Solar wind
speed: 400.9 km/sec
density: 2.76 protons/cm3
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 1221 UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: C1
1911 UT Oct22
24-hr: C4
0152 UT Oct22
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 0025 UT
Daily Sun: 22 Oct 25
Expand: labels | no labels
All of these sunspots are stable and quiet--unlikely to produce strong solar flares. Credit: NASA/SDO

Sunspot number: 107
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 22 Oct 2025
Current Auroral Oval:
Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica
Credit: NOAA/Ovation
Planetary K-index
Now: Kp= 1.67 quiet
24-hr max: Kp= 1.67
quiet
explanation | more data
Interplanetary Mag. Field
Btotal: 9.63 nT
Bz: -1.67 nT south
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 1222 UT
Coronal Holes: 22 Oct 25

There are no equatorial coronal holes on the Earthside of the sun.
Credit: NASA/SDO | more data

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 0 days
2025 total: 0 days (0%)
2024 total: 0 days (0%)
2023 total: 0 days (0%)
2022 total: 1 day (<1%)
2021 total: 64 days (18%)
2020 total: 208 days (57%)
2019 total: 281 days (77%)
2018 total: 221 days (61%)
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%)
2008 total: 268 days (73%)
2007 total: 152 days (42%)
2006 total: 70 days (19%)

Updated 22 Oct 2025


Thermosphere Climate Index
today: 21.79x1010 W Warm
Max: 49.4
x1010 W Hot (10/1957)
Min: 2.05
x1010 W Cold (02/2009)
explanation | more data: gfx, txt
Updated 21 Oct 2025

The Radio Sun
10.7 cm flux: 133 sfu
explanation | more data
Updated 22 Oct 2025

Cosmic Rays Solar Cycle 25 is near its peak, and this is reflected in the number of cosmic rays entering Earth's atmosphere. Neutron counts from the University of Oulu's Sodankyla Geophysical Observatory show that cosmic rays reaching Earth are slowly declining--a result of the yin-yang relationship between the solar cycle and cosmic rays.

Oulu Neutron Counts

Percentages of the Space Age average:
today: -8.2% Low
48-hr change: -1.1%
Max: +11.7% Very High
(12/2009)
Min: -32.1% Very Low (06/1991)
explanation | more data
Updated 22 Oct 2025 @ 0700 UT


SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts
Updated at: 2025 Oct 22 2200 UTC
FLARE
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
CLASS M
15 %
15 %
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: 2025 Oct 22 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 %
20 %
MINOR
25 %
20 %
SEVERE
20 %
10 %
 
Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025
What's up in space
       
 

This is an AI Free Zone: Text created by Large Language Models is spreading across the Internet. It's well-written, but frequently inaccurate. If you find a mistake on Spaceweather.com, rest assured it was made by a real human being.

 

AURORAS SURROUND COMET LEMMON--AGAIN: Comet Lemmon's close approach to Earth on Oct. 21st coincided with the onset of autumnal aurora season. The resulting photo-ops have been superb. Here's the comet surrounded by red oxygen auroras over Germany, and purple nitrogen auroras over Alaska. Photographers, submit your images here.

MAJOR FARSIDE EXPLOSION: Something exploded on the farside of the sun yesterday (late on Oct. 21st). The blast produced an exceptionally fast and potent CME, shown here in an animation from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO):

The USAF reported Type II radio emissions from this CME with high-velocity drift rates: 2474 km/s--a sign of fast-moving shocks inside the CME. Only a handful of CMEs in the Space Age have moved significantly faster, such as the great CME of Aug. 1972 (2850 km/s) and a CME propelled by an X8 flare in Sept. 2017 (2600–3300 km/s).

If the CME hit Earth, we would almost certainly experience a strong geomagnetic storm. Instead, it is going to hit Venus (as early as Oct. 23rd according to this NASA model). Venus does not have an internally generated global magnetic field to protect it, so the impact will erode some gas from the planet's cloudtops. Venus's crushingly-thick atmosphere won't notice.

The source of this explosion approximately matches the location of old sunspot 4246, currently transiting the farside of the sun. Only a week ago, that dangerous sunspot was facing Earth. ==> We have dodged a bullet. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text.

Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
Free:
Spaceweather.com Newsletter

MILKY WAY IN A CRYSTAL BALL: Are you looking for a big gift? How about the entire Milky Way? The students of Earth to Sky Calculus have launched our own galaxy to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon. Here it is 113,517 feet above the Sierra Nevada mountains of central California:

You can have it for $119.95. The galaxy is laser etched inside a 60 mm crystal sphere. You can turn it in your hands, inspecting the spiral star system from any angle. The gift-boxed sphere comes with a greeting card showing the item in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space.

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

EARTH'S ELECTRICAL RINGS JUST SPRUNG A LEAK: This story shows how little we know. On Oct. 18th, a routine G2-class geomagnetic storm broke out when a CME passed close to Earth. What happened next was not routine. An extremely bright SAR arc cut across the night sky, stretching from the USA to Europe.

"My son and I were surprised by this red bow in the south," reports P-M Hedén, who photographed the display from Norrtälje, Sweden. It was so bright, he even captured its reflection in a local pond:

"Only a few times in a solar cycle do we get an SAR arc this bright," says Jeff Baumgardner, who has been studying the phenomenon for decades at Boston University's Center for Space Physics. "It nearly saturated our detectors."

SAR arcs appear when Earth’s ring current system springs a leak. Yes, Earth has rings. They are made of electricity, a donut-shaped circuit carrying millions of amps around our planet. The ring system is created by opposing motions of electrons and ions in Earth’s rotating magnetic field.

During strong geomagnetic storms, thermal energy from the ring current can leak into the atmosphere below, creating red lights in the sky. The ring-shaped arcs were discovered in 1956 at the dawn of the Space Age. At first, researchers didn’t know what they were and gave them a misleading name: "Stable Auroral Red arcs," or SAR arcs for short. However, they are not auroras.


This super SAR arc appeared over Maine on Oct. 18th

The storm on Oct. 18th was not strong. Nevertheless, it created one of the biggest and brightest SAR arcs in years. Some sky watchers could see it even though the human eye is famously insensitive to the arc's pure red color (630.0 nm).

Baumgardner doesn’t know why the arc was so bright. He says it was 10 to 30 times brighter than a G2 storm would typically produce. "We need to gather more information."

Meanwhile, sky watchers should remain alert for SAR arcs. Apparently, we don’t know when a bright one will appear.

more images: from Bengt Flodqvist of southern Öland, Sweden; from Carla Sanders of Searsport, Maine; from Janne-Kalle Räsänen of southern Finland; from Laura Kranich near Berlin, Germany

Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
Free:
Spaceweather.com Newsletter


Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
Free:
Spaceweather.com Newsletter

  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 Oct 20, 2025, the network reported 27 fireballs.
(19 sporadics, 3 Orionids, 3 Leonis Minorids, 1 epsilon Geminid, 1 Southern Taurid)

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 October 23, 2025 there were 2349 potentially hazardous asteroids.
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:
Asteroid
Date(UT)
Miss Distance
Velocity (km/s)
Diameter (m)
2025 TR2
2025-Oct-17
12.8 LD
16.3
58
2025 UE4
2025-Oct-17
13.6 LD
16.6
26
2025 UZ1
2025-Oct-17
3.7 LD
9.6
12
2025 UD
2025-Oct-17
5.7 LD
14.6
38
2025 UT
2025-Oct-17
1.7 LD
10.5
13
2025 UY2
2025-Oct-17
1.6 LD
14.1
10
2025 UQ
2025-Oct-17
3.3 LD
7.2
6
2025 UB1
2025-Oct-17
3.3 LD
7.2
6
2025 UH1
2025-Oct-18
3.8 LD
10.3
6
2025 UH3
2025-Oct-18
5.7 LD
9.2
10
2025 UM1
2025-Oct-18
0.3 LD
14.4
4
2025 UW
2025-Oct-18
8.4 LD
8.2
14
2022 UU15
2025-Oct-19
14.8 LD
16.1
34
2025 UL
2025-Oct-19
10.9 LD
11.9
23
2025 TT10
2025-Oct-19
1.2 LD
22.8
16
2025 UO2
2025-Oct-19
19.3 LD
8.3
22
2025 UE
2025-Oct-19
13.9 LD
7.8
32
2025 UW3
2025-Oct-20
3.8 LD
8.4
8
2025 TV10
2025-Oct-20
7.8 LD
7.2
35
2025 UB2
2025-Oct-20
19.7 LD
17
50
2025 TJ11
2025-Oct-20
7.2 LD
13.1
25
2025 UR
2025-Oct-21
3.7 LD
11.6
20
2025 SD7
2025-Oct-21
9.9 LD
12.5
55
2025 TQ10
2025-Oct-21
9.3 LD
7.4
44
2023 UK3
2025-Oct-21
6.7 LD
9
5
2025 UN1
2025-Oct-21
16.2 LD
12.6
30
2025 UX
2025-Oct-21
11.9 LD
6.5
21
2025 TU4
2025-Oct-21
15.4 LD
7.7
17
2025 TU10
2025-Oct-21
15.9 LD
7.3
25
2025 UJ1
2025-Oct-22
2.5 LD
15.3
11
2025 UC2
2025-Oct-22
0.9 LD
10.6
9
2025 UB
2025-Oct-22
3.2 LD
5.4
12
2024 GD2
2025-Oct-22
17.8 LD
4.2
28
2025 UV1
2025-Oct-22
5.5 LD
11.7
21
2025 UA2
2025-Oct-22
4.6 LD
11.3
13
2025 UK2
2025-Oct-22
13.7 LD
7.2
30
2025 UE1
2025-Oct-22
0.7 LD
15.3
17
2025 TG11
2025-Oct-22
10.4 LD
10.8
19
2025 UP1
2025-Oct-23
18.4 LD
6.8
12
2022 HM1
2025-Oct-23
15.1 LD
13.3
27
2025 UR3
2025-Oct-23
1.3 LD
9.9
8
2025 UE2
2025-Oct-23
5.9 LD
9.2
11
2025 UD2
2025-Oct-23
2.1 LD
9.6
16
2025 UL1
2025-Oct-24
9.1 LD
14.1
30
2025 TX2
2025-Oct-24
6.3 LD
6.8
26
2012 TP231
2025-Oct-25
15.2 LD
6.7
37
2025 UX1
2025-Oct-25
3.7 LD
14.5
10
2025 UP2
2025-Oct-25
5.2 LD
3.1
6
2025 UD3
2025-Oct-25
1.9 LD
6.3
6
2025 UU
2025-Oct-25
5 LD
12.6
29
2020 FA5
2025-Oct-26
15.7 LD
26.5
210
2025 UU1
2025-Oct-26
16.1 LD
13.2
26
2025 UV2
2025-Oct-26
14.6 LD
7.7
12
2009 HC
2025-Oct-26
8.6 LD
4.2
39
2025 UJ2
2025-Oct-26
18.9 LD
14.5
48
2025 UF3
2025-Oct-27
6.2 LD
3.2
14
434196
2025-Oct-27
17.4 LD
10.9
171
2025 UQ1
2025-Oct-28
10.4 LD
5.8
10
2025 UH2
2025-Oct-29
19.3 LD
8.9
29
2025 UL2
2025-Oct-29
3.9 LD
12.4
21
2025 TP11
2025-Nov-02
12 LD
8.4
35
2005 EZ223
2025-Nov-03
15.6 LD
12.9
118
2023 VK6
2025-Nov-03
7.6 LD
9.6
15
2025 TB12
2025-Nov-04
7.3 LD
6.3
22
2021 VQ10
2025-Nov-08
9 LD
15
13
2019 UH7
2025-Nov-08
13.3 LD
5.8
11
2018 KC
2025-Nov-09
16 LD
9.3
11
2017 WG14
2025-Nov-09
16.7 LD
11.7
45
2020 VK4
2025-Nov-10
16.4 LD
3.8
9
2012 VC26
2025-Nov-11
13.3 LD
6.4
6
2019 VL5
2025-Nov-14
14.7 LD
9.1
24
2022 FG4
2025-Nov-17
18.7 LD
22.2
105
3361
2025-Nov-19
14.8 LD
9.1
435
2013 NJ4
2025-Nov-20
12.6 LD
6.4
12
2021 WR
2025-Nov-22
19.3 LD
10
31
516155
2025-Nov-24
12.5 LD
16.7
338
2020 WM
2025-Nov-24
17.4 LD
11.8
36
2019 UT6
2025-Nov-25
6.2 LD
12.6
147
2018 WG2
2025-Nov-27
13.5 LD
7.5
3
2007 VM184
2025-Dec-01
13.1 LD
20
224
2018 WC2
2025-Dec-03
9.8 LD
8.9
36
2021 JE1
2025-Dec-08
13.5 LD
7.1
16
2019 XN3
2025-Dec-10
5.7 LD
3.6
15
1999 SF10
2025-Dec-10
8.2 LD
4.4
46
2016 YH
2025-Dec-13
6.8 LD
8.9
28
2025 TZ
2025-Dec-16
19.1 LD
6.1
48
2015 XX168
2025-Dec-18
4.7 LD
11.6
27
2010 WR7
2025-Dec-20
19.5 LD
8.3
71
Notes: LD means "Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance between Earth and the Moon. 1 LD also equals 0.00256 AU.
  Cosmic Rays in the Atmosphere

SPACE WEATHER BALLOON DATA: Almost 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 sensors that detect secondary cosmic rays, a form of radiation from space that can penetrate all the way down to Earth's surface. Our monitoring program has been underway without interruption for 10 years, resulting in a unique dataset of in situ atmospheric measurements.

Latest results (Nov. 2024): Atmospheric radiation is sharply decreasing in 2024. Our latest measurements in November registered a 10-year low:

What's going on? Ironically, the radiation drop is caused by increasing solar activity. Solar Cycle 25 has roared to life faster than forecasters expected. The sun's strengthening and increasingly tangled magnetic field repels cosmic rays from deep space. In addition, solar coronal mass ejections (CMEs) sweep aside cosmic rays, causing sharp reductions called "Forbush Decreases." The two effects blend together to bring daily radiation levels down.

.Who cares? Cosmic rays are a surprisingly "down to Earth" form of space weather. They can alter the chemistry of the atmosphere, trigger lightning, and penetrate commercial airplanes. According to a study from the Harvard T.H. Chan school of public health, crews of aircraft have higher rates of cancer than the general population. The researchers listed cosmic rays, irregular sleep habits, and chemical contaminants as leading risk factors. A number of controversial studies (#1, #2, #3, #4) go even further, linking cosmic rays with cardiac arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death.

Technical notes: 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.

Data points in the graph labeled "Stratospheric Radiation" correspond to the peak of the Regener-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 Regener 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.
SolarMonitor.org
  information about sunspots based on the latest NOAA/USAF Active Region Summary
Starlink Satellite Statistics
  current counts of failed and deployed Starlink satellites from Jonathan's Space Page. See also, all satellite statistics.
The Aerospace Corporation
  Authoritative predictions of space junk and satellite re-entries
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
Live Aurora Webcam
  from Lights over Lapland
Heliophysics
  the underlying science of space weather

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T CrB NOVA WATCH
today: m=9.7 (Oct 22.2)
yesterday: m=9.9

more: AAVSO data

Explanation: When the nova explodes, the visual magnitude of the star (m) will jump from +10 (invisible to the naked eye) to +2 (about as bright as the North Star).

A New Prediction: Astronomer Jean Schneider of the Paris observatory predicts the nova will occur around Nov. 10, 2025, or June 25, 2026, based on periodicities observed in previous eruptions. [more]



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