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SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids
 
Solar wind
speed: 530.6 km/sec
density: 5.7 protons/cm3
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 2348 UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: A4
1718 UT May10
24-hr: A5
0943 UT May10
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 2300 UT
Daily Sun: 10 May 18
These small sunspots have stable magnetic fields that pose little threat for solar flares. Credit: SDO/HMI

Sunspot number: 22
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 10 May 2018

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 0 days
2018 total: 73 days (56%)
2017 total: 104 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 10 May 2018


The Radio Sun
10.7 cm flux: 70 sfu
explanation | more data
Updated 10 May 2018

Current Auroral Oval:
Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica
Credit: NOAA/Ovation
Planetary K-index
Now: Kp= 1 quiet
24-hr max: Kp= 3
quiet
explanation | more data
Interplanetary Mag. Field
Btotal: 3.6 nT
Bz: -1.0 nT south
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 2347 UT
Coronal Holes: 10 May 18

Earth is exiting a stream of solar wind flowing from the indicated coronal hole. Credit: SDO/AIA
Noctilucent Clouds Our connection with NASA's AIM spacecraft has been restored! New images from AIM show that the southern season for noctilucent clouds (NLCs) is underway. Come back to this spot every day to see AIM's "daily daisy," which reveals the dance of electric-blue NLCs around the Antarctic Circle..
Switch view: Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctic Peninsula, East Antarctica, Polar
Updated at: 02-07-2018 17:55:05
SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts
Updated at: 2018 May 10 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: 2018 May 10 2200 UTC
Mid-latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
20 %
10 %
MINOR
05 %
01 %
SEVERE
01 %
01 %
High latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
20 %
15 %
MINOR
25 %
15 %
SEVERE
20 %
10 %
 
Thursday, May. 10, 2018
What's up in space
       
 

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EXITING THE SOLAR WIND STREAM: After five days inside a stream of high speed solar wind, Earth is finally making its exit. Solar wind speeds are gradually subsiding below 600 km/s. NOAA forecasters estimate a 30% chance of polar geomagnetic storms on May 10th, dropping to 10% on May 11th as we move away from the gaseous material. Free: Aurora Alerts

RED SPRITES OVER NEBRASKA: It's only springtime, but in the Great Plains states of the USA, summer thunderstorm season is already underway. Jingpeng Liu saw evidence of this on May 9th when he photographed red sprites dancing over Hickman, Nebraska:

"I was attempting to shoot a time-lapse sequence of the rising Milky Way at about 1 o'clock in the morning when I noticed some thunderstorms in the far distance," says Liu. "Immediately I began to look for sprites--and there they were."

Sprites are an exotic form of lightning that fly up from thunderstorms instead of down. Some researchers believe they are linked to cosmic rays: Subatomic particles from deep space strike the top of Earth's atmosphere, producing secondary electrons that trigger sprites. If this is true, then sprites could multiply in the years ahead as cosmic rays intensify due to the decline of the solar cycle.

Although sprites have been seen for at least a century, most scientists did not believe they existed until after 1989 when sprites were photographed by cameras onboard the space shuttle. Now "sprite chasers" routinely photograph sprites from their own homes. Give it a try!

Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery

MOTHER'S DAY IS THIS SUNDAY: Nothing says "I Love You" like a heart-shaped pendant from the edge of space. On Dec. 31, 2017, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus flew an array of cosmic ray sensors to the stratosphere onboard a giant helium balloon. This Mother's Day gift went along for the ride:

You can have it for $119.95. The students are selling these pendants as a fund-raiser for their cosmic ray monitoring program. All proceeds support atmospheric radiation measurements and hands-on STEM education.

Each pendant comes with a greeting card showing the jewelry in flight and telling the story of its journey to the stratosphere and back again. Mom-satisfaction guaranteed.

Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All proceeds support hands-on STEM education

POLLEN CORONA: This spring in Europe has been remarkably warm and sunny, kickstarting a frenzy of vegetative reproduction. "The air is full of pollen," says Peter Paul Hattinga Verschure of Deventer, The Netherlands. "As a result, we've seen some beautiful pollen coronas." He photographed this one on May 8th:

"I used a street lamp to block the glare of the sun," says Verschure. "The colorful rings then became very clear."

Atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley explains the phenomenon: "Coronas are produced when light waves scatter from the outsides of small particles. Tiny droplets of water in clouds do a  great job making coronas, but pollen grains are even better. They make small but very colorful rings of light around the sun."

"Unlike water droplets, pollens are non-spherical--and this adds to their magic," he continues. "Many have air sacs to help carry them in the wind. These align the grains to give beautiful elliptical coronas with bright spots." This is why Verschure's pollen corona looks the way it does.

"I believe the elliptical shape of this corona points to its origin in pine tree pollen," says Verschure. Look carefully at his photo and you can see individual specks of pollen glittering in the air.

Realtime Aurora 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 May. 10, 2018, the network reported 19 fireballs.
(12 sporadics, 5 eta Aquariids, 2 eta Lyrids)

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 May 10, 2018 there were 1907 potentially hazardous asteroids.
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:
Asteroid
Date(UT)
Miss Distance
Velocity (km/s)
Diameter (m)
2018 JD
2018-May-06
3.5 LD
8.1
16
2018 JW
2018-May-06
9 LD
11.7
25
2018 JB
2018-May-06
5.2 LD
8.3
23
1999 FN19
2018-May-07
9.7 LD
5.7
118
2016 JQ5
2018-May-08
6.3 LD
10.4
9
388945
2018-May-09
6.5 LD
9
295
2018 JP
2018-May-09
2.1 LD
7.4
12
2018 JJ
2018-May-10
13.1 LD
12.7
51
2018 GR2
2018-May-11
13.4 LD
9.8
111
2018 JZ
2018-May-11
4.3 LD
13.2
13
2016 HP6
2018-May-13
2.2 LD
5.6
28
2018 JA1
2018-May-13
4.4 LD
5.8
28
2018 JL1
2018-May-14
7.5 LD
5.7
16
2018 JY
2018-May-14
8.8 LD
10.6
52
1999 LK1
2018-May-15
13.3 LD
10
141
2010 WC9
2018-May-15
0.5 LD
12.8
71
2018 JX
2018-May-16
3.9 LD
13
77
2018 JC
2018-May-17
17.8 LD
9.4
78
2018 GL1
2018-May-18
14.3 LD
5.2
69
2018 JG1
2018-May-20
5.3 LD
8.3
44
2018 JK
2018-May-22
16.4 LD
12.5
78
68347
2018-May-29
9.5 LD
13.3
389
2013 LE7
2018-May-31
17.8 LD
1.7
12
2018 EJ4
2018-Jun-10
5.6 LD
6.2
195
2015 DP155
2018-Jun-11
9 LD
4.4
170
2017 YE5
2018-Jun-21
15.6 LD
15.5
513
467309
2018-Jun-23
17.9 LD
14
355
441987
2018-Jun-24
7.3 LD
12.6
178
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 13% 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
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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