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SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids
 
Solar wind
speed: 348.9 km/sec
density: 13.0 protons/cm3
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 0003 UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: A8
2356 UT Mar20
24-hr: B1
1559 UT Mar20
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 2359 UT
Daily Sun: 20 Mar 17
The sun is blank--no sunspots. Credit: SDO/HMI

Sunspot number: 0
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 20 Mar 2017

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 14 days
2017 total: 26 days (34%)
2016 total: 32 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 20 Mar 2017


The Radio Sun
10.7 cm flux: 71 sfu
explanation | more data
Updated 20 Mar 2017

Current Auroral Oval:
Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica
Credit: NOAA/Ovation
Planetary K-index
Now: Kp= 0 quiet
24-hr max: Kp= 1
quiet
explanation | more data
Interplanetary Mag. Field
Btotal: 6.2 nT
Bz: 5.5 nT north
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 0003 UT
Coronal Holes: 19 Mar 17

Solar wind flowing from the indicated coronal hole should reach Earth as early as March 22nd. Credit: NASA/SDO.
Noctilucent Clouds The southern season for noctilucent clouds began on Nov. 17, 2016. Come back to this spot every day to see the "daily daisy" from NASA's AIM spacecraft, which is monitoring the dance of electric-blue around the Antarctic Circle.
Switch view: Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctic Peninsula, East Antarctica, Polar
Updated at: 02-24-2017 17:55:02
SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts
Updated at: 2017 Mar 20 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: 2017 Mar 20 2200 UTC
Mid-latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
15 %
20 %
MINOR
05 %
05 %
SEVERE
01 %
01 %
High latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
15 %
15 %
MINOR
20 %
20 %
SEVERE
20 %
30 %
 
Monday, Mar. 20, 2017
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. Email Marianne for bookings and availability.

 

SUNSPOT COUNTS REACH 7-YEAR LOW: The sun has now been blank (no sunspots) for 14 consecutive days. To find a similar stretch of blank suns in the historical record, you have to go back to April of 2010--a time when the sun was emerging from a deep Solar Minimum. The current stretch of spotlessness heralds a new Solar Minimum expected to arrive in 2019-2020. Between now and then we can expect even longer interregnums broken from time to time by mostly small sunspots incapable of strong flares. Is space weather coming to an end? On the contrary, now is when things get interesting: Solar Minimum brings extra cosmic rays, pink auroras, and more.

TWINKLE, TWINKLE, CRESCENT VENUS: Like the Moon, Venus has phases, and right now it is a beautifully slender crescent.  On March 17th, Italian astronomer Raffaello Lena used a small telescope to track Venus down to the horizon as it set in the evening sky of Rome. He recorded a beautiful example of atmospheric turbulence distorting the curved lines of the second planet:


This kind of scintillation is normally reserved for pinpoint objects like distant stars.  Venus is so thin, it's doing it too.  In a related development, some observers have recorded the chromatic splitting of Venus into red, green, and blue crescents, making Venus look like a tiny rainbow in space.

All of this is happening because Venus is passing between Earth and the sun--an event astronomers call "inferior solar conjunction."  As Venus turns its night side to Earth, only a luminous sliver remains.  Observers can find Venus shining through the twilight in the western sky at sunset. The crescent is easy to see in small telescopes and binoculars.


Above: "Rainbow Venus" photographed by Kevin R. Witman of Cochranville PA [more]

The Venus-sun distance will be least on March 25th. This is the most beautiful time to observe Venus, but also the most perilous. The glare of the nearby sun magnified by a telescope can damage the eyes of anyone looking through the eyepiece.

Anthony J. Cook of the Griffith Observatory has some advice for observers: "I have observed Venus at conjunction, but only from within the shadow of a building, or by adding a mask to the front end of the telescope to fully shadow the optics from direct sunlight. This is tricky with a refractor or a catadioptric, because the optics start at the front end of the tube. Here at Griffith Observatory, I rotate the telescope dome to make sure the lens of the telescope is shaded from direct sunlight, even through it means that the lens will be partially blocked when aimed at Venus. With our Newtonian telescope, I add a curved cardboard mask at the front end of the tube to shadow the primary mirror."

Realtime Venus Photo Gallery

THE FLIGHT OF THE EASTERNAUTS: The cosmic ray monitoring program of Earth to Sky Calculus is not supported by government grants or big corporate sponsors.  Instead we rely on you.  That is, you and the Easternauts:

On March 2nd, the student researchers flew a payload-full of Easter bunnies to the edge of space--and you can have one for $39.95. (Space helmet included!) They make great Easter gifts for young scientists, and all proceeds support STEM education.  Each bunny comes with a greeting card showing the Easternaut in flight and telling the story of its journey to the stratosphere and back again.

More far-out gifts may be found in the Earth to Sky store.

NEUTRONS ON A PLANE: Among researchers, it is well known that air travelers are exposed to cosmic rays. High-energy particles and photons from deep space penetrate Earth's atmosphere and go right through the hulls of commercial aircraft. This has prompted the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) to classify pilots and flight attendants as occupational radiation workers.

Many studies of this problem focus on ionizing radiation such as x-rays and gamma-rays. On March 16th we turned the tables and measured neutrons instead. During a 12-hour flight from Stockholm to Los Angeles, Spaceweather.com and the students of Earth to Sky Calculus used bubble chambers to monitor neutron activity inside a Scandinavian Airlines jetliner.

In the photo above, taken 35,000 feet above Greenland, each bubble shows where a neutron passed through the chamber and vaporized a superheated droplet. By the time the long flight was over, we measured almost 20 uSv (microsieverts) of radiation from neutrons--similar to the dose from a panoramic X-ray at your dentist's office. This confirms that neutrons are an important form of aviation radiation relevant to both air travelers and future space tourists.

Where do these neutrons come from? Mainly, they are secondary cosmic rays. When primary cosmic rays from deep space hit Earth's atmosphere, they produce a spray of secondary particles including neutrons, protons, alpha particles, and other species. Cosmic ray neutrons can reach the ground; indeed, researchers routinely use neutron counters on Earth's surface to monitor cosmic ray activity above the atmosphere. Now we're doing the same thing onboard airplanes.

Earlier in the week, we flew these bubble chambers to the Arctic stratosphere using a space weather balloon. Interestingly, the 12-hour plane flight yielded ~6 times more neutrons than the shorter (2 hour) but far higher (97,000 ft) balloon flight to the stratosphere. What does it mean? We're still analyzing the data and will have more insights to share in the days ahead. Stay tuned!

Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery


Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery


Realtime Comet 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. 17, 2017, the network reported 18 fireballs.
(18 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 20, 2017 there were 1780 potentially hazardous asteroids.
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:
Asteroid
Date(UT)
Miss Distance
Size
2017 EU2
Mar 14
12.4 LD
35 m
2017 EK3
Mar 14
10.3 LD
24 m
2017 FW
Mar 14
4.4 LD
22 m
2017 EE4
Mar 16
7 LD
43 m
1998 SL36
Mar 16
8.3 LD
375 m
2017 EG3
Mar 17
4.4 LD
23 m
2017 FS
Mar 19
0.3 LD
7 m
2017 FK
Mar 20
1.7 LD
15 m
2017 FJ
Mar 21
2 LD
10 m
2017 FO
Mar 21
12.2 LD
23 m
2015 TC25
Mar 26
7.6 LD
6 m
2017 FV
Apr 2
9.1 LD
60 m
2017 EB3
Apr 4
13.7 LD
43 m
2017 DC38
Apr 5
14.6 LD
54 m
2003 BD44
Apr 18
21.7 LD
1.9 km
2014 JO25
Apr 19
4.6 LD
1.0 km
1999 CU3
Apr 19
63.7 LD
1.9 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

Readers, thank you for your patience while we continue to develop this new section of Spaceweather.com. We've been working to streamline our data reduction, allowing us to post results from balloon flights much more rapidly, and we have developed a new data product, shown here:

This plot displays radiation measurements not only in the stratosphere, but also at aviation altitudes. Dose rates are expessed as multiples of sea level. For instance, we see that boarding a plane that flies at 25,000 feet exposes passengers to dose rates ~10x higher than sea level. At 40,000 feet, the multiplier is closer to 50x. These measurements are made by our usual cosmic ray payload as it passes through aviation altitudes en route to the stratosphere over California.

What is this all about? 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. Furthermore, there are studies ( #1, #2, #3, #4) linking cosmic rays with cardiac arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death in the general population. Our latest measurements show that cosmic rays are intensifying, with an increase of more than 12% since 2015:


Why are cosmic rays intensifying? The main reason is the sun. Solar storm clouds such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) sweep aside cosmic rays when they pass by Earth. During Solar Maximum, CMEs are abundant and cosmic rays are held at bay. Now, however, the solar cycle is swinging toward Solar Minimum, allowing cosmic rays to return. Another reason could be the weakening of Earth's magnetic field, which helps protect us from deep-space radiation.

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 data points in the graph above correspond to the peak of the Reneger-Pfotzer maximum, which lies about 67,000 feet above central California. When cosmic rays crash into Earth's atmosphere, they produce a spray of secondary particles that is most intense at the entrance to the stratosphere. Physicists Eric Reneger and Georg Pfotzer discovered the maximum using balloons in the 1930s and it is what we are measuring today.

  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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NOAA 27-Day Space Weather Forecasts
  fun to read, but should be taken with a grain of salt! Forecasts looking ahead more than a few days are often wrong.
Aurora 30 min forecast
  from the NOAA Space Environment Center
Heliophysics
  the underlying science of space weather
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