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SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids

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Science news and information about the Sun-Earth environment.

SPACE WEATHER
Current
Conditions

Solar Wind
speed: 633.0 km/s
density:
2.1 protons/cm3
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 2255 UT


X-ray Solar Flares

6-hr max:
B2 1645 UT Jul05
24-hr: C1 0855 UT Jul05
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 2245 UT

Daily Sun: 05 Jul '06

Sunspots 898 is still big, but it may be in the early stages of a break-up. Stay tuned for updates. Credit: SOHO/MDI


Sunspot Number: 40
What is the sunspot number?
Updated: 04 Jul 2006

Far Side of the Sun

This holographic image reveals no sunspots on the far side of the sun. Image credit: SOHO/MDI

Interplanetary Mag. Field
Btotal: 3.9 nT
Bz:
3.7 nT south
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 2256 UT

Coronal Holes:

Earth is inside a solar wind stream flowing from the indicated coronal hole. Credit: SOHO Extreme UV telescope.


SPACE WEATHER
NOAA
Forecasts

Solar Flares: Probabilities for a medium-sized (M-class) or a major (X-class) solar flare during the next 24/48 hours are tabulated below.
Updated at 2006 Jul 05 2203 UTC
FLARE 0-24 hr 24-48 hr
CLASS M 10 % 10 %
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 2006 Jul 05 2203 UTC
Mid-latitudes
0-24 hr 24-48 hr
ACTIVE 25 % 20 %
MINOR 15 % 10 %
SEVERE 05 % 05 %

High latitudes
0-24 hr 24-48 hr
ACTIVE 25 % 20 %
MINOR 15 % 10 %
SEVERE 05 % 05 %

What's Up in Space -- 5 Jul 2006
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JUPITER & THE MOON: For the second night in a row, the Moon and Jupiter will pop out of the evening twilight side by side--very pretty. Look for them halfway up the southern sky as soon as the sun sets: sky map.

COOL SPOT: Sunspot 898 looks like a seething inferno, but "it's the coolest spot on the sun," insists Gary Palmer of Los Angeles who took this picture on July 4th:

He's absolutely right. Sunspots have magnetic fields so intense they block the flow of heat from nuclear fires below. This lowers their temperature by more than a thousand degrees. If you stuck a thermometer in a sunspot it would register only 4300 C. On the sun, that's cool.

more images: from Gianluca Valentini of Rimini, Italy; from Andreas Murner of Lake Chiemsee, Germany; from Stanescu Octavian of Timisoara, Romania; from Cameran Ashraf of Claremont, CA.

INFRABOW: The colors of the rainbow define what the human eye can see: Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet. But what would a rainbow look like at wavelengths the human eye cannot see? Jonas Förste decided to find out. On June 28th, from his frontyard in Jakobstad, Finland, he photographed a bright rainbow through an infrared filter:

This "infrabow" looks much like an ordinary rainbow, but there is a difference. See the scalloped bands inside the bright primary bow? Those are supernumerary arcs, and they appear because the wavelength of infrared light is similar to the diameter of the raindrops forming the bow. The whole scene has an eerie, alien feel. Indeed, rainbows like this may be common in strange places such as Saturn's moon Titan: full story.



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 5 Jul 2006 there were 796 known Potentially
Hazardous Asteroids

July 2006 Earth-asteroid encounters
ASTEROID

 DATE
(UT)

MISS DISTANCE

MAG.

 SIZE
2004 XP14

Jul 3

1.1 LD

12

600 m
Notes: LD is a "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.

Essential Web Links

NOAA Space Environment Center -- The official U.S. government bureau for real-time monitoring of solar and geophysical events, research in solar-terrestrial physics, and forecasting solar and geophysical disturbances.

Atmospheric Optics -- the first place to look for information about sundogs, pillars, rainbows and related phenomena. See also Snow Crystals.

Solar and Heliospheric Observatory -- Realtime and archival images of the Sun from SOHO. (European Mirror Site)

Daily Sunspot Summaries -- from the NOAA Space Environment Center.

Current Solar Images --a gallery of up-to-date solar pictures from the National Solar Data Analysis Center at the Goddard Space Flight Center. See also the GOES-12 Solar X-ray Imager.

Recent Solar Events -- a nice summary of current solar conditions from lmsal.com.

SOHO Farside Images of the Sun from SWAN and MDI.

The Latest SOHO Coronagraph Images -- from the Naval Research Lab

List of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids -- from the Harvard Minor Planet Center.

Observable Comets -- from the Harvard Minor Planet Center.

What is the Interplanetary Magnetic Field? -- A lucid answer from the University of Michigan. See also the Anatomy of Earth's Magnetosphere.

Real-time Solar Wind Data -- from NASA's ACE spacecraft. How powerful are solar wind gusts? Read this story from Science@NASA.

More Real-time Solar Wind Data -- from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory Proton Monitor.

Lists of Coronal Mass Ejections -- from 1998 to 2001

Mirages: Mirages in Finland; An Introduction to Mirages;

NOAA Solar Flare and Sunspot Data: 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999; 2000; 2001; 2002; 2003; 2004; 2005; Jan-Mar 2006;

Space Audio Streams: (University of Florida) 20 MHz radio emissions from Jupiter: #1, #2, #3, #4; (NASA/Marshall) INSPIRE: #1; (Stan Nelson of Roswell, New Mexico) meteor radar: #1, #2;

Recent International Astronomical Union Circulars

GLOSSARY | SPACE WEATHER TUTORIAL

This site is penned daily by Dr. Tony Phillips: email


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