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SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids
 
Solar wind
speed: 422.5 km/sec
density: 7.3 protons/cm3
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 2347 UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: C1
2059 UT Jun25
24-hr: C1
2059 UT Jun25
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 2300 UT
Daily Sun: 25 Jun 12
A new sunspot is growing at the circled location. Credit: SDO/HMI
Sunspot number: 24
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 25 Jun 2012

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 0 days
2012 total: 0 days (0%)
2011 total: 2 days (<1%)
2010 total: 51 days (14%)
2009 total: 260 days (71%)
Since 2004: 821 days
Typical Solar Min: 486 days

Updated 25 Jun 2012


The Radio Sun
10.7 cm flux: 85 sfu
explanation | more data
Updated 25 Jun 2012

Current Auroral Oval:
Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica
Credit: NOAA/POES
Planetary K-index
Now: Kp= 2 quiet
24-hr max: Kp= 3
quiet
explanation | more data
Interplanetary Mag. Field
Btotal: 6.5 nT
Bz: 1.8 nT north
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 2347 UT
Coronal Holes: 24 Jun 12
An equatorial coronal hole is emerging over the eastern limb. Solar wind ETA: July 1-2. Credit: SDO/AIA.
SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts
Updated at: 2012 Jun 25 2200 UTC
FLARE
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
CLASS M
05 %
05 %
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: 2012 Jun 25 2200 UTC
Mid-latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
10 %
10 %
MINOR
01 %
01 %
SEVERE
01 %
01 %
High latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
15 %
15 %
MINOR
20 %
20 %
SEVERE
10 %
10 %
 
Monday, Jun. 25, 2012
What's up in space
 

Thirty-five new items have just been added to our Meteorite Jewelry collection. Browse the Space Weather Store for something out of this world.

 
Meteorite jewelry

FAST-GROWING SUNSPOT: Breaking the temporary monotony of a blank sun, a new sunspot is growing rapidly in near the southeastern limb of the solar disk. Readers with solar telescopes, this is your chance to observe sunspot genesis.

ELECTRIC-BLUE CLOUDS: Last night, 82 km above Earth's surface where our planet's atmosphere meets the vacuum of space, a ray of sunlight hit a wispy, rippling bank of icy noctilucent clouds (NLCs). They lit up, glowing electric-blue, producing this apparition over Queensferry, Scotland:

"A stitch of 2 images shows the broad extent of the display last night," says photographer Adrian Maricic. "It was bright and vivid, the best of the 2012 noctilucent cloud season so far for us in Scotland!"

Normally confined to Arctic latitudes, the intense NLCs of June 24-25, 2012, dipped all the way down to the south coast of England: "This was my first sighting of 2012," says Pete Lawrence, who photographed the southern edge of the bank from Selsey UK.

In recent years, the "habitat" of noctilucent clouds has been expanding. Breaking through the barriers of high-latitude that once kept them bottled up in the Arctic, NLCs have been sighted as far south as Colorado, Virginia, Kansas, and Utah. Here are some examples of sightings in the lower United States.

Observing tips: Look west 30 to 60 minutes after sunset when the sun has dipped 6o to 16o below the horizon. If you see luminous blue-white tendrils spreading across the sky, you've probably spotted a noctilucent cloud.

Realtime Noctilucent Cloud Photo Gallery
[previous years: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011]

THE BUSY-NESS OVER YOUR HEAD: Earth orbit is crowded with nearly a thousand operating satellites and tens of thousands of spent rocket engines, splinters from satellite collisions, and other space debris. Space is a busy place. This picture taken by expert satellite watcher Marco Langbroek frames some of the madding crowd over Leiden, the Netherlands:

"This single image of a 10x14 degree-wide part of the geostationary belt was taken near midnight of June 18-19 and shows 30 satellites," says Langbroek. "Each black box contains one or more (mostly) geostationary satellites plus a few rocket bodies: 23 commercial geostationary satellites, one classified military geostationary satellite (Milstar 5), and 6 spent rocket boosters."

"The geostationary belt can be seen as a slanting line of objects diagonally over the larger image." he continues. "The geostationary belt (at declination -7.4 degrees for the Netherlands) never comes high in the sky for my country (which is at 52 N). All the objects on the picture have an elevation below 30 degrees. The image was taken from the center of Leiden--i.e. not an ideal dark sky. I did a slightly bad job in focussing, so the image is slightly less sharp (especially near the edges) than it could have been with this fine lens. Still, an amazing number of objects recorded in this small field of view!"

Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery

  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 25, 2012 there were potentially hazardous asteroids.
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:
Asteroid
Date(UT)
Miss Distance
Mag.
Size
2012 MF7
Jun 21
0.8 LD
--
19 m
2005 GO21
Jun 21
17.1 LD
--
2.2 km
2012 LU
Jun 23
5.8 LD
--
39 m
2012 MY2
Jun 29
1.3 LD
--
23 m
2003 KU2
Jul 15
40.2 LD
--
1.3 km
2004 EW9
Jul 16
46.8 LD
--
2.1 km
2002 AM31
Jul 22
13.7 LD
--
1.0 km
37655 Illapa
Aug 12
37 LD
--
1.2 km
2000 ET70
Aug 21
58.5 LD
--
1.0 km
1998 TU3
Aug 25
49.2 LD
--
4.9 km
2009 AV
Aug 26
62.8 LD
--
1.1 km
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
Trade Show Displays
   
  more links...
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