You are viewing the page for Apr. 29, 2015
  Select another date:
<<back forward>>
SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids Internet Shopping Sites high quality binoculars excellent weather stations all-metal reflector telescopes rotatable microscopes
 
Solar wind
speed: 296.2 km/sec
density: 7.2 protons/cm3
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 2349 UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: B7
2028 UT Apr29
24-hr: C1
1634 UT Apr29
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 2300 UT
Daily Sun: 29 Apr 15
With only a few tiny sunspots dotting the solar disk, solar activity is very low. Credit: SDO/HMI

Sunspot number: 36
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 29 Apr 2015

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 0 days
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 29 Apr 2015


The Radio Sun
10.7 cm flux: 108 sfu
explanation | more data
Updated 29 Apr 2015

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: 5.2 nT
Bz: 3.9 nT south
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 2348 UT
Coronal Holes: 29 Apr 15

Solar wind flowing from this coronal hole should reach Earth on ~May 3-4. Credit: SDO/AIA.
Noctilucent Clouds The southern season for NLCs has come to an end. The last clouds were observed by NASA's AIM spacecraft on Feb. 20, 2015. Now attention shifts to the northern hemisphere, where the first clouds of 2015 should appear in mid-May.
Switch view: Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctic Penninsula, East Antarctica, Polar
Updated at:
SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts
Updated at: 2015 Apr 29 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: 2015 Apr 29 2200 UTC
Mid-latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
20 %
20 %
MINOR
05 %
05 %
SEVERE
01 %
01 %
High latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
15 %
15 %
MINOR
30 %
30 %
SEVERE
25 %
25 %
 
Wednesday, Apr. 29, 2015
What's up in space
 

Come to Tromsø and share Marianne's passion for rural photography: Chasethelighttours.co.uk invites you to experience "Heaven on Earth" with an aurora, fjord, fishing, whale watching, photography or sightseeing tour.

 
Chase the Light Tours

CME TO MISS EARTH: Yesterday, a massive filament of plasma exploded away from the sun's northeastern limb. The CME it hurled into space (movie) is not expected to hit Earth. Geomagnetic activity should remain low for the next 3 days as the CME sails wide of our planet. Aurora alerts: text, voice.

ALMOST-BLANK SUN: The sunspot number is plummeting toward zero. Only a few dark cores are peppering the face of the sun, and they are so small you might have trouble finding them in this April 29th image of the sun:

Almost no sunspots = almost no solar activity. The sun's X-ray output has flatlined, and NOAA forecasters estimate a scant 1% chance of strong flares in the next 24 hours.

If the sunspot number continues to drop, the sun could become completely blank. Blank, spotless suns are a sign that Solar Max is ending. Stay tuned for ... quiet? Solar flare alerts: text, voice.

Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery

VOLCANIC GAS CROSSES THE ATLANTIC: European MetOp satellites have been monitoring aerosols blasted into the atmosphere by Chile's Calbuco volcano on April 22nd. A new 7-day movie shows a plume of sulfur dioxide crossing the Atlantic from South America to Africa:


Credit: The Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment-2 (GOME-2) onboard MetOp-A and MetOp-B

South Africans should be alert for "volcanic sunsets" in the evenings ahead when the plume reaches the tip of their continent.

When the plume crossed Brazil, it produced "an impressive display of bright exotic colors in the evening twilight sky," reports Helio C. Vital of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This is what he saw on April 27th:

Many of Vital's photos show a distinctly purple hue. That is one of the telltale signs of a volcanic sunset. Fine volcanic aerosols in the stratosphere scatter blue light which, when mixed with ordinary sunset red, produces a violet hue. But purple isn't the only thing to look for, says atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley. In addition, he advises, sky watchers should "be alert for a very bright yellow twilight arch, fine cloud structure in the arch seen through binoculars, and long diffuse rays and shadows."

Stay tuned for updates from beneath the volcanic plume.

Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery

MICROBES LAUNCHED TO THE STRATOSPHERE: On Tuesday afternoon, April 28th, Spaceweather.com and the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched a colony of halobacteria 110,000 feet above Earth's surface. Why send microbes to the edge of space? For answers, scroll past the launch photo:

The purpose of this ongoing experiment is to find out if halobacteria can survive Mars-like conditions high above Earth's surface. If the answer is "yes," cousins of the terrestrial extremophile might one day be found on the Red Planet.

Some of the microbes traveling onboard the payload, pictured above, have been to the edge of space 3 times, where they have experienced sustained temperatures as low as -63 C and intense doses of cosmic radiation more than 40x Earth-normal. Can they survive this kind of treatment? Stay tuned for updates.

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 Apr. 29, 2015, the network reported 10 fireballs.
(9 sporadics, 1 eta Aquariid)

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 April 29, 2015 there were potentially hazardous asteroids.
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:
Asteroid
Date(UT)
Miss Distance
Size
2015 HO116
Apr 27
1.7 LD
31 m
2015 HA117
Apr 27
7.2 LD
15 m
2015 GB14
Apr 28
9 LD
36 m
2015 HD10
Apr 29
1.6 LD
22 m
2015 HS11
May 1
7.1 LD
15 m
2015 HL171
May 2
8.8 LD
61 m
5381 Sekhmet
May 17
62.8 LD
2.1 km
2015 HT9
May 25
12.2 LD
24 m
2005 XL80
Jun 4
38.1 LD
1.0 km
2012 XB112
Jun 11
10.1 LD
2 m
2015 HM10
Jul 7
1.4 LD
65 m
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.
  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
Heliophysics
  the underlying science of space weather
Space Weather Alerts
   
  more links...
©2015 Spaceweather.com. All rights reserved. This site is penned daily by Dr. Tony Phillips.
©2019 Spaceweather.com. All rights reserved.