SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids

Solar wind
speed: 442.5 km/sec
density: 8.07 protons/cm³
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 0616 UT

X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: C5 1748 UT Jun12
24-hr: C8 1911 UT Jun11
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 1820 UT

Daily Sun: 12 June 25

Expand: labels | no labels

Sunspot 4107 is developing a delta-class magnetic that could ead to strong solar flares. NASA/SDO

Sunspot number: 133
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 12 Jun 2025

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 12 Jun 2025

Thermosphere Climate Index
today: 22.21x10¹⁰ W Warm
Max: 49.4x10¹⁰ W Hot (10/1957)
Min: 2.05x10¹⁰ W Cold (02/2009)
explanation | more data: gfx, txt
Updated 11 Jun 2025

The Radio Sun
10.7 cm flux: 141 sfu
explanation | more data
Updated 12 Jun 2025

Cosmic Rays Solar Cycle 25 is intensifying, 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: -6.4% Very Low
48-hr change: +1.4%
Max: +11.7% Very High (12/2009)
Min: -32.1% Very Low (06/1991)
explanation | more data
Updated 12 Jun 2025 @ 0700 UT

Current Auroral Oval:

Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica
Credit: NOAA/Ovation

Planetary K-index
Now: Kp= 2.67 quiet
24-hr max: Kp= 5.00 storm
explanation | more data

Interplanetary Mag. Field
B_total: 14.51 nT
B_z: -8.50 nT south
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 0616 UT

Coronal Holes: 12 Jun 25

Solar wind flowing from this large southern coronal hole shold reach Earth on June 14-15. Credit: NASA/SDO | more data

Polar Stratospheric Clouds
Colorful Type II polar stratospheric clouds (PSC) form when the temperature in the stratosphere drops to a staggeringly low -85C. NASA's MERRA-2 climate model predicts when the air up there is cold enough:

On Jun 09, 2025, the Arctic stratosphere is much too hot for polar stratospheric clouds. | more data.

Noctilucent Clouds
The northern season for noctilucent clouds has begin. First reports of the electric-blue clouds came from Russia on May 28, 2025. Since then, the clouds have spread to lower latitudes with one possible sighting in southern Italy on June 3, 2025.

Above: June 4, 2025 in Poland

"This morning, despite poor visibility, I saw my first noctilucent clouds this year," reports photographer Marek Nikodem of Szubin, Poland. "The display was 60 degrees high--surprisingly high for a first observation. I consider the new season for noctilucent clouds to have started, here in Poland."

SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts

Updated at: 2025 Jun 11 2200 UTC

FLARE	0-24 hr	24-48 hr
CLASS M	40 %	40 %
CLASS X	05 %	05 %

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 Jun 11 2200 UTC

Mid-latitudes

	0-24 hr	24-48 hr
ACTIVE	15 %	40 %
MINOR	05 %	20 %
SEVERE	01 %	05 %

High latitudes

	0-24 hr	24-48 hr
ACTIVE	15 %	10 %
MINOR	25 %	30 %
SEVERE	25 %	55 %


		Thursday, Jun. 12, 2025
	What's up in space	Thursday, Jun. 12, 2025

This is an AI Free Zone: AI isn't all bad. Large language models are good writers with access to vast stores of data. There's still no substitute for a human being with decades of space weather forecasting experience. This website is 100% human.

CO-ROTATING INTERACTION REGION: A G2-class geomanetic storm is possible on June 14th when a co-rotating interaction region (CIR) is expected to hit Earth's magnetic field. CIRs are transition zones between slow- and fast-moving streams of solar wind. They contain shock waves and enhanced magnetic fields that do a good job sparlking auroras. Aurora alerts: SMS Text

A HIDDEN WORLD OF SOLAR ACTIVITY: In the 17th century when Anton van Leeuwenhoek looked through a microscope and saw bacteria for the first time, he revealed a new "world of the small" and forever upended the field of biology. Is the same thing about to happen to solar physics?

Maybe. A paper just published in Nature Astronomy reports a new technology for seeing very small things in the atmosphere of the sun. It's a system of adaptive optics that corrects for turbulence in Earth's atmosphere. A test run in July 2023 on the 1.6 m Goode Solar Telescope in California's Big Bear Lake produced an immediate discovery:

"We became astounded witnesses to a strange, short-lived object," recalls the research team, led by Dirk Schmidt of the NSF National Solar Observatory. "We call it a twisted plasmoid."

The plasmoid is unlike anything seen inside the sun's atmosphere before. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory was observing at the same time and saw nothing. The Big Bear adaptive optics system is so good at correcting turbulent blur, it outperforms space telescopes.

A movie of the plasmoid shows a narrow stream of plasma less than 100 km wide moving like a flagellate under van Leeuwenhoek's microscope. The front of the stream "suddenly stopped and collided with its own rear half," before fading away.

The 1.6-meter Goode Solar Telescope in Big Bear Lake. The steady temperature of the water surface helps keep the air around the telescope calm

It's not clear whether this is a significant discovery or just something idiosyncratic and weird. We'll soon find out. The researchers plan to install the same system on the giant Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii, where adaptive optics on its 4-meter mirror could reveal an even greater menagerie. Let the plasmoid hunt begin!

For more images from the new adaptive optics system, click here.

Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter

SOLAR SYSTEM STUD EARRINGS: These earrings have flown to the edge of space--and all eight planets are included! On May 21, 2025, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched the Solar System Stud Earrings to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon. At the apex of the flight, they floated 104,655 feet high:

You can have the complete set for $149.95. Only Pluto is omitted from the collection; the dwarf planet was too small for human earlobes. The earrings come with a greeting card showing the studs in flight and telling the story of their journey to the stratosphere and back again.

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

Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter

Realtime Noctilucent Cloud 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 Jun 10, 2025, the network reported 6 fireballs.
(6 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 12, 2025 there were 2349 potentially hazardous asteroids.

Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:

Asteroid	Date(UT)	Miss Distance	Velocity (km/s)	Diameter (m)
2020 LQ	2025-Jun-06	17.3 LD	11.8	34
2018 LE4	2025-Jun-07	12.2 LD	13.3	62
2025 LN	2025-Jun-07	0.6 LD	8.9	6
2014 LL26	2025-Jun-08	8 LD	5.2	31
2025 LK	2025-Jun-08	0.3 LD	10.3	15
2025 KP8	2025-Jun-08	13.6 LD	13.7	53
2015 XR1	2025-Jun-12	18.1 LD	12.6	81
2022 KQ5	2025-Jun-12	13.6 LD	5.1	5
2025 KV4	2025-Jun-12	4.1 LD	8	26
2025 KF1	2025-Jun-12	8.1 LD	9.7	39
2023 XO15	2025-Jun-15	17.8 LD	3.4	24
2025 HN6	2025-Jun-16	6.4 LD	2.3	23
2000 LF3	2025-Jun-17	18.9 LD	14.5	169
2023 XU2	2025-Jun-18	11.1 LD	15.6	32
2025 KT6	2025-Jun-19	7 LD	9.2	72
2003 AY2	2025-Jun-22	14.2 LD	15.9	386
2014 DH	2025-Jun-28	17.1 LD	12.1	17
2019 JM	2025-Jul-09	16.6 LD	6.9	14
2019 NW5	2025-Jul-09	15.2 LD	16.5	65
2005 VO5	2025-Jul-11	15.9 LD	14.4	382
2022 YS5	2025-Jul-17	17.4 LD	6.1	38
2018 BY6	2025-Jul-19	13.7 LD	7.4	69
2019 CO1	2025-Aug-08	17.8 LD	10.5	65

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=10.1 (Jun 12.4)
yesterday: m=10.1
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).