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QUIET SUN: Solar activity remains low. All of the sunspots on the Earthside of the sun have stable, quiet magnetic fields. NOAA forecasters say there is no more than a 1% chance of strong flares on June 13th. Solar flare alerts: text or voice
NOCTILUCENT OUTBURST: Observers in Europe are reporting a spectacular outburst of noctilucent clouds (NLCs). "The NLCs were really bright over Gothenburg, Sweden!" says Svante Sandström, who took this picture before daybreak on June 13th:
The electric-blue color and finely spaced ripples are typical of these clouds, which are seeded by meteoroids and hover 83 km above Earth's surface at the threshold of space. They are growing brighter every night as northern summer approaches. Elsewhere in Europe, the clouds were spotted in Denmark, Poland and Estonia.
Noctilucent clouds were first reported by Europeans in the late 1800s. In those days, you had to travel to latitudes well above 50o to see them. Now, however, NLCs are spreading. In recent years they have been sighted as far south as Colorado and Utah in the United States.
So far this year, the majority of NLC sightings have been in Europe. It is only a matter of time before the electric-blue ripples spread to North America. Observing tips: Look west 30 to 60 minutes after sunset when the Sun has dipped 6o to 16o below the horizon. If you see blue-white tendrils spreading across the sky, you may have spotted a noctilucent cloud.
Realtime Noctilucent Cloud Photo Gallery
DONUT OF LIGHT OVER COLORADO: On June 8th, high above a thunderstorm in Colorado, an enormous ring of light appeared near the edge of space. Amateur astronomer Thomas Ashcraft photographed the 'donut' using a low-light video camera.
"It only lasted about a millisecond," says Ashcraft, "but it was definitely there. The ring was about 300 km wide," he estimates.
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 lightning propagates up toward space and hits the base of Earth's ionosphere. A faint ring of light marks the broad 'spot' where the EMP hits.
ELVES often appear alongside red sprites. Indeed, Ashcraft's camera caught a cluster of sprites leaping straight up through the middle of the donut. "Play the complete video to see the sprites," says Ashcraft.
ELVEs are elusive--and that's an understatement. Blinking in and out of existance 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
UFO-SHAPED CLOUDS: On the evening of June 9th, a spectacular array of UFO-shaped clouds appeared above California's Eastern Sierra mountain range. The display was a sensation on social media as people in nearby valleys began posting pictures of the sunset-colored armada. One photographer, unlike the others, was in the mountains; ultrarunner Jeff Kozak of Bishop CA captured this edge-on view from 11,100 feet:
"I was topping out on Morgan Pass at sunset when I looked south to see what I thought was The Mothership hovering over Mt Tom!" says Kozak.
In fact, it was a lenticular cloud. Lenticular clouds form downwind of mountain ranges where the air organizes itself into starship-sized waves. Although they appear stationary, moist air is constantly moving through them, condensing at the apex of the wave. Wind sculpts the clouds into giant saucers and voilà--spaceships in the sky.
For more information about lenticular clouds, click here.
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
Realtime Aurora 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 Jun. 13, 2016, the network reported 21 fireballs.
(21 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 June 13, 2016 there were 1705 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. | Cosmic Rays in the Atmosphere |
Situation Report -- Oct. 30, 2015 | Stratospheric Radiation (+37o N) |
Cosmic ray levels are elevated (+6.1% above the Space Age median). The trend is flat. Cosmic ray levels have increased +0% in the past month. |
Sept. 06: 4.14 uSv/hr (414 uRad/hr) |
Sept. 12: 4.09 uSv/hr (409 uRad/hr) |
Sept. 23: 4.12 uSv/hr (412 uRad/hr) |
Sept. 25: 4.16 uSv/hr (416 uRad/hr) |
Sept. 27: 4.13 uSv/hr (413 uRad/hr) |
Oct. 11: 4.02 uSv/hr (402 uRad/hr) |
Oct. 22: 4.11 uSv/hr (411 uRad/hr) |
These measurements are based on regular space weather balloon flights: learn more. 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. Our measurements show that someone flying back and forth across the continental USA, just once, can absorb as much ionizing radiation as 2 to 5 dental X-rays. For example, here is the data from a flight on Oct. 22, 2015:
Radiation levels peak at the entrance to the stratosphere in a broad region called the "Pfotzer Maximum." This peak is named after physicist George Pfotzer who discovered it using balloons and Geiger tubes in the 1930s. Radiation levels there are more than 80x sea level.
Note that the bottom of the Pfotzer Maximim is near 55,000 ft. This means that some high-flying aircraft are not far from the zone of maximum radiation. Indeed, according to the Oct 22th measurements, a plane flying at 45,000 feet is exposed to 2.79 uSv/hr. At that rate, a passenger would absorb about one dental X-ray's worth of radiation in about 5 hours.
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 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 |
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