Lights Over Lapland has a brand-new website full of exciting adventures in Abisko National Park, Sweden! Take a look at our aurora activities and book your once-in-a-lifetime trip with us today!

THE MOON AND MARS--TONIGHT: When the sun goes down tonight, step outside and face south. The waxing gibbous Moon is approaching Mars for a conjunction in the constellation Capricornus. Mars is distinctly red and it shines about 6x brighter than a 1st magnitude star--easy to see even beside the glaring Moon. Try to look before the sky fades to black. The pair will look extra beautiful surrounded by twilight blue. Sky maps: Oct. 17, 18.

GEOMAGNETIC STORM PREDICTED: NOAA forecasters say there is a 55% chance of G1-class geomagnetic storms on Oct. 19th when a stream of solar wind is expected to graze Earth's magnetic field. The gaseous material is flowing from a north polar hole in the sun's atmosphere, shown here in an extreme ultraviolet image from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory:

Most of the solar wind stream will miss Earth, sailing north of our planet. However, the southern extension of the hole will send just enough material our way to potentially trigger a storm--especially if an equinox crack opens when the solar wind arrives. Arctic sky watchers should be alert for auroras before the weekend. Free: Aurora Alerts.

Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery

RED AURORAS OVER SVALBARD: Three nights ago, auroras filled the sky over Svalbard, one of the northernmost inhabited places on Earth. That's nothing unusual. Located between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole, the Arctic island is frequently illuminated by the glow of geomagnetic activity. Seldom, however, are the Northern Lights so red:

Ruslan Merzlyakov took the picture overlooking Svalbard's Mt. Sarkofagen. "I've never seen auroras so colorful before," says Merzlyakov, a veteran observer of Northern Lights.

Auroras are normally green. The verdant glow comes from oxygen atoms excited by geomagnetic activity about 150 km above Earth's surface. Rare red auroras are also caused by oxygen atoms--but at a much higher altitude, between 150 km and 500 km. At those heights, the temperature and density of the atmosphere favors atomic transitions that emit red photons. Indeed, Merzlyakov's photo shows red stacked on top of green just as theory predicts.

Merzlyakov notes that the auroras did not look this red to his unaided eye. "My camera drew out the colors from a more monocromatic display," he says. "Even so--what a show!"

Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery

THE PLUTO PENDANT: When NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto in the summer of 2015, planetary scientists were amazed by what they saw: towering mountains, methane dunes, deep canyons. Most amazing of all was the giant heart in Pluto's southern hemisphere--an expanse of geologically fresh terrain named "Tombaugh Regio". Now you can wear Pluto next to your own heart:

On Oct 11th the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched this pendant to the edge of space using a high altitude cosmic ray balloon. It reached an altitude of 35.6 km (116,798 feet) above Earth's surface. You can have it for $119.95. The students are selling these pendants support their cosmic ray ballooning program.

Bonus: If you buy one this week, you may have a "Pluto is a Planet" Space Pendant free of charge.

Each pendant comes with a unique gift card showing the item at the edge of space and telling the story of its flight. Proceeds support Earth to Sky Calculus and hands-on STEM research.

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

Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery

On Oct. 17, 2018, the network reported 26 fireballs.
(22 sporadics, 1 epsilon Geminid, 1 Orionid, 1 Southern Taurid, 1 October beta Camelopardalid)

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]

Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:

Asteroid	Date(UT)	Miss Distance	Velocity (km/s)	Diameter (m)
2018 TS4	2018-Oct-11	5.2 LD	2.3	12
2018 TR4	2018-Oct-11	6.9 LD	11	36
2018 TD2	2018-Oct-12	12.9 LD	11.2	18
2018 TQ3	2018-Oct-12	10.5 LD	7.4	14
2018 TB5	2018-Oct-13	3.1 LD	16.3	17
2018 TC5	2018-Oct-13	12.6 LD	7.6	20
2018 TU4	2018-Oct-15	14.2 LD	11	29
2018 SL3	2018-Oct-15	9.1 LD	13.4	34
2018 TS1	2018-Oct-15	6.6 LD	10.9	27
2018 TZ2	2018-Oct-16	9.1 LD	16.7	41
2014 US7	2018-Oct-17	3.2 LD	8.7	19
2013 UG1	2018-Oct-18	10.4 LD	13.4	123
2016 GC221	2018-Oct-18	8.7 LD	14.4	39
2018 TT5	2018-Oct-24	15.9 LD	10.2	29
475534	2018-Oct-29	7.5 LD	18.1	204
2002 VE68	2018-Nov-04	14.7 LD	8.6	282
2018 TF3	2018-Nov-05	7.8 LD	20.6	310
2010 VQ	2018-Nov-07	15.6 LD	3.8	10
2009 WB105	2018-Nov-25	15.2 LD	18.9	71
2008 WD14	2018-Nov-27	7.4 LD	9.3	93
2001 WO15	2018-Nov-28	13.6 LD	11.7	107
2013 VX4	2018-Dec-09	4.1 LD	6.6	65
2015 XX169	2018-Dec-13	17 LD	5.8	12

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

SOMETHING NEW! We have developed a new predictive model of aviation radiation. It's called E-RAD--short for Empirical RADiation model. We are constantly flying radiation sensors onboard airplanes over the US and and around the world, so far collecting more than 22,000 gps-tagged radiation measurements. Using this unique dataset, we can predict the dosage on any flight over the USA with an error no worse than 15%.

E-RAD lets us do something new: Every day we monitor approximately 1400 flights criss-crossing the 10 busiest routes in the continental USA. Typically, this includes more than 80,000 passengers per day. E-RAD calculates the radiation exposure for every single flight.

The Hot Flights Table is a daily summary of these calculations. It shows the 5 charter flights with the highest dose rates; the 5 commercial flights with the highest dose rates; 5 commercial flights with near-average dose rates; and the 5 commercial flights with the lowest dose rates. Passengers typically experience dose rates that are 20 to 70 times higher than natural radiation at sea level.

To measure radiation on airplanes, we use the same sensors we fly to the stratosphere onboard Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray balloons: neutron bubble chambers and X-ray/gamma-ray Geiger tubes sensitive to energies between 10 keV and 20 MeV. These energies span the range of medical X-ray machines and airport security scanners.

Column definitions: (1) The flight number; (2) The maximum dose rate during the flight, expressed in units of natural radiation at sea level; (3) The maximum altitude of the plane in feet above sea level; (4) Departure city; (5) Arrival city; (6) Duration of the flight.

SPACE WEATHER BALLOON DATA: 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 18% since 2015:

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.

En route to the stratosphere, our sensors also pass through aviation altitudes:

In this plot, 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.

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.

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.

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

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

Spaceweather.com welcomes two supporters of science communication: SEO Phoenix AZ and CRAS, the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences.

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