When the pandemic is over, Marianne Bergli would like to show you something: The Northern Lights. Marianne's team at Heaven on Earth Aurora Tours is eager to see you when flights to Norway resume--perfect for small groups/families. | | |
A "CANYON OF FIRE" ON THE SUN: During the late hours of July 8th, a magnetic filament on the sun became unstable and snapped. The eruption cut a "canyon of fire" in the sun's atmosphere and hurled a faint coronal mass ejection (CME) into space. NOAA analysts are modeling the CME now to see if it might hit Earth's magnetic field in the days ahead. Stay tuned for updates. Aurora alerts: SMS Text.
COMET NEOWISE HAS A SUPER-SIZED NUCLEUS: Now we know why Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) is so bright. Its nucleus is huge. Researchers working with NASA's NEOWISE spacecraft have analyzed infrared emissions from the comet's core, shown here in discovery images from March 2020:

The glow is proportional to the size of the nucleus--the nugget of dust and frozen gas at the heart of the comet. "From its infrared signature, we can tell that [the nucleus] is about 5 kilometers across," says Joseph Masiero, NEOWISE deputy principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"5 km is extremely large for a comet approaching this close to the sun (think Comet McNaught-sized), which explains its high activity," says Qicheng Zhang, a PhD student in planetary sciences at Caltech.
On July 3rd, Comet NEOWISE passed by the sun near the orbit of Mercury. The oversized nucleus helped it survive the encounter, which some comets would have found too hot to handle. Now NEOWISE's sun-heated core is spewing massive amounts of dust and gas, creating a worldwide sensation.
"Here is my daughter Izar ('Star' in the Basque language) pointing out the comet in the sunrise sky over Girona, Catalonia, Spain," says photographer Juan Carlos Casado. "It was easy to see with the naked eye."

"Foreground lighting in the photo is natural, provided by the Moon," he adds.
For Comet NEOWISE, the future looks bright. Its large nucleus is a reservoir of dust and gas that should continue to fill the comet's double tail with visible material for weeks to come. Observing tips: Wake up about 90 minutes before sunrise, find a place with a clear horizon, and look northeast. The comet is visible to the naked eye as a fuzzy patch with a tail. Binoculars are recommended for full effect. Sky maps: July 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.
Realtime Comet NEOWISE Photo Gallery
Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter
THE MESOSPHERE IS STILL COLD: Noctilucent clouds (NLCs) have been extra-abundant this summer. Nearly half of all photos of Comet NEOWISE taken from Europe in the past few mornings have caught the comet surfing waves of electric blue. The reason: It's cold in the mesosphere. Very cold. These data from NASA's Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) show how the temperature has cratered 83 km above Earth where NLCs form:

Lynn Harvey of the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics made the plot, which spans 14 years. 2020 is traced in red. "Conditions continue to be extremely cold with temperatures setting cold records on some days," she says.
For noctilucent clouds, cold is good. NLCs form when summertime wisps of water vapor rise up to the mesosphere, allowing water to crystallize around specks of meteor smoke. Low temperatures help the ice crystals form.
In addition to a major outbreak in Europe, the clouds have spread across the USA to southern California. This means everyone should be watching for them. The best time to look for NLCs is during the hours after sunset (or before sunrise) when the sun is more than 6 degrees below the horizon: diagram. If you see electric-blue tendrils spreading across the sky, take a picture and submit it here.
Realtime Noctilucent Cloud Photo Gallery
Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter
NEED BABY YODA, YOU DO: Baby Yoda has been to the stratosphere. The future Jedi left Earth on May 21st aboard an Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray balloon. Here he is floating Force-free 107,611 feet above Earth's surface:

You can have Baby Yoda for $119.95. The students are selling these adorable bobbleheads to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. They make great birthday, Christmas, and graduation gifts. Each one comes with a greeting card showing Yoda in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space and back again.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
Realtime Space Weather 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 July 10, 2020, the network reported 14 fireballs.
(13 sporadics, 1 July Pegasid)
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 July 10, 2020 there were 2037 potentially hazardous asteroids.
 |
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
2020 NB | 2020-Jul-05 | 0.5 LD | 8.3 | 20 |
2020 MU1 | 2020-Jul-11 | 18.8 LD | 2.7 | 38 |
2020 ML | 2020-Jul-12 | 11.4 LD | 4.4 | 25 |
2020 KJ7 | 2020-Jul-13 | 11.8 LD | 3.4 | 31 |
2009 OS5 | 2020-Jul-13 | 17.6 LD | 2.6 | 45 |
2020 MQ2 | 2020-Jul-14 | 17.1 LD | 8.3 | 44 |
2020 MX | 2020-Jul-17 | 15 LD | 5.3 | 52 |
2016 DY30 | 2020-Jul-19 | 9 LD | 15.1 | 3 |
2020 ME3 | 2020-Jul-19 | 14.8 LD | 4.6 | 24 |
2002 BF25 | 2020-Jul-21 | 9.4 LD | 6.8 | 129 |
2020 ND | 2020-Jul-24 | 14.5 LD | 13.6 | 168 |
2020 MX3 | 2020-Jul-29 | 9.5 LD | 8.6 | 70 |
2018 PY7 | 2020-Jul-31 | 8.9 LD | 9.5 | 16 |
2007 RF1 | 2020-Jul-31 | 10.7 LD | 5 | 21 |
2018 BD | 2020-Aug-03 | 7.6 LD | 9.4 | 3 |
2009 PQ1 | 2020-Aug-05 | 10.8 LD | 13.5 | 112 |
2020 FA1 | 2020-Aug-23 | 18.4 LD | 1.9 | 20 |
2016 AH164 | 2020-Aug-26 | 15.7 LD | 5.6 | 4 |
2011 ES4 | 2020-Sep-01 | 0.3 LD | 8.2 | 30 |
465824 | 2020-Sep-06 | 19.4 LD | 14 | 162 |
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 |
SOMETHING NEW! We have developed a new predictive model of aviation radiation. It's called E-RAD--short for Empirical RADiation model. We are constantly flying radiation sensors onboard airplanes over the US and and around the world, so far collecting more than 22,000 gps-tagged radiation measurements. Using this unique dataset, we can predict the dosage on any flight over the USA with an error no worse than 15%.
E-RAD lets us do something new: Every day we monitor approximately 1400 flights criss-crossing the 10 busiest routes in the continental USA. Typically, this includes more than 80,000 passengers per day. E-RAD calculates the radiation exposure for every single flight.
The Hot Flights Table is a daily summary of these calculations. It shows the 5 charter flights with the highest dose rates; the 5 commercial flights with the highest dose rates; 5 commercial flights with near-average dose rates; and the 5 commercial flights with the lowest dose rates. Passengers typically experience dose rates that are 20 to 70 times higher than natural radiation at sea level.
To measure radiation on airplanes, we use the same sensors we fly to the stratosphere onboard Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray balloons: neutron bubble chambers and X-ray/gamma-ray Geiger tubes sensitive to energies between 10 keV and 20 MeV. These energies span the range of medical X-ray machines and airport security scanners.
Column definitions: (1) The flight number; (2) The maximum dose rate during the flight, expressed in units of natural radiation at sea level; (3) The maximum altitude of the plane in feet above sea level; (4) Departure city; (5) Arrival city; (6) Duration of the flight.
SPACE WEATHER BALLOON DATA: 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 18% since 2015:

The data points in the graph above 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 Reneger and Georg Pfotzer discovered the maximum using balloons in the 1930s and it is what we are measuring today.
En route to the stratosphere, our sensors also pass through aviation altitudes:
In this plot, 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.
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.
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 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 |
| 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 |
 | To find reviews of new online casino sites in the UK try The Casino DB where there are hundreds of online casino reviews complete with bonuses and ratings. Get a bonus when playing at a new casino in the UK. The Genie got you covered! Looking for a new online casino? Try Casimpo the new site dedicated to making online casino simple and easy for all. |
| These links help Spaceweather.com stay online. Thank you to our supporters! |
| | | | | |