On April 15th there will be a total eclipse of the Moon. Got clouds? No problem. The event will be broadcast live on the web by the Coca-Cola Science Center. | | | TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE: Mark your calendar. On April 15th, there will be a total eclipse of the Moon visible from Australia, New Zealand, and all of the Americas. The action begins on Tuesday at 2 AM Eastern time. Get the full story and a video from Science@NASA. SOMETHING IN THE OFFING: For the past 24 hours, plumes of hot plasma have been rising and falling over the sun's southeastern limb. April 10th began with this eruption recorded by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory: The surge heralds the approach of a new sunspot. Because we cannot yet discern the complexity of the region's magnetic field, its potency remains unknown. However, the fact that it has been producing C-flares while still partially eclipsed suggests that much stronger flares are possible when the region fully emerges in the days ahead. Stay tuned. Solar flare alerts: text, voice Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery CORONAL HOLES: NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory is monitoring a pair of coronal holes straddling the sun's equator. They are the deep-blue wedges in this extreme ultraviolet image of the sun taken mid-day on April 9th: Coronal holes are places in the sun's atmosphere where the ambient magnetic field opens up and allows solar wind to escape. A double-stream of solar wind flowing from these coronal holes could reach Earth on April 12-14. It is possible that neither stream will be geoeffective as they flow north and south of our planet. On the other hand, a "brush pass" might still spark polar auroras. NOAA forecasters estmate a 40% chance of polar geomagnetic storms when the streams arrive. Aurora alerts: text, voice Realtime Mars Photo Gallery Realtime Comet Photo Gallery Realtime Aurora 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 Apr. 10, 2014, the network reported 10 fireballs. (10 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] 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 10, 2014 there were 1465 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. | 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 | | the underlying science of space weather | |