Did you miss the lunar eclipse? No problem. The Coca-Cola Science Center recorded it for you. Click here to play the movie. | | | WANING CHANCE OF STORMS: NOAA forecasters have downgraded the chance of geomagnetic storms today to 35% as Earth exits a stream of high-speed solar wind. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for fading auroras. Aurora alerts: text, voice EARTH DAY METEOR SHOWER: Earth is passing through a stream of debris from ancient Comet Thatcher, source of the annual Lyrid meteor shower. Prof. Peter Brown of the Universiy of Western Ontario reports that "the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar (CMOR) just finished processing orbital data from last night and the Lyrids are showing up quite nicely. The meteor rate is near 15 per hour so visual observers should have had a good view early this morning and should be able to easily detect the shower tonight." Click to view an all-sky map of CMOR meteor radar echoes on April 22nd: The bright pink blob pinpoints the Lyrid radiant in the constellation Lyra. Other lesser showers are active, too, but they are much weaker. If you see a meteor tonight, it is probably a Lyrid. Usually the Lyrid meteor shower is mild (10-20 meteors per hour), but unmapped filaments of dust in the comet's tail sometimes trigger outbursts ten times stronger. So far this year's shower is trending toward the usual. "The shower is comparable in strength to what was seen last year - so far no surprises," says Brown. Forecasters espect the shower to peak on April 22nd between the hours of 10:00 UT and 21:00 UT. Got clouds? Listen for Lyrid radar echoes on Space Weather Radio. Realtime Meteor Photo Gallery PEEP-O-NAUTS TAKE RISKY TRIP TO THE EDGE OF SPACE: On April 20th, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched a pair of suborbital helium balloons to the stratosphere. One payload carried a radiation sensor to measure the effects of the Easter geomagnetic storm on Earth's upper atmosphere. The other payload carried a colony of halobacteria in an experiment to find out if the extremophiles could live at the edge of space. In honor of the holiday, the students launched some peeps as halobacteria companions. As this movie shows, it's risky being a peep-o-naut: The near-miss only 2000 ft. above the launch site almost brought an explosive end to the mission. Fortunately, the two balloons carried on to the stratosphere, gathering data on the solar storm in progress during the flight. Here is what peeps look like at the edge of space. Later, the peeps and halobacteria parachuted to Earth, landing in a tree in the Inyo Mountains of central California. Student adventurers recovered the payload and they are studying the data now. Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery 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 Apr. 22, 2014, the network reported 25 fireballs. (19 sporadics, 6 April Lyrids)
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] On Apr. 21, 2014, the network reported 15 fireballs. (14 sporadics, 1 April Lyrid)
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 April 22, 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 | |