Learn to photograph Northern Lights like a pro. Sign up for Peter Rosen's Aurora Photo Courses in Abisko National Park, winner of the TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence Award 2015. | | |
QUIET SUN: The sun's X-ray output has not completely flatlined, but the pulse is weak. Solar flare activity is very low. Moreover, it is likely to remain so. NOAA forecasters say the odds of an X-class flare today is no more than 1%. Solar flare alerts: text, voice
ANTARCTIC MICROBES VISIT THE EDGE OF SPACE: On Saturday, May 30th, Spaceweather.com and the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched approximately 100 billion Antarctic microbes to the stratosphere. During the 3 hour flight, which skirted the edge of space, the extremophiles were exposed to extreme cold (-63 oC) and doses of cosmic radiation more than 100x Earth-normal. This snapshot shows the payload 111,200 feet above Earth's surface:
The microbes are inside the little white vials on top of the payload. Take a closer look. They are Halorubrum lacusprofundi, a species that normally lives in Antarctica's Deep Lake. These microbes have developed survival tricks, such as cold-tolerant proteins, that could help them adapt to space-like environments.
Astrobiologists have long wondered if terrestrial extremophiles like this one could survive on the planet Mars. The Earth to Sky Calculus experiment aims to answer that question by flying microbes to the stratosphere, where the temperature, air pressure, and cosmic radiation environment is akin to that of the Red Planet.
The microbes parachuted back to Earth, landing in a dessicated stretch of California's Owen's Valley. Students recovered the samples less than 2 hours after they touched down. Now, the microbes are en route to the University of Maryland, where microbiologists Priya and Shil DasSarma will analyze them in their NASA-supported lab. We already know that some of the microbes survived--but how many? Stay tuned for updates.
HEY THANKS! All of the high-altitude research you see on Spaceweather.com is crowd funded. Saturday's flight of the Antarctic microbes was sponsored by Coady Torio of Monroe, Michigan, who paid $500 to fly a photo of six local science students to the edge of space:
"Matthew and John Torio, Ella and Joss Harvey, Max Hassett and Evan Zdybek took their love of science to new heights thanks to Earth to Sky Calculus," says Torio. "Their school, Meadow Montessori, is the nation's only accredited Montessori school for grades K-12. The school rigorously promotes the advancement of science not only in the classroom, but at 111,200 feet into the atmosphere as well. Thank you Earth to Sky Calculus for this wonderful experience." (Earth to Sky Calculus thanks them right back!)
Readers, if you would like to send your own students to the edge of space, please contact Dr. Tony Phillips to sponsor a flight
SUNSET SKY SHOW: If you love stargazing, there's a date you should mark on your calendar. It's June. That's right, the whole month. Throughout the month of June 2015, the two brightest planets in the night sky are converging for an amazing sunset sky show. At closest approach on June 30th, Venus and Jupiter will be less than 1/3rd of a degree apart. Even now, a month ahead of time, the gathering is beautiful. Leo Caldas sends this picture from Brasilia, Brazil:
"The Hubble Space Telescope flew by the planets just as I was photographing the conjunction," says Caldas. "Perfect timing."
In the weeks ahead, Venus and Jupiter will draw steadily closer together. You can see the distance shrink every night. Dates of special interest include June 12th, when Venus passes by the Beehive star cluster. Using binoculars, scan the sky around Venus to observe the cluster. On June 19th, the crescent Moon joins Venus and Jupiter to form a bright isosceles triangle in the sunset sky. One night later, on June 20th, the triangle reappears with shape-shifted vertices. From then until the end of the month, the converging planets will rush together, seemingly on a collision course, but actually en route to a near-miss on June 30th-July 1st.
Keep an eye on the sunset sky for the rest of the month.
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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 Jun. 1, 2015, the network reported 22 fireballs.
(22 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 June 1, 2015 there were 1584 potentially hazardous asteroids.
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. | 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. |
| 3D views of the sun from NASA's Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory |
| Realtime and archival images of the Sun from SOHO. |
| from the NOAA Space Environment Center |
| the underlying science of space weather |