lucky capture of a gigantic jet. It's the first time I've seen one captured using a fisheye lens!"

Think of them as sprites on steroids: Gigantic jets are lightning-like discharges that spring from the tops of thunderstorms, reaching all the way to the ionosphere more than 50 miles overhead. They're enormous and powerful.

"Gigantic jets are much more rare than sprites," says van der Velde. "While sprites were discovered in 1989 and have since been photographed by the thousands, it was not until 2001-2002 that gigantic jets were first recorded from Puerto Rico and Taiwan." Only a few dozen gigantic jets have ever been seen.

Like their cousins the sprites, gigantic jets reach all the way up to the edge of space alongside meteors, noctilucent clouds, and some auroras. This means they are a true space weather phenomenon. Indeed, some researchers believe cosmic rays help trigger these exotic forms of lightning, but the link is controversial.

Realtime Sprite Photo Gallery

NOCTILUCENT CLOUDS: NASA's AIM spacecraft, which monitors noctilucent clouds (NLCS) from space, is offline for the next few months while engineers upload a software patch. Meanwhile,observers on the ground are still seeing the electric-blue ripples. Satu Juvonen sends this picture from Raakkyla, Finland:

"The noctilucent clouds were incredibly bright on Aug. 13th," says Juvonen. "The display was also special because it had a red fringe on top."

Indeed, that is odd.  Noctilucent clouds are best known for their azure hue. Why? The clouds are made of microscopic ice crystals, which form when summertime wisps of water vapor rise to the top of Earth's stratosphere and freeze around microscopic specks of meteor smoke. Very tiny crystals, such as the ones found in NLCs, scatter blue light. 

So where did the red fringe come from? Members of the AIM science team asked to explain it weren't sure. One of them, Cora Randall from the University of Colorado, speculated that "light being scattered by the NLCs in this band might be encountering some sort of fine dust layer in the troposphere, which preferentially scatters blue light out of the line of sight, resulting in a reddish tint to the NLCs."

Realtime Noctilucent Cloud Photo Gallery


Realtime Perseid Photo Gallery


Realtime Space Weather 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 Aug. 15, 2016, the network reported 83 fireballs.
(50 sporadics, 31 Perseids, 1 Northern delta Aquariid, 1)

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 August 15, 2016 there were potentially hazardous asteroids.
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:
Asteroid
Date(UT)
Miss Distance
Size
2016 PX8
Aug 11
7.6 LD
17 m
2016 PW8
Aug 12
6.1 LD
26 m
2000 DP107
Aug 12
66.5 LD
1.0 km
2016 PS26
Aug 25
13.8 LD
33 m
2016 PA40
Aug 29
14.6 LD
57 m
2004 BO41
Sep 7
38.9 LD
1.1 km
2015 KE
Sep 10
14.9 LD
23 m
2009 UG
Sep 30
7.3 LD
101 m
2100 Ra-Shalom
Oct 9
58.3 LD
1.1 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.
  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.

  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
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