Directly under the Arctic Circle! Marianne's Arctic Xpress in Tromsø offers fjord, whale and wildlife tours by day, aurora tours by night. Book Now for out of this world day and night adventures. | | | THE WORM MOON: There's a full Moon tonight, and according to folklore it has a special name: the Worm Moon. It signals the coming of northern spring, a thawing of the soil, and the first stirrings of earthworms in long-dormant gardens. Step outside tonight and behold the wakening landscape. "Worm moonlight" is prettier than it sounds. [photo gallery] AURORAS VS. THE FULL MOON: For the next few nights, sky watchers around the Arctic Circle may have trouble seeing the aurora borealis. Only a bright outburst of lights could compete with the full Moon. On March 11th in Saariselka, Finland, such an outburst did occur: "A brief but intense display of auroras was well visible despite the moonlight," reports photographer Juan Carlos Casado. "We also witnessed a beautiful Moon halo." While the auroras were caused by the gentle buffeting of solar wind thousands of kilometers above Earth's surface, the Moon halo is a sign of something much closer to the ground: ice crystals. Plate-shaped crystals floating in clouds 5 to 10 km overhead catch rays of moonlight and bend them into a 22o ring, as shown above. The forecast this weekend calls for lots of Moon halos, but not so many auroras. NOAA forecasters say the chance of geomagnetic storm on March 12th is only 5%, so outbursts like Casado observed are unlikely. Meanwhile, the chance of a full Moon is 100%. Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery NEUTRONS ON A PLANE: Want to experience space weather? It's easy. Just step on board an airplane. Cosmic rays from deep space penetrate Earth's atmosphere where air travelers absorb them during long trips. On March 9th, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus flew to Sweden for an Arctic space weather balloon launch. During the flight from Los Angeles to Stockholm, they used a bubble chamber to search for neutrons--and they found them. In this photo, each bubble (three are circled for illustration) shows where a neutron passed through the chamber and vaporized a superheated droplet: Among researchers it is well known that neutrons are an important form of cosmic rays, providing much of the biologically effective radiation dose at altitudes of interest to aviation and space tourism. Low-energy neutrons also cause single-event upsets in aircraft avionics. By counting the bubbles in the chamber, it is possible to estimate the total dose of neutron radiation during our flight. The answer is 18 uSv--even more than the dose of X-rays and gamma-rays, which the students also measured. Lesson: When measuring aviation radiation, don't forget the neutrons! Stay tuned for more results from our ongoing research trip to the Arctic Circle. Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery NORTHERN LIGHTS SPACE PENDANT: To raise money for their trip to the Arctic Circle, on March 2nd the students of Earth to Sky Calculus flew a payload-full of Northern Lights pendants to the edge of space above California. You can have one for $69.95. Each piece of jewelry comes with a greeting card telling the story of the pendant's trip to the stratosphere and certifying its peak altitude: 112,200 feet above Earth's surface. Bonus: Would you like your pendant to fly above the Arctic Circle as well? Make a note in the COMMENTS box at checkout and we will take your pendant to Sweden for a second trip to the stratosphere. More far-out gifts may be found in the Earth to Sky Store. All proceeds support STEM education and high-altitude ballooning. Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery Realtime Space Weather 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 Mar. 12, 2017, the network reported 2 fireballs. (2 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 March 12, 2017 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. | 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 12% 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 | | These links help Spaceweather.com stay online. Thank you to our supporters! | |