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.
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A SHADOW IS ABOUT TO FALL ACROSS SATURN: This week, amateur astronomers can witness a rare event. The black circular shadow of Titan will fall across the cloudtops of Saturn. Look for it through backyard telescopes on July 18th between 07:00 UT and 12:05 UTC. This timing favors observers in the Americas, where Saturn will be halfway up the pre-dawn sky when the shadow appears. Full story.
THE BASTILLE DAY EVENT, 25 YEARS LATER: You know a solar flare is strong when even the Voyager spacecraft feel it. Twenty-five years ago today, on July 14, 2000, the sun unleashed one of the most powerful solar storms of the Space Age—an event so intense, its shockwaves rippled all the way to the edge of the solar system.
Voyager 2 felt the explosion 180 days later; Voyager 1, 245 days. The debris was still coherent and traveling faster than 600 km/s (1.9 million mph) when it slammed into the two spacecraft—then more than 9 billion kilometers from the sun.
Here on Earth, the effects were almost immediate. Within minutes, extreme ultraviolet and X-ray radiation bathed our planet and its satellites. Ground-based sensors registered a rare GLE (ground-level event) as energetic particles cascaded through the atmosphere.
"People flying in commercial jets at high latitudes would have received double their usual radiation dose," recalled Clive Dyer of the University of Surrey Space Centre. “It was quite an energetic event—one of the strongest of its time."
Because the flare happened on July 14th, it's called "The Bastille Day Event" after France’s national holiday. However, auroras did not appear until the following day, July 15th, when a coronal mass ejection (CME) arrived. The 1500 km/s impact triggered an extreme geomagnetic storm (Kp=9).
Auroras on July 15, 2000, photographed by (left) Ronnie Sherrill in North Carolina and (right) NASA's IMAGE spacecraft.
In New York, Lou Michael Moure remembers his sky catching fire: "I was living on Long Island. A family member ran into my room, shouting about 'the sky on fire.' Sure enough, the sky blazed white, green, then red from horizon to horizon." In North Carolina, Uwe Heine was doing yardwork when bright red auroras appeared straight overhead: "I told our neighbor those weren’t sunset colors. It was an aurora—and super rare this far south!"
By the time the storm ended on July 16th, auroras had been sighted as far south as Texas, Florida, and even Mexico.
The Bastille Day Event was important because, for the first time in history, spacecraft throughout the solar system were equipped with instruments capable of studying such a storm. Most notably, it was the first major solar storm observed by SOHO, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, which gave researchers an unprecedented look at how extreme flares unfold and evolve.
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| Above: SOHO images of the X5.7-class Bastille Day solar flare (left) and CME (right). "Snow" in the images is a result of energetic protons hitting the spacecraft |
Later studies described how an X5.7-class flare, erupting near the center of the solar disk, released 10³³ ergs of magnetic energy—equivalent to a thousand billion WWII-era atomic bombs. The resulting CME generated a massive barrier of magnetic field and plasma, which swept away galactic cosmic rays as it raced through the heliosphere. Even the Voyagers felt this unusual dip in cosmic radiation, known as a Forbush Decrease.
Could it happen again? It could happen again this week. We’re currently near the peak of Solar Cycle 25, and another X-flare is well within the realm of possibility.
Happy Bastille Day.
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THE ALIEN ABDUCTION CHRISTMAS ORNAMENT: "Turnabout is fair play," said the cow. You can't buy this on Amazon: The Alien Abduction Christmas Ornamant is only available from the Earth to Sky Store. On July 7, 2025, it flew to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon:
You can have it for $149.95. Hand-sculpted in the USA, this humorous ornament is intricately detailed, from the tied-up alien at the rear of the saucer to the cow at the helm. Durable polyresin construction makes it lightweight enough to hang on any tree, but sturdy enough to last for many Christmases to come--a guaranteed conversation starter!
The students are selling space ornaments to pay the helium bill for their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the ornament in flight and telling the story of its trip to the stratosphere and back again.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
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Realtime Noctilucent Cloud Photo Gallery
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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 Jul 13, 2025, the network reported 4 fireballs.
(4 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 July 14, 2025 there were 2349 potentially hazardous asteroids.
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Recent
& Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:
| Asteroid |
Date(UT) |
Miss Distance |
Velocity (km/s) |
Diameter (m) |
| 2019 JM |
2025-Jul-09 |
16.6 LD |
6.9 |
14 |
| 2019 NW5 |
2025-Jul-09 |
15.2 LD |
16.5 |
65 |
| 2025 NE1 |
2025-Jul-10 |
18.3 LD |
19.1 |
51 |
| 2025 NR1 |
2025-Jul-10 |
8.5 LD |
13.8 |
88 |
| 2025 MH90 |
2025-Jul-10 |
19.4 LD |
6.5 |
53 |
| 2025 MD89 |
2025-Jul-11 |
14.7 LD |
8.1 |
38 |
| 2005 VO5 |
2025-Jul-11 |
15.9 LD |
14.4 |
397 |
| 2025 NS1 |
2025-Jul-11 |
1.1 LD |
12 |
15 |
| 2025 MD1 |
2025-Jul-11 |
18 LD |
8.9 |
44 |
| 2025 MG1 |
2025-Jul-12 |
13.2 LD |
7.2 |
41 |
| 2025 MA90 |
2025-Jul-15 |
16.9 LD |
9.1 |
89 |
| 2022 YS5 |
2025-Jul-17 |
17.4 LD |
6.1 |
38 |
| 2018 BY6 |
2025-Jul-19 |
13.7 LD |
7.4 |
68 |
| 2025 ME92 |
2025-Jul-20 |
13.4 LD |
5.3 |
31 |
| 2019 CO1 |
2025-Aug-08 |
17.8 LD |
10.5 |
65 |
| 2022 QB1 |
2025-Aug-10 |
8.9 LD |
3.9 |
6 |
| 2021 PJ1 |
2025-Aug-15 |
4.4 LD |
9.3 |
24 |
| 2025 CO3 |
2025-Aug-16 |
19.8 LD |
8.4 |
90 |
| 1997 QK1 |
2025-Aug-20 |
7.9 LD |
9.8 |
315 |
| 2022 QD3 |
2025-Aug-21 |
15 LD |
6.9 |
35 |
| 2023 PX |
2025-Aug-22 |
2.4 LD |
8.3 |
23 |
| 2019 QQ6 |
2025-Aug-24 |
9.4 LD |
17.2 |
31 |
| 2017 RK15 |
2025-Aug-29 |
15.8 LD |
13.2 |
26 |
| 2020 TS1 |
2025-Aug-29 |
17.8 LD |
3.3 |
5 |
| 1998 SH2 |
2025-Aug-30 |
8.1 LD |
17.3 |
246 |
| 2019 JG1 |
2025-Sep-09 |
18.8 LD |
7.9 |
17 |
| 2009 FF |
2025-Sep-11 |
6.8 LD |
12.9 |
155 |
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.
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The
official U.S. government space weather bureau |
| |
The
first place to look for information about sundogs,
pillars, rainbows and related phenomena. |
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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 |
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Realtime
and archival images of the Sun from SOHO. |
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information about sunspots based on the latest NOAA/USAF Active Region Summary |
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current counts of failed and deployed Starlink satellites from Jonathan's Space Page. See also, all satellite statistics. |
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Authoritative predictions of space junk and satellite re-entries |
| |
from
the NOAA Space Environment Center |
| |
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 |
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Got a chipped or cracked windshield that prevents you from seeing space weather events while driving? Get windshield replacement from SR Windows & Glass with free mobile auto glass service anywhere in the Phoenix area. |
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