Listen to radar echoes from satellites and meteors, live on listener-supported Space Weather Radio. | | |
FULL WORM MOON: Tonight's full Moon has a special name--the Worm Moon. It signals the coming of northern spring, a thawing of the soil, and the first stirrings of earthworms in long-dormant gardens. Step outside tonight and behold the wakening landscape. "Worm moonlight" is prettier than it sounds. [photo gallery]
RAPID RESPONSE SPACE WEATHER BALLOON: Supported in part by Spaceweather.com, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus are developing a Space Weather Balloon that can be launched on a moment's notice to probe the effects of unexpected solar storms on Earth's upper atmosphere. On March 16th--today--they will test-launch a rapid response payload capable of measuring high-energy radiation all the way from ground level to the stratosphere. Stay tuned for photos and data from the flight.
ERUPTING FILAMENT CREATES A 'CANYON OF FIRE': For days, amateur astronomers have been monitoring two long, dark filaments of magnetism snaking around the sun's southeastern limb. This morning, one of them erupted. The eruption split the sun's atmosphere, creating a "canyon of fire," shown here in a movie captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory:
The glowing walls of the canyon are formed in a process closely related to that of arcade loops, which appear after many solar flares. The structure traces the original channel where the filament was suspended by magnetic forces above the stellar surface.
As erupting magnetic filaments often do, this one launched a coronal mass ejection (CME) into space. The Solar and Heliospheric Observary recorded the expanding cloud: movie. The CME does not appear to be heading for Earth. Solar flare alerts: text, voice
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
AURORA STORM: On March 12th, an unexpected geomagnetic storm erupted around the Arctic Circle. The G1-class event was mostly minor, but a few longitudes experienced something more. Over the Finnish Lapland, geomagnetic activity and the auroras it sparked were locally intense. Juan Carlos Casado photographed the display from Saariselkä, a mountain village in northern Finland:
"I took these pictures from the longest toboggan run in the world, in Saariselkä,using a circular fisheye lens,' says Casado. "I was with a group of observers and the reactions of people were very emotional, with shouts, laughter and tears in the eyes!"
"Time marks inserted in the full-sized image give an idea of the speed of the phenomenon," he continues. "You can see the big bang of activity (top right) and how only in two minutes the whole sky is filled with auroras."
The unexpected storm was caused by a fluctuation in the interplanetary magnetic field (
IMF). As March 12th turned to 13th, the IMF tilted south, opening a crack in Earth's magnetosphere. Solar wind poured in and fueled the display.
Aurora alerts: text,
voice Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
Realtime Mars 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 Mar. 15, 2014, the network reported 6 fireballs.
(6 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 March 16, 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 |