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SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids
 
Solar wind
speed: 369.9 km/sec
density: 2.5 protons/cm3
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 2350 UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: A5
1526 UT Jun29
24-hr: A6
1123 UT Jun29
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 2259 UT
Daily Sun: 29 Jun 17
Sunspot AR2664 poses no threat for strong solar flares. Credit: SDO/HMI

Sunspot number: 13
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 29 Jun 2017

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 0 days
2017 total: 42 days (24%)
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 29 Jun 2017


The Radio Sun
10.7 cm flux: 72 sfu
explanation | more data
Updated 29 Jun 2017

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: 2.7 nT
Bz: -0.1 nT south
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 2349 UT
Coronal Holes: 29 Jun 17

There are no large coronal holes on the Earthside of the sun today. 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 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: 2017 Jun 29 2200 UTC
Mid-latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
15 %
10 %
MINOR
05 %
01 %
SEVERE
01 %
01 %
High latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
15 %
15 %
MINOR
25 %
20 %
SEVERE
20 %
15 %
 
Thursday, Jun. 29, 2017
What's up in space
       
 

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!

 

POSSIBLE EARTH-DIRECTED CME: Defying expectations, decaying sunspot AR2664 exploded during the late hours of June 28th. The long-duration B1-class blast produced a faint but clear halo CME. NOAA forecasters are analyzing the expanding cloud now to determine if it will hit Earth in the days ahead. Free: Aurora Alerts

NASA CREATES ARTIFICIAL 'SPACE CLOUDS': After multiple scrubbed launch attempts over the last 30 days, a Terrier-Improved Malemute sounding rocket finally blasted off from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia at 4:25 a.m. on June 29th.  The resulting display of space clouds was worth the wait:

"It was an amazing sight." says onlooker Kerry Puglisi of Smithfield VA.  "I saw the clouds forming almost one/two at a time in all the colors of the rainbow. I  wanted to run in for my camera, and wake my husband and son, but I was too amazed to move."

During the 8-minute flight, the rocket deployed 10 canisters about the size of soft drink cans more than 100 miles above Earth's surface. The canisters dispensed barium, strontium and cupric-oxide, which interacted to form blue-green and red vapors visible from New York to North Carolina. According to the space agency, the chemicals "pose[d] no hazard to residents along the mid-Atlantic coast."

"This photo doesn't do it justice," says Susan Milligan of Williamsburg VA. "As the canisters fired, the erupting colors were vivid and brilliantly apparent. This was the way the clouds looked as the colors dissipated."

These clouds allow scientists on the ground to visually track particle motions at the edge of space, giving them new insights into the dynamics of Earth's ionosphere.

Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery

WHERE WILL YOU BE ON AUG. 21, 2017? The Great American Solar Eclipse is less than two months away. Do you know where you will be? The map below shows the path of totality (the narrow zone where the Moon completely covers the sun) overlaid on a statistical map of cloudiness for the month of August. The best places to be are blue:

Canadian meteorologist Jay Anderson and colleague Jennifer West made the map based on data from NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites. It shows that people in western states, where fractional cloud cover dips as low as 15%, are most likely to witness the precious two and a half minutes of totality. Overcast is more of a problem east of Missouri.  As the Moon's shadow approaches the Atlantic Coast of the USA, there is a better than 50% chance that it will be hitting the tops of clouds instead of the landscape below.

Pushpins in the map show confirmed launch sites for the our Solar Eclipse Balloon Network. Using space weather balloons, teams of student researchers will launch cameras to the stratosphere for a unique view of the eclipse high above any obscuring clouds. There's more to their mission, however, than photography: Each balloon will also be equipped with an array of cosmic ray sensors. By the time the eclipse is finished, we will have gained a snapshot of how deep-space radiation is penetrating Earth's atmosphere across the entirety of North America. Want to join us? Click here.

Realtime Solar Eclipse Photo Gallery

THESE PENDANTS HAVE TOUCHED SPACE: Looking for a far-out gift? On April 15, 2017, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus flew a payload-full of heart-shaped Venus pendants to the stratosphere onboard a high-altitude helium balloon. Here's one floating 111,550 feet above the Sierras of central California:

You can have one for $129.95. Each glittering pendant comes with a greeting card showing the jewelry in flight and telling the story of its journey to the stratosphere and back again.

More items from the edge of space may be found in the Earth to Sky Store. All proceeds support atmospheric radiation monitoring and hands-on STEM education.

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

SUNSET RAINBOW: On June 25th, Brad Timerson of Newark NY stepped outside after a brief rain shower and witnessed a remarkably tall--and remarkably red--rainbow. "It was about as big as a rainbow can be," marveled Timerson. "I had to use my iPhone in panorama mode to catch it all."

What made this rainbow so tall? And so red? The answer to both questions is the sunset. Atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley explains:

"Sunset rainbows ride high in the sky because their centers are exactly opposite the sun. Like a see-saw, the lower the sun, the higher is the bow. Sunset light making up the 'bow is highly reddened by its long travel through the lower atmosphere where air and dust preferentially scatter away blues and greens."

"Timerson's 'bow shows something more, that rainbows are disks with colored rims," adds Cowley. "When you next see a bow, look for the contrast between the bright sky inside and the dark of Alexanders dark band immediately outside


Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery


Realtime Noctilucent Cloud 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 Jun. 29, 2017, the network reported 12 fireballs.
(12 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 June 29, 2017 there were 1803 potentially hazardous asteroids.
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:
Asteroid
Date(UT)
Miss Distance
Velocity (km/s)
Diameter (m)
441987
2017-Jun-24
7.9 LD
12.7
178
2017 MA3
2017-Jun-27
3.2 LD
9.3
16
2017 MB3
2017-Jun-30
5 LD
6.4
31
2017 MC1
2017-Jun-30
2.5 LD
11.6
44
2017 MC3
2017-Jul-02
6.5 LD
13.2
53
2017 ME4
2017-Jul-03
5.4 LD
6.8
20
2017 MB5
2017-Jul-05
18.9 LD
9.5
115
2017 MA5
2017-Jul-06
15 LD
7.9
26
2017 MC4
2017-Jul-11
7.6 LD
20.6
154
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.

  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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