Did you miss the lunar eclipse? No problem. The Coca-Cola Science Center recorded it for you. Click here to play the movie. | | | GET READY FOR A NEW METEOR SHOWER: May 24th could be a big day for meteor astronomy. That's when Earth is expected to pass through a cloud of debris from comet 209P/LINEAR, producing a never-before-seen meteor shower. Meteor rates could exceed 200 per hour, and some forecasters have even mentioned the possibility of a meteor storm. Get the full story from Science@NASA. WILD SWx BALLOON LAUNCH: This morning, May 10th, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus sent another space weather balloon to the stratosphere. The launch occurred in windy weather, which made the inflated balloon unusually difficult to control. In this video, listen to the reaction of the students as the balloon barely clears the roof of a house next-door to the launch site: In addition to its usual sensors for temperature, altitude, and cosmic radiation, the payload carried four colonies of halobacteria. The students are exposing these bacteria to Mars-like conditions at the edge of space in a continuing series of experiments to find out if terrestrial extremophiles could live on other planets. Stay tuned for updates. So far so good: They survived the launch! Stay tuned for updates after the payload is recovered from its landing site near Death Valley later today. Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery SOUTHERN CORONAL HOLE: Imagine what it would be like if, from time to time, a hole opened up in Earth's atmosphere and air went blowing out into space. On the sun, this happens all the time. The openings are called "coronal holes." NASA's Solar Dynamics Obervatory is monitoring one right now; it is the dark wedge-shaped region in this extreme ultraviolet image of the sun's southern hemisphere: Coronal holes are places in the sun's atmosphere where the magnetic field bends back and allows gas to escape. From such openings, solar wind blows out into space. A stream of solar wind flowing from this particular coronal hole could reach Earth on May 11-12, sparking auroras when it arrives. On the other hand, the stream might sail south of our planet, delivering only a glancing blow. Stay tuned for updates. Aurora alerts: text, voice Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery Realtime Mars Photo Gallery Realtime Comet 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 May. 8, 2014, the network reported 23 fireballs. (16 sporadics, 7 eta Aquariids)
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 May 10, 2014 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. | 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 | |