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GEOMAGNETIC STORM WATCH (G1): Minor G1-class geomagnetic storms are possible on Nov. 8th and 9th when Earth enters a stream of fast-moving solar wind. The gaseous material is flowing from a southern hole in the sun's atmosphere. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras. Aurora alerts: SMS Text
EARTH'S RING CURRENT JUST SPRANG A LEAK: During this past weekend's strong G3-class geomagnetic storm, low-latitude auroras spread as far south as Texas and Arizona. Upon further review, most of those lights were not auroras at all. Everything red in this montage is an "SAR arc":
Credits: Texas (Anita Oakley); Missouri (Dan Bush); New York (James Perez-Rogers); Arizona (Jeremy Perez)
"This was a new phenomenon to me," says Jeremy Perez, who took the Arizona picture. "I had never heard of SARs before, but I kept shooting anyway."
SAR arcs were discovered in 1956 at the beginning of the Space Age. Researchers didn't know what they were and unwittingly gave them a misleading name: "Stable Auroral Red arcs" or SAR arcs. In fact, SAR arcs are neither stable nor auroras.
Auroras appear when charged particles rain down from space, hitting the atmosphere and causing it to glow. SAR arcs form differently. They are a sign of heat energy leaking into the upper atmosphere from Earth's ring current system–a donut-shaped circuit carrying millions of amps around our planet.
An artist's concept of Earth's ring current, quiet (left) and active (right) [more]
"On Nov. 5th, the ring current was pumped up by hours of strong geomagnetic storming, with energy dissipating into these SAR arcs," says Jeff Baumgardner of Boston University's Center for Space Physics. "It was a global event. Our cameras registered SAR arc activity from Italy to New Zealand."
Recent research has linked SAR arcs to another phenomenon that is not an aurora: STEVE. The mauve ribbon in the sky was not originally thought to have anything to do with Earth's ring current. Yet in 2015, observers in New Zealand caught a bright red SAR arc transforming itself into STEVE like a caterpillar into a butterfly.
On Nov. 5th, Mark Savage may have witnessed the same metamorphosis over Northumberland, UK:
Visible to the naked eye, STEVE materialized from an overhanging red arc. "The entire process took about 10 minutes," says Savage. This timescale roughly matches that of
another SAR-to-STEVE transition observed over Canada in April 2022. Clearly, the two phenomena are linked, but researchers aren't sure how.
"The connection is still elusive," says Carlos Martinis, a leading researcher in the field at Boston University. "Sometimes SAR arcs evolve into STEVE--but not always. This is a very active field of research, involving citizen scientists and researchers."
Did you see an SAR arc on Nov. 5th? Submit your pictures here.
more SAR images: from Greg Redfern of Shenandoah National Park, Virginia; from Dean Cosgrove near Stockville, Nebraska; from Chris Cook of Borrego Springs, California; from Todd Bush of Banner Elk, North Carolina; from Ronnie Sherrill of Troutman, North Carolina; from George Preoteasa of Milford, PA; from David Blanchard of Wupatki National Monument, Arizona; from Hunter Outten of Laurel, Delaware; from Caryl Bohn of West Oak, Nebraska; from Ken Sklute of Phoenix, Arizona; from Bernhard Deufel of Horgen, Switzerland; from Klaus Steinberg of Troisdorf, Germany; from Bernhard Deufel of Horgen, Switzerland
Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
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VOYAGER GOLDEN RECORD CHRISTMAS ORNAMENT: This is a must-have Christmas ornament for space fans: The Voyager Golden Record. On Oct. 31, 2023, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched it to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon:
You can have it for $99.95. The 3-inch aluminum disk is imprinted with instructions intended for extraterrestrials, telling them how to play the phonographs now sailing through interstellar space onboard NASA's Voyager probes. Having touched the edge of space, it's the closest thing on Earth to an actual Golden Record.
The students are selling these unique ornaments to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the ornament in flight and extra materials decoding the markings on the disk.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
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Realtime Comet 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 Nov 07, 2023, the network reported 19 fireballs.
(16 sporadics, 2 Northern Taurids, 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 7, 2023 there were 2349 potentially hazardous asteroids.
 |
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: | Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
| 2023 VC2 | 2023-Nov-02 | 5.5 LD | 5 | 16 |
| 2023 VA | 2023-Nov-02 | 0.1 LD | 11.3 | 7 |
| 2016 WY | 2023-Nov-02 | 9.1 LD | 3.9 | 5 |
| 363505 | 2023-Nov-02 | 13.7 LD | 8 | 709 |
| 2023 UY3 | 2023-Nov-02 | 14.1 LD | 3.7 | 15 |
| 2023 VG | 2023-Nov-02 | 0.3 LD | 8.5 | 8 |
| 2022 JF | 2023-Nov-03 | 15.2 LD | 17.2 | 39 |
| 2023 VL1 | 2023-Nov-03 | 12.1 LD | 14.7 | 21 |
| 2023 VW1 | 2023-Nov-03 | 2.4 LD | 13.8 | 42 |
| 2023 VJ | 2023-Nov-03 | 9.7 LD | 16.5 | 29 |
| 2023 QP8 | 2023-Nov-03 | 17.1 LD | 8.8 | 180 |
| 2016 VW2 | 2023-Nov-03 | 10.1 LD | 8.1 | 20 |
| 2019 UH7 | 2023-Nov-04 | 9.9 LD | 5.9 | 11 |
| 2023 VE1 | 2023-Nov-04 | 0.1 LD | 6.5 | 3 |
| 2023 TL31 | 2023-Nov-04 | 8.1 LD | 9.2 | 28 |
| 2023 VT2 | 2023-Nov-04 | 11.1 LD | 14.8 | 21 |
| 2023 VO1 | 2023-Nov-04 | 0.2 LD | 16.4 | 4 |
| 2023 VU | 2023-Nov-05 | 2.6 LD | 14.4 | 20 |
| 2023 UG4 | 2023-Nov-06 | 6.5 LD | 3.5 | 18 |
| 2023 VG1 | 2023-Nov-06 | 7.9 LD | 10.3 | 13 |
| 2023 TO15 | 2023-Nov-06 | 15.2 LD | 11.2 | 50 |
| 2023 VE | 2023-Nov-07 | 3.1 LD | 12.1 | 11 |
| 2023 VS | 2023-Nov-07 | 1 LD | 3.5 | 4 |
| 2023 VH2 | 2023-Nov-07 | 17.3 LD | 14.3 | 28 |
| 2023 VB2 | 2023-Nov-07 | 0.1 LD | 18 | 8 |
| 2023 VD2 | 2023-Nov-07 | 0.1 LD | 8.1 | 3 |
| 2023 VR | 2023-Nov-07 | 2.4 LD | 11.8 | 10 |
| 2023 TD14 | 2023-Nov-08 | 9.3 LD | 6.3 | 25 |
| 2023 VW | 2023-Nov-08 | 1.7 LD | 8 | 9 |
| 2023 VC | 2023-Nov-09 | 6.3 LD | 9.6 | 29 |
| 2023 VN1 | 2023-Nov-09 | 14.4 LD | 7.6 | 14 |
| 2023 VU2 | 2023-Nov-10 | 1.9 LD | 6.1 | 8 |
| 2023 VD1 | 2023-Nov-11 | 17.2 LD | 10 | 32 |
| 2023 VL2 | 2023-Nov-11 | 2.7 LD | 6 | 8 |
| 2023 UQ4 | 2023-Nov-11 | 10.7 LD | 8.4 | 39 |
| 2023 VK1 | 2023-Nov-12 | 10.1 LD | 9.1 | 28 |
| 2023 TZ2 | 2023-Nov-12 | 19 LD | 2.8 | 24 |
| 2023 VY1 | 2023-Nov-13 | 8.9 LD | 6.3 | 39 |
| 2014 BA3 | 2023-Nov-13 | 15.7 LD | 2.7 | 8 |
| 2023 VV1 | 2023-Nov-13 | 2 LD | 3.7 | 6 |
| 2023 VX | 2023-Nov-13 | 17.4 LD | 11.1 | 50 |
| 2023 UO | 2023-Nov-15 | 6.4 LD | 6.8 | 38 |
| 2021 TN3 | 2023-Nov-15 | 17 LD | 6.3 | 31 |
| 2019 VL5 | 2023-Nov-16 | 8.5 LD | 8.2 | 24 |
| 2019 LB1 | 2023-Nov-18 | 15.8 LD | 4.2 | 14 |
| 2016 DK1 | 2023-Nov-19 | 5.3 LD | 6.8 | 12 |
| 2022 VR1 | 2023-Nov-19 | 8.1 LD | 6.1 | 39 |
| 2019 UT6 | 2023-Nov-24 | 9 LD | 13.2 | 141 |
| 2019 CZ2 | 2023-Nov-25 | 2.8 LD | 5.8 | 44 |
| 2023 VM1 | 2023-Nov-26 | 10.9 LD | 8.9 | 44 |
| 2013 UB3 | 2023-Nov-27 | 18.5 LD | 5.4 | 25 |
| 1998 WB2 | 2023-Dec-03 | 11 LD | 14.2 | 151 |
| 2013 VX4 | 2023-Dec-04 | 5.1 LD | 6.6 | 60 |
| 2023 TB27 | 2023-Dec-06 | 17 LD | 4.3 | 45 |
| 139622 | 2023-Dec-06 | 14.4 LD | 6.7 | 719 |
| 2020 HX3 | 2023-Dec-10 | 9.8 LD | 15.7 | 13 |
| 2010 XF3 | 2023-Dec-11 | 19.4 LD | 4 | 46 |
| 2016 XD2 | 2023-Dec-19 | 18.7 LD | 6.9 | 59 |
| 341843 | 2023-Dec-20 | 16.5 LD | 5.3 | 344 |
| 2018 YJ2 | 2023-Dec-21 | 18.4 LD | 13.1 | 154 |
| 2022 YG | 2023-Dec-22 | 10.8 LD | 5.1 | 17 |
| 2020 YO3 | 2023-Dec-23 | 3.6 LD | 16.6 | 42 |
| 2010 UE51 | 2023-Dec-24 | 9 LD | 1.3 | 7 |
| 2020 YR2 | 2023-Dec-25 | 13.8 LD | 8 | 8 |
| 2021 AM6 | 2023-Dec-31 | 18.3 LD | 6.6 | 17 |
| 2019 KK5 | 2024-Jan-03 | 10.6 LD | 20.9 | 98 |
Notes: LD means "Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance between Earth and the Moon. 1 LD also equals 0.00256 AU. | | 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 7 years, resulting in a unique dataset of in situ atmospheric measurements.
Latest results (July 2022): Atmospheric radiation is decreasing in 2022. Our latest measurements in July 2022 registered a 6-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.
| | 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. |
| | information about sunspots based on the latest NOAA/USAF Active Region Summary |
| | current counts of failed and deployed Starlink satellites from Jonathan's Space Page |
| | Authoritative predictions of space junk and satellite re-entries |
| | from the NOAA Space Environment Center |
| | fun to read, but should be taken with a grain of salt! Forecasts looking ahead more than a few days are often wrong. |
| | from the NOAA Space Environment Center |
| | the underlying science of space weather |
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