Marianne's Arctic Xpress wishes you a Happy New Year. Learn to photograph auroras with the experts. Full photography tuition, all clothing, and semi-pro camera equipment included. Groups of 2 to 8 welcome. Book Now | | | CHANCE OF STORMS: NOAA forecasters estimate a 65% chance of G1-class geomagnetic storms on Jan. 5th as Earth moves into a stream of fast-moving solar wind. The source of the wind is a large hole in the sun's atmosphere. Arctic sky watchers should be alert for aurorason Thursday night. Free: Aurora Alerts A NEW METEOROLOGICAL PHENOMENON? We've all heard of the wind chill factor. It's how wind makes cold air feel even colder. Inside the Arctic Circle, Lights over Lapland tour guide Oliver Wright has discovered a new meteorological phenomenon: auroras make cold air feel ... not so bad. "Last night," he explains, "the air temperature in Abisko, Sweden, was -35 C when these auroras appeared." "As the auroras intensified and developed into multiple coronas, our guests were less bothered by the cold," Wright observed. "Coronas" are auroras that materialize directly overhead, creating a rippling spray of light centered on the zenith. They tend to occur during periods of strong magnetic unrest, and they are widely considered to be the most beautiful manifestation of Northern Lights. More coronas are possible tonight as a quickening stream of solar wind buffets Earth's magnetic field. Observers around the Arctic Circle may find that they don't feel nearly as cold as they actually are. Stay tuned. Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery FANTASTIC SUN PILLAR: When the air gets very cold, fantastic things can happen to the setting sun. Peter Rosén of Stockholm, Sweden, witnessed one of them on Jan. 5th. "With freezing temperatures, thermometers reading -10°C, and ice crystals floating in the air, we got a fantastic sun pillar at sunset this afternoon." Sun pillars are caused by ice in the air. Plate-shaped crystals ice fluttering down from cirrus clouds catch the rays of the setting sun and spread it into a vertical column. "Watch a leaf or piece of paper flutter and wobble as it falls," says atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley. "Ice crystals in the air wobble, too, and this smears the sun's reflection into a vertical line." All around the world, the atmosphere is cold enough 5 to 10 km high to produce these ice crystals. That means sun pillars can be seen anywhere. However, the odds of sighting one improve in cold places like Sweden. Residents of the north should be alert for these beautiful pillars as winter unfolds. Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery Realtime Airglow Photo Gallery Realtime Sprite Photo Gallery 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 Jan. 5, 2017, the network reported 21 fireballs. (16 sporadics, 2 Quadrantids, 2 December Leonis Minorids, 1 alpha Hydrid) 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 January 5, 2017 there were 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. | Cosmic Rays in the Atmosphere | Readers, thank you for your patience while we continue to develop this new section of Spaceweather.com. We've been working to streamline our data reduction, allowing us to post results from balloon flights much more rapidly, and we have developed a new data product, shown here: This plot displays radiation measurements not only in the stratosphere, but also at aviation altitudes. 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. These measurements are made by our usual cosmic ray payload as it passes through aviation altitudes en route to the stratosphere over California. What is this all about? 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 12% since 2015: 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. 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. 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. | 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 | | a proud supporter of science education and Spaceweather.com | | the underlying science of space weather | | Beautyz for top beauty products reviews and their buying guides | | These links help Spaceweather.com stay online. Thank you to our supporters! | |