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SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts |
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Updated at: 2026 Nov 03 2200 UTC
FLARE |
0-24
hr |
24-48
hr |
CLASS M |
25
% |
25
% |
CLASS X |
10
% |
10
% |
Geomagnetic Storms:
Probabilities for significant
disturbances in Earth's magnetic field are given for three activity levels: active, minor
storm, severe
storm
Updated at: 2026 Nov 03 2200 UTC
Mid-latitudes
|
0-24
hr |
24-48
hr |
ACTIVE |
10
% |
30
% |
MINOR |
01
% |
15
% |
SEVERE |
01
% |
01
% |
High latitudes
|
0-24
hr |
24-48
hr |
ACTIVE |
20
% |
15
% |
MINOR |
20
% |
30
% |
SEVERE |
10
% |
40
% |
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|
|
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|
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AI writing is everywhere -- except here. This website is written by Dr. Tony Phillips, a carbon-based lifeform with 30 yrs of forecasting experience. Our guarantee: If you find a mistake, it was made by a real human being.
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SWIFT RE-ENTRY UPDATE: According to the Aerospace Corporation, NASA’s Swift observatory will reenter Earth’s atmosphere on Nov. 4th at 10:19 UTC ± 2 hours. The window's midpoint sits over western South America, near Peru and Bolivia. NASA says "The risk of harm coming to anyone on Earth is unlikely, approximately 1 in 2,100." [Ground tracks]
JUPITER EXPERIENCES THE ' BLACK DROP' EFFECT: On Nov. 3rd, the Moon passed in front of Jupiter over Malaysia, and Shahrin Ahmad was ready. A "terrible haze" had been covering southeast Asia, and it lifted just in time for him to film Jupiter sinking behind the lunar limb from Kuala Lumpur:
Click here to watch the movie
In the full video, Jupiter seems to melt. The Moon’s edge should have sliced it like a crisp disk. Instead, the planet slumped into a glowing dome that flared out and dripped into the lunar surface.
It looked like a famous atmospheric optics phenomenon--the "omega sunset." Yet the Moon has no atmosphere. What’s going on?
Ahmad captured a version of the rare "black drop effect." Astronomers have seen it for centuries during transits of Venus across the sun. As Venus touches the sun’s edge, it stretches into a dark teardrop. 18th-century observers blamed Venus’s atmosphere, but they were wrong. In 1999, NASA’s TRACE spacecraft saw the same drop when airless Mercury transited the sun.
You can re-create the phenomenon with your own hand. Hold your thumb and forefinger a few inches above a table under a single lamp. Slowly close the gap. The shadows bulge toward each other and snap together before your fingers touch. This is sometimes called the "shadow blister effect."
This phenomenon has a simple explanation. Every edge seen through a telescope has a soft, fuzzy halo, smeared by the optics and by Earth's shimmering air. When two edges get close, their halos overlap. On Nov. 3rd, the glowing halos of Jupiter and the Moon blended, and the planet appeared to melt into the lunar limb.
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
Free: Space Weather Newsletter
SANTA GOT RUN OVER BY A T-REX: You can't by this on Amazon. The Santa Got Run Over by a T-Rex Christmas Ornament is only available from the Earth to Sky Store. On Oct 28, 2026, it flew to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon:
You can have it for $98.95. Santa's Boots vanishing down the gullet of a T-Rex are a unique addition to any Christmas tree. With your purchase, you will also receive a Christmas card showing the ornament in flight, and certifying that it has traveled to the edge of space 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
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 November 3, 2026, the network reported 5 fireballs.
(2 Northern Taurids, 2 sporadics, 1 Orionid)
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 November 4, 2026 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) |
| 2026 UE2 |
2026-Oct-29 |
0.3 LD |
7.7 |
5 |
| 2026 VH |
2026-Oct-29 |
6.6 LD |
7.7 |
13 |
| 2022 UV21 |
2026-Oct-29 |
14.8 LD |
9.6 |
13 |
| 2026 UC2 |
2026-Oct-29 |
2.7 LD |
13.9 |
23 |
| 2026 UB2 |
2026-Oct-29 |
1.2 LD |
7.5 |
16 |
| 2026 UD |
2026-Oct-30 |
11.6 LD |
7.7 |
25 |
| 2025 UK9 |
2026-Oct-31 |
0.8 LD |
7.8 |
4 |
| 2026 UT3 |
2026-Oct-31 |
19.3 LD |
6.5 |
55 |
| 2026 VA |
2026-Nov-02 |
3.2 LD |
9 |
29 |
| 524522 |
2026-Nov-02 |
15.7 LD |
8.7 |
277 |
| 2026 VE |
2026-Nov-03 |
9.1 LD |
14.7 |
25 |
| 2021 VC4 |
2026-Nov-03 |
6 LD |
11.2 |
15 |
| 2026 VC |
2026-Nov-04 |
13.1 LD |
11.7 |
20 |
| 2017 WJ2 |
2026-Nov-05 |
14.7 LD |
12 |
118 |
| 2016 VZ1 |
2026-Nov-05 |
20 LD |
13.5 |
21 |
| 2001 KF54 |
2026-Nov-06 |
18.9 LD |
16.4 |
391 |
| 2026 UX |
2026-Nov-07 |
19.6 LD |
9.7 |
39 |
| 2026 UG4 |
2026-Nov-08 |
6.7 LD |
7.2 |
35 |
| 2025 UF5 |
2026-Nov-09 |
18.9 LD |
1.9 |
10 |
| 2015 VH65 |
2026-Nov-10 |
9.7 LD |
8 |
10 |
| 2012 YD7 |
2026-Nov-10 |
18.6 LD |
7.5 |
49 |
| 2023 VF3 |
2026-Nov-11 |
8.5 LD |
8.8 |
19 |
| 2022 MP2 |
2026-Nov-13 |
19.8 LD |
3.8 |
23 |
| 2025 VG5 |
2026-Nov-13 |
18.2 LD |
4.9 |
16 |
| 2026 UY |
2026-Nov-14 |
19.7 LD |
4.3 |
64 |
| 2023 VE6 |
2026-Nov-17 |
18.4 LD |
10.1 |
13 |
| 2019 WT1 |
2026-Nov-18 |
19.7 LD |
9.7 |
16 |
| 2018 NE1 |
2026-Nov-19 |
16.7 LD |
13.3 |
74 |
| 2026 TB84 |
2026-Nov-19 |
12.1 LD |
9.9 |
67 |
| 2025 CP1 |
2026-Nov-30 |
12.9 LD |
10.8 |
6 |
| 2019 XF2 |
2026-Dec-04 |
3.1 LD |
10.2 |
14 |
| 2023 XH3 |
2026-Dec-06 |
18.7 LD |
16.5 |
14 |
| 2020 XC3 |
2026-Dec-08 |
14.5 LD |
14.3 |
110 |
| 2016 NV |
2026-Dec-08 |
14.3 LD |
10.4 |
379 |
| 2010 VQ |
2026-Dec-12 |
4.6 LD |
4.3 |
10 |
| 2025 XN6 |
2026-Dec-12 |
6.9 LD |
12.2 |
5 |
| 2026 QQ8 |
2026-Dec-13 |
3.5 LD |
0.8 |
2 |
| 2026 LZ1 |
2026-Dec-14 |
14.4 LD |
11.2 |
36 |
| 2025 YN |
2026-Dec-18 |
18.3 LD |
13.1 |
21 |
| 2018 FQ4 |
2026-Dec-19 |
16.7 LD |
10.4 |
14 |
| 2021 PF7 |
2026-Dec-26 |
15.5 LD |
7.7 |
10 |
Notes: LD means
"Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance
between Earth and the Moon. 1 LD also equals 0.00256
AU.
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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. |
| |
Researchers
call it a "Hubble for the sun." SDO
is the most advanced solar observatory ever. |
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3D
views of the sun from NASA's Solar and Terrestrial
Relations Observatory |
| |
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 |
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from
the NOAA Space Environment Center |
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fun to read, but should be taken with a grain of salt! Forecasts looking ahead more than a few days are often wrong. |
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from the NOAA Space Environment Center |
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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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