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SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids
 
Solar wind
speed: 440.8 km/sec
density: 4.9 protons/cm3
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 2350 UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: B1
1809 UT May24
24-hr: B9
1230 UT May24
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 2300 UT
Daily Sun: 24 May 18
An active sunspot is emerging at the circled location. At the same time, new sunspot AR2711 is growing rapidly. Solar Minimum is taking the day off. Credit: SDO/HMI

Sunspot number: 30
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 23 May 2018

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 0 days
2018 total: 80 days (56%)
2017 total: 104 days (28%)
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 23 May 2018


The Radio Sun
10.7 cm flux: 71 sfu
explanation | more data
Updated 23 May 2018

Current Auroral Oval:
Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica
Credit: NOAA/Ovation
Planetary K-index
Now: Kp= 1 quiet
24-hr max: Kp= 2
quiet
explanation | more data
Interplanetary Mag. Field
Btotal: 3.2 nT
Bz: -1.9 nT south
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 2349 UT
Coronal Holes: 24 May 18

Solar wind flowing from this coronal hole will reach Earh on May 27-28. Credit: SDO/AIA
Noctilucent Clouds Our connection with NASA's AIM spacecraft has been restored! New images from AIM show that the southern season for noctilucent clouds (NLCs) is underway. Come back to this spot every day to see AIM's "daily daisy," which reveals the dance of electric-blue NLCs around the Antarctic Circle..
Switch view: Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctic Peninsula, East Antarctica, Polar
Updated at: 02-07-2018 17:55:05
SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts
Updated at: 2018 May 24 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: 2018 May 24 2200 UTC
Mid-latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
15 %
10 %
MINOR
01 %
01 %
SEVERE
01 %
01 %
High latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
15 %
15 %
MINOR
20 %
20 %
SEVERE
20 %
15 %
 
Thursday, May. 24, 2018
What's up in space
       
 

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DIPPING IN AND OUT OF THE SOLAR WIND: Earth is exiting a stream of solar wind that sparked auroras over the Canadian prairies on May 22nd. We won't have to wait long for more. Another stream of solar wind is approaching Earth, due to arrive on May 27-28th. The gaseous material is flowing from a northern hole in the sun's atmosphere, and could spark high-latitude auroras this weekend. Free: Aurora Alerts.

LUNAR ECLIPSES AND CLIMATE CHANGE: Strange but true: You can learn a lot about Earth's climate by watching a lunar eclipse. This week at the 46th Global Monitoring Annual Conference (GMAC) in Boulder, CO, climate scientist Richard Keen of the University of  Colorado announced new results from decades of lunar eclipse monitoring.

"Based on the color and brightness of recent eclipses, we can say that Earth's stratosphere is as clear as it has been in decades. There are very few volcanic aerosols up there," he explains. This is important, climatologically, because a clear stratosphere "lets the sunshine in" to warm the Earth below.

To illustrate the effect that volcanic aerosols have on eclipses, Keen prepared a side-by-side comparison (above) of a lunar eclipse observed in 1992 after the Philippine volcano Pinatubo spewed millions of tons of gas and ash into the atmosphere vs. the latest "all-clear" eclipse in January 2018.

"Compared to the murky decades of the el Chichon and Pinatubo, the clear stratosphere since 1995 has allowed the intensity of sunlight reaching the ground to increase by about 0.6 Watts per square meter," says Keen. "That's equivalent to a warming of 1 or 2 tenths of a degree C (0.1 C to 0.2 C)."

"In other words," he adds, "over the past 40 years, the decrease of volcanic aerosols and the increase of greenhouse gases have contributed equally to the total warming (~0.3 C) observed in global satellite temperature records."

Total lunar eclipses happen somewhere on Earth typically once or twice a year. Keen is looking forward to the next one on July 27, 2018, which will be the longest lunar eclipse of the century. The Moon will pass almost directly through the middle of Earth's shadow, remaining inside for 1 hour and 43 minutes. That's just a few minutes shy of the theoretical maximum.

"This will give us plenty of time to measure the color and brightness of Earth's shadow and, thus, the aerosol content of the stratosphere," says Keen.

For more information about lunar eclipses and climate change, check out Keen's poster from the GMAC.

A CRYSTAL BALL IN THE STRATOSPHERE: Father's Day is less than a month away. To get ready, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched a crystal ball to the stratosphere. Watch the video as the crystal orb travels onboard a giant helium balloon 93,000 feet above Earth's surface, stretching, focusing, and inverting the incredible landscape of the Sierra Nevada mountains behind it:

The students are selling these crystal balls as a fundraiser, and you can have one for $229. The 800 gram sphere contains an embedded model of the Solar System, including the sun, eight planets and their moons. It makes an incredible gift for anyone interested in space. Dad-satisfaction guaranteed.

Each crystal ball comes with a unique gift card showing the item at the edge of space and telling the story of its flight. All proceeds support Earth to Sky Calculus and hands-on STEM research.

Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All proceeds support hands-on STEM education

SOLAR MINIMUM SUNSPOTS: Lack of sunspots is a sign of Solar Minimum and for most of 2018 the face of the sun has been persistently blank. Today, Solar Minimum is taking the day off. Two sunspot groups are emerging on opposite sides of the sun:

Astronomers with safely-filtered solar telescopes are encouraged to train their optics on these regions. The one on the right is growing rapidly, while the one on the left is crackling with B- and C-class solar flares.

Such relatively weak flares would seldom be mentioned during Solar Max, but any flare is remarkable during the current period of deepening Solar Minimum. Since yesterday, Earth-orbiting satellites have detected almost two dozen minor eruptions. Their combined effect may be noticable to radio operators in the form of HF brownouts and other propagation effects. Stay tuned for updates.

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 May. 24, 2018, the network reported 14 fireballs.
(13 sporadics, 1 Daytime Arietid)

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 May 24, 2018 there were 1912 potentially hazardous asteroids.
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:
Asteroid
Date(UT)
Miss Distance
Velocity (km/s)
Diameter (m)
2018 KN
2018-May-19
11 LD
7.5
27
2018 KD2
2018-May-19
2.3 LD
13.3
25
2018 JL2
2018-May-19
10.9 LD
13.5
40
2018 KQ
2018-May-19
8.7 LD
7.7
11
2018 JG1
2018-May-20
5.3 LD
8.3
45
2018 KK
2018-May-21
12.1 LD
9.1
32
2018 KF1
2018-May-21
2.2 LD
8.6
26
2018 KS
2018-May-22
2.1 LD
7.7
9
2018 JK
2018-May-22
16.3 LD
12.5
81
2018 KW1
2018-May-23
0.4 LD
7.3
4
2018 KP2
2018-May-24
11.8 LD
13.2
44
2018 JG2
2018-May-25
18.4 LD
6.9
61
2018 JK3
2018-May-27
19.7 LD
21.8
168
2018 KR
2018-May-28
15.7 LD
4
18
68347
2018-May-29
9.5 LD
13.3
389
2018 KN2
2018-May-29
6.1 LD
8
28
2013 LE7
2018-May-31
17.8 LD
1.7
12
2018 KE1
2018-Jun-01
10.8 LD
16.2
33
2018 EJ4
2018-Jun-10
5.6 LD
6.2
195
2015 DP155
2018-Jun-11
9 LD
4.4
170
2017 YE5
2018-Jun-21
15.6 LD
15.5
513
467309
2018-Jun-23
17.9 LD
14
355
441987
2018-Jun-24
7.3 LD
12.6
178
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.

  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
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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