| | 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: 4.2 nT Bz: -0.7 nT south more data: ACE, DSCOVR Updated: Today at 2349 UT Coronal Holes: 20 Jun 17 Solar wind flowing from the indicated coronal hole could brush against Earth's magnetic field as early as June 23rd. Credit: NASA/SDO. Noctilucent Clouds NASA's AIM spacecraft, which monitors NLCs from space, recent moved into a new orbit around Earth. Daily data are currently unavailable while the spacecraft's pointing settles. Polar images should resume in early June. Stay tuned! 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 Jun 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 Jun 20 2200 UTC Mid-latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 05 % | 10 % | MINOR | 01 % | 05 % | SEVERE | 01 % | 01 % | High latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 15 % | 15 % | MINOR | 15 % | 20 % | SEVERE | 10 % | 15 % | | | | | | | | | | | | Lights Over lapland is excited to announce that Autumn Aurora Adventures are available for immediate booking! Reserve your adventure of a lifetime in Abisko National Park, Sweden today! | | | HAPPY SOLSTICE: Tonight is the shortest night of the year in the northern hemisphere, a brief stretch of darkness that heralds the beginning of summer on the morning of June 21st (4:24 UT). Meanwhile, in the southern hemisphere, winter begins at the same time. Wherever you live, Happy Solstice! Free: Space Weather Alerts RAINBOW BREATHING WHALES: "Rainbow breathing whale" sounds like a mythical creature. On June 18th, Mila Zinkova of San Francisco saw one ... for real. "Humpback whales are back in San Francisco Bay, and they are breathing out rainbows." This is not mythology. It's physics. When Zinkova took the picture, the sun was behind her back shining down into the droplet-filled exhaust of the whale's spout. Sunbeams reflecting from the water droplets produced a prismatic spray of color just like an ordinary rainbow. Of course it didn't look ordinary. "The full video," says Zinkova, "may be found here. At 2:10 into the video there are anchovies jumping out of the water, escaping a feeding whale." Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery HOTTER THAN THE SUN: Everyone knows that lightning loves heat. Summertime air, warm and laden with moisture, rises into the sky. Airborne droplets of water and other hydrometeors rub together, creating static electricity in much the same way as woolen socks rubbed against carpet. The charge builds until ... this: "The sky erupted," says photographer Nunzio Micale, who took this picture on June 6th from Vieste(FG), ITALY. "I opened the shutter for 30 seconds and the heavens were filled with electricity." The blue color of the bolts in Micale's picture is not a digital accent; it's an authentic sign of incredible heat. Electric currents in lightning can heat the air to 30,000o C or more, far hotter than the 5,500o C surface of the sun. The high temperature of the lightning's plasma (ionized air) gives it the same blue color as a massive newborn O-type star. That's hot. Realtime Noctilucent Cloud Photo Gallery HYPERBOLIC COMET JOHNSON: Comet Johnson (C/2015 V2) has just entered the galaxy-rich constellation Virgo, and it is passing by a spectacular array of star systems. Amateur astronomer Rolando Ligustri used a remotely controlled telescope in New Mexico to photograph the flyby on June 18th: "Comet Johnson is close to many galaxies!" he says. And it will probably pass by many more in the weeks ahead as the comet continues its journey past the Virgo Cluster. This beautiful comet made its closest approach to the sun (1.6 AU) just a few days ago--an encounter that set the stage for its departure. Comet Johnson is on a hyperbolic orbit, which means the sun's gravity is flinging the the comet into deep space. After this visit to the inner solar system, it will probably disappear forever. Now is the time to look. The comet is about as bright as an 8th magnitude star--invisible to the naked eye, but an easy target for backyard telescopes. On June 22nd, Comet Johnson will cross the celestial equator heading south, giving astronomers in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and South America a front row seat as the comet recedes into interstellar space. Resources: 3D orbit, ephemeris, magnitudes. Realtime Comet Photo Gallery Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store All proceeds support hands-on STEM education Realtime Aurora 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 Jun. 20, 2017, 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 June 20, 2017 there were 1803 potentially hazardous asteroids. | Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) | 2017 LE1 | 2017-Jun-15 | 20 LD | 6.4 | 26 | 2010 VB1 | 2017-Jun-16 | 10.3 LD | 8.3 | 81 | 2017 LX | 2017-Jun-16 | 2.8 LD | 20 | 20 | 2017 LV | 2017-Jun-18 | 6.9 LD | 10.7 | 21 | 471984 | 2017-Jun-18 | 19.1 LD | 7.7 | 102 | 2017 MF | 2017-Jun-19 | 1 LD | 6.5 | 17 | 2017 LW | 2017-Jun-20 | 15.7 LD | 3.5 | 28 | 441987 | 2017-Jun-24 | 7.9 LD | 12.7 | 178 | 2017 BS5 | 2017-Jul-23 | 3.1 LD | 5.8 | 54 | 2014 OA339 | 2017-Aug-13 | 12.3 LD | 10 | 47 | 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 13% 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. | 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 | | a proud supporter of science education and Spaceweather.com | | fun to read, but should be taken with a grain of salt! Forecasts looking ahead more than a few days are often wrong. | | from the NOAA Space Environment Center | | the underlying science of space weather | | Beautyz for top beauty products reviews and their buying guides | | Reviews here can help you to pick up best memory foam mattresses. | | These links help Spaceweather.com stay online. Thank you to our supporters! | | | | | | | | | | | | ©2017 Spaceweather.com. All rights reserved. This site is penned daily by Dr. Tony Phillips. | |