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SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids
 
Solar wind
speed: 351.8 km/sec
density: 5.9 protons/cm3
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 2352 UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: A8
1739 UT Jun04
24-hr: A8
0743 UT Jun04
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 2300 UT
Daily Sun: 04 Jun 19
The sun is blank--no sunspots. Credit: SDO/HMI

Sunspot number: 0
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 04 Jun 2019

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 16 days
2019 total: 90 days (58%)
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 04 Jun 2019


Thermosphere Climate Index
today: 4.19
x1010 W Cold
Max: 49.4
x1010 W Hot (10/1957)
Min: 2.05
x1010 W Cold (02/2009)
explanation | more data
Updated 04 Jun 2019

The Radio Sun
10.7 cm flux: 70 sfu
explanation | more data
Updated 04 Jun 2019

Current Auroral Oval:
Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica
Credit: NOAA/Ovation
Planetary K-index
Now: Kp= 2 quiet
24-hr max: Kp= 2
quiet
explanation | more data
Interplanetary Mag. Field
Btotal: 5.4 nT
Bz: -3.8 nT south
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 2351 UT
Coronal Holes: 04 Jun 19


There are no large equatorial coronal holes on the Earthside of the sun.
Credit: SDO/AIA

Noctilucent Clouds The northern season for noctilicent clouds is underway. Monitor the daily images from NASA's AIM spacecraft to see how the clouds spread around the Arctic Circle as northern summer unfolds.
Switch view: Europe, USA, Asia, Polar
Updated at: 06-04-2019 13:55:06
SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts
Updated at: 2019 Jun 04 2200 UTC
FLARE
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
CLASS M
01 %
01 %
CLASS X
01 %
01 %
Geomagnetic Storms:
Probabilities for significant disturbances in Earth's magnetic field are given for three activity levels: active, minor storm, severe storm
Updated at: 2019 Jun 04 2200 UTC
Mid-latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
25 %
10 %
MINOR
05 %
01 %
SEVERE
01 %
01 %
High latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
20 %
15 %
MINOR
30 %
20 %
SEVERE
25 %
10 %
 
Tuesday, Jun. 4, 2019
What's up in space
       
 

Special Offer: SAVE 600nok per person. Book a combination aurora borealis chase and scenic day tour during the months of September, October or November 2019 for the special price of 1800 kr. Check Marianne's webpage for details!

 

SOLAR MINIMUM CONDITIONS ARE IN EFFECT: The sun has been without spots for 16 consecutive days--a sign that Solar Minimum is underway. Many people think Solar Minimum is uninteresting. Not so. This phase of the solar cycle brings extra cosmic rays, long-lasting holes in the sun's atmosphere, and a possible surplus of noctilucent clouds. Aurora Alerts: SMS text, email.

RED AIRGLOW MAKES WAVES: Last week a line of strong thunderstorms passed north of Texas. Thomas Ashcraft saw the whole sky ripple in response. "I photographed a dramatic display of mesospheric gravity waves," he says. "This movie compresses an hour of ripples into just over 20 seconds."

The red light in the sky is airglow--a faint aurora-like phenomenon caused by chemical reactions in the upper atmosphere. These reactions get started during daylight hours when the atmosphere is bathed in strong UV radiation from the sun.  On very dark nights we see the afterglow, colored green by oxygen atoms 90-100 km high or, in this case, red by hydroxyl molecules 86-87 km high.

The ripples come from thunderstorms. Gravity waves propagating up from powerful storms can impress airglow with a dramatic rippling structure. From space, the waves look like a giant atmospheric bull's eye.

Realtime Airglow Cloud Photo Gallery
Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter

"ELECTRIC BLUE" MEETS ACTUAL ELECTRICITY: Every summer high above the North Pole, wisps of water vapor rise to the top of the atmosphere and crystallize around specks of meteor smoke. The resultant noctilucent clouds (NLCs) are often described by observers as "electric blue," similar in hue to an electric spark. Yesterday, electric blue met actual electricity in the skies over Kiel, Germany:

"It was a beautiful summer night with several small thunderstorms," says photographer Laura Kranich. "Pale rippling noctilucent clouds appeared above the thunderheads as lightning struck the ground below. What an incredible sight!"

What are noctilucent clouds doing in Germany? 2019 appears to be a special year for NLCs. The polar clouds are reaching down to southern latitudes, putting on a good show long before the summer season for NLCs nears its typical peak in mid-July.  Studies have shown that noctilucent clouds sometimes intensify during Solar Minimum. Solar Minimum conditions are in effect now, and may be partly responsible for the unusual early-season sightings.

Realtime Noctilucent Cloud Photo Gallery
Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter

A GIFT FROM THE EDGE OF SPACE: On August 16, 2018, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched a cosmic ray balloon to the stratosphere. This unique laser-etched Moon cube went along for the ride, ascending to an altitude of 101,140 feet:

You can have it for $119.95. The students are selling these cubes as a fund-raiser for their cosmic ray ballooning program. It's an authentic representation of the Moon, with all of the craters, mountains and lava plains accurately portrayed.

Each Moon-cube comes with a unique gift card showing the item floating at the top of Earth's atmosphere. The interior of the card tells the story of the flight and confirms that this gift has been to the edge of space and back again.

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


Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter


Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery

  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. 4, 2019, the network reported 24 fireballs.
(24 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 4, 2019 there were 1983 potentially hazardous asteroids.
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:
Asteroid
Date(UT)
Miss Distance
Velocity (km/s)
Diameter (m)
2019 KJ4
2019-May-30
6.7 LD
4.6
14
2011 HP
2019-May-30
12.3 LD
8.4
135
2019 KG2
2019-May-30
2.7 LD
12
23
2019 KJ2
2019-May-31
13.7 LD
1.7
13
2019 KL2
2019-Jun-01
8.7 LD
4.5
11
2019 KU
2019-Jun-01
16.1 LD
6.1
18
2019 KY3
2019-Jun-02
2.3 LD
16.3
17
2019 KH1
2019-Jun-02
10.6 LD
18.5
29
2010 WH1
2019-Jun-02
18 LD
7.8
22
2019 LC
2019-Jun-02
19.2 LD
6.9
25
2012 KZ41
2019-Jun-03
3.8 LD
12
34
2019 KE2
2019-Jun-04
19.9 LD
9.3
48
2019 KY
2019-Jun-04
5.5 LD
6.2
19
2019 KS
2019-Jun-04
12.3 LD
17.6
44
2019 KA4
2019-Jun-05
8.4 LD
7.2
22
2019 KA3
2019-Jun-06
4 LD
3.9
9
2019 JX2
2019-Jun-06
13.8 LD
7
41
2014 MF18
2019-Jun-06
8.8 LD
3
22
2019 LA
2019-Jun-07
13.9 LD
22.3
67
2019 KZ3
2019-Jun-07
5.7 LD
10
51
2019 KG3
2019-Jun-11
16.4 LD
6.8
24
2019 LB
2019-Jun-12
9.1 LD
6.1
32
2013 YA14
2019-Jun-14
14.7 LD
11.1
65
2019 KJ
2019-Jun-14
12.6 LD
8.1
68
2019 LU
2019-Jun-16
4.1 LD
8
35
2019 LR
2019-Jun-16
18.3 LD
15
34
441987
2019-Jun-24
7.7 LD
12.6
178
2008 KV2
2019-Jun-27
17.8 LD
11.4
195
2016 NN15
2019-Jun-28
9.6 LD
8.4
16
2015 XC352
2019-Jul-01
11.9 LD
4.1
26
2016 OF
2019-Jul-07
12.8 LD
8.5
85
2016 NO56
2019-Jul-07
3.4 LD
12.2
26
2019 KD3
2019-Jul-12
15.5 LD
8
89
2016 NJ33
2019-Jul-12
15 LD
4.5
32
2015 HM10
2019-Jul-24
12.2 LD
9.5
68
2010 PK9
2019-Jul-26
8.2 LD
16.5
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. 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
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