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SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids
 
Solar wind
speed: 575.3 km/sec
density: 5.8 protons/cm3
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 0004 UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: B4
1929 UT Apr08
24-hr: C1
0309 UT Apr08
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 2359 UT
Daily Sun: 08 Apr 17
Neither of these sunspots poses a threat for strong flares. Credit: SDO/HMI

Sunspot number: 27
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 08 Apr 2017

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 0 days
2017 total: 27 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%)

Updated 08 Apr 2017


The Radio Sun
10.7 cm flux: 74 sfu
explanation | more data
Updated 08 Apr 2017

Current Auroral Oval:
Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica
Credit: NOAA/Ovation
Planetary K-index
Now: Kp= 3 quiet
24-hr max: Kp= 4
unsettled
explanation | more data
Interplanetary Mag. Field
Btotal: 5.1 nT
Bz: -3.5 nT south
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 0004 UT
Coronal Holes: 08 Apr 17

Solar wind flowing from the northern reaches of this southern coronal hole is buffeting Earth's magnetic field today. Credit: NASA/SDO.
Noctilucent Clouds The southern season for noctilucent clouds began on Nov. 17, 2016. Come back to this spot every day to see the "daily daisy" from NASA's AIM spacecraft, which is monitoring the dance of electric-blue around the Antarctic Circle.
Switch view: Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctic Peninsula, East Antarctica, Polar
Updated at: 02-24-2017 17:55:02
SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts
Updated at: 2017 Apr 08 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: 2017 Apr 08 2200 UTC
Mid-latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
20 %
10 %
MINOR
05 %
05 %
SEVERE
01 %
01 %
High latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
15 %
15 %
MINOR
20 %
20 %
SEVERE
20 %
15 %
 
Saturday, Apr. 8, 2017
What's up in space
       
 

Directly under the Arctic Circle! Marianne's Arctic Xpress in Tromsø offers fjord, whale and wildlife tours by day, aurora tours by night. Email Marianne for bookings and availability.

 

SKREI-RORA BOREALIS: During the early hours of April 8th, a solar wind stream flowing from a hole in the sun's atmosphere enveloped our planet. Photographer Eric Fokke immediately saw the effect of the incoming wind as green auroras backlit the fish drying racks so common these days in Lofoton, Norway:

"Two seasons come to an end next week on the Lofoten Islands. The northern light season and the skrei (or cod) season," says Fokke. "The drying racks are full with fish and the nights are getting shorter and shorter. Both seasons were great again! One more week to go ... and the weather forecast sounds good, so we may have a nice finale!"

Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery

SPHERICAL CAMERA IN THE STRATOSPHERE: On March 26th, as part of our normal cosmic ray monitoring program, Spaceweather.com and the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched a Ricoh Theta S spherical camera to the stratosphere. The finicky instrument worked throughout the entire flight, resulting in this view from an altitude of 116,140 feet:

The view from a space weather balloon at 116,140 feet above the Sierra Nevada mountains of central California. - Spherical Image - RICOH THETA

Click on the image, then spin and zoom. Be sure to notice the cosmic ray payload below the camera and the 50 ft-wide balloon overhead. The black object apparently bisecting the balloon is a thermal pack attached to the camera itself; this pack helped the camera stay warm despite surrounding air temperatures as low as -63 C. A few seconds after this picture was taken, the balloon exploded and the payload parachuted back to Earth, landing in a Joshua Tree forest on the verge of Death Valley National Park.

More spherical images show the launch crew, the payload approaching the cloud deck from below, and the parachute opening in the stratosphere.

Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery

GIANT 'ELVE' APPEARS OVER EUROPE: On April 2nd, high above a thunderstorm in the Czech republic, an enormous ring of light appeared in the night sky. Using a low-light video camera, amateur astronomer Martin Popek of Nýdek photographed the 300 km-wide donut hovering near the edge of space:

"It appeared for just a split second alongside the constellation Orion" says Popek.

This is an example of an ELVE (Emissions of Light and Very Low Frequency Perturbations due to Electromagnetic Pulse Sources). First seen by cameras on the space shuttle in 1990, ELVEs appear when a pulse of electromagnetic radiation from cloud-to-ground lightning propagates up toward space and hits the base of Earth's ionosphere. A faint ring of deep-red light marks the broad 'spot' where the EMP hits.

"For this to happen, the lightning needs to be very strong--typically 150-350 kilo-Ampères," says Oscar van der Velde, a member of the Lightning Research Group at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. "For comparison, normal cloud-to-ground flashes only reach 10-30 kA."

ELVEs often appear alongside red sprites, which are also sparked by strong lightning. Indeed, Popek's camera caught a cluster of sprites dancing nearby.

ELVEs are elusive--and that's an understatement. Blinking in and out of existence in only 1/1000th of a second, they are completely invisible to the human eye. For comparison, red sprites tend to last for hundredths of a second and regular lightning can scintillate for a second or more. Their brevity explains why ELVEs are a more recent discovery than other lightning-related phenomenon. Learn more about the history and physics of ELVEs here and here.

Realtime Sprite Photo Gallery


Realtime Comet 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 Apr. 8, 2017, the network reported 3 fireballs.
(3 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 April 8, 2017 there were potentially hazardous asteroids.
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:
Asteroid
Date(UT)
Miss Distance
Size
2017 DC38
Apr 5
14.6 LD
54 m
2017 FO127
Apr 6
11.2 LD
18 m
2017 FU64
Apr 6
3.7 LD
73 m
2017 FW128
Apr 6
5.2 LD
16 m
2017 FN101
Apr 7
10.3 LD
48 m
2017 FS102
Apr 7
7.7 LD
17 m
2017 GT4
Apr 9
3.5 LD
21 m
2017 GP4
Apr 12
11.5 LD
27 m
2017 GN5
Apr 12
11.1 LD
52 m
2017 FF128
Apr 13
6.7 LD
33 m
2017 GO4
Apr 15
13.7 LD
41 m
2003 BD44
Apr 18
21.7 LD
1.9 km
2014 JO25
Apr 19
4.6 LD
1.0 km
1999 CU3
Apr 19
63.7 LD
1.9 km
2017 GM4
Apr 20
13.1 LD
175 m
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.

  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
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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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