| | Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica Credit: NOAA/Ovation Planetary K-index Now: Kp= 0 quiet 24-hr max: Kp= 4 unsettled explanation | more data Interplanetary Mag. Field Btotal: 6.5 nT Bz: 1.9 nT north more data: ACE, DSCOVR Updated: Today at 2345 UT Coronal Holes: 14 Jul 20 There are no large coronal holes on the Earthside of the sun. Credit: SDO/AIA Noctilucent Clouds NLC season is underway. NASA's AIM spacecraft detected a blue cloud over the north pole on May 17th--one of the earliest starts in the spacecraft's14 year history. Check here for daily images from AIM. Switch view: Europe, USA, Asia, Polar Updated at: SPACE WEATHER NOAA Forecasts | | Updated at: 2020 Jul 14 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: 2020 Jul 14 2200 UTC Mid-latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 20 % | 05 % | MINOR | 05 % | 01 % | SEVERE | 01 % | 01 % | High latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 15 % | 15 % | MINOR | 25 % | 15 % | SEVERE | 25 % | 10 % | | | | | | | | | | | | Never miss another geomagnetic storm. Sign up for Space Weather Alerts and you'll receive a text message when auroras appear in your area. Aurora tour guides and professional astronomers use this service. Now you can, too! | | | JUPITER AT OPPOSITION: Tonight, Jupiter it at opposition---that is, opposite the sun and making its closest approach to Earth. The giant planet rises at sunset and stays up all night long. Look for it right beside Saturn in the midnight sky. [sky map] COMET NEOWISE MEETS THE NORTHERN LIGHTS: On July 13th, a slow-moving CME hit Earth's magnetic field. Its impact was barely felt, but the slight ripples it sent through the geomagnetic field were enough to spark auroras along the US-Canadian border. Heidi Pinkerton caught the display from Babbitt, Minnesota: "It was thrilling to see the sunset, the comet, and northern lights all in the same image," says Pinkerton. Pinkerton and her husband had gone out at sunset on July 12th (July 13th UTC) to photograph Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3). The auroras were a surprise. A CME launched toward Earth on July 8th by the eruption of a magnetic filament on the sun was supposed to arrive on July 14th. Instead it hit a day early--just as the Pinkertons were stepping out for a comet-shoot. "Perfect timing!" she says. Comet NEOWISE is now visible in the morning sky and the evening sky. This doubles the odds that photographers will catch the comet alongside auroras, meteors, fireballs, spaceships, and noctilucent clouds. For best results, make a wish. Morning sky maps: July 13, 14, 15, 16, 17; Evening sky maps: July 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. Realtime Comet NEOWISE Photo Gallery Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter COMET NEOWISE VS. THE SOLAR WIND: On July 12th, two of the best comet photographers in the world, Michael Jaeger and Gerald Rhemann, traveled to the Hochkar Ski Resort in Austria for a good long look at Comet NEOWISE. "The ski resort is over 1400 meters above sea level and has a perfect horizon view to north," explains Jaeger. "From there, we could expose the comet as deeply as possible." This is what they saw: Rhemann's color photo is inset in Jaeger's high-resolution black and white image. They both reveal the comet's spectacular double tail. The brighter of the two is the dust tail, made of dusty-rocky grains sprinkled like crumbs along the comet's curved orbit. Just above it is the blue ion tail, made of gas shoved straight away from the sun by the solar wind. Well ... not quite straight. Take a closer look at the ion tail. It is filled with kinks, curlicues, and other discontinuities. These are signs of turbulence in the solar wind. As gusts buffet the ion tail, irregularities ripple downstream from the comet, adding a dash of complicated beauty to an already gorgeous object. Stay tuned for even longer exposures as Comet NEOWISE climbs higher in the evening sky. Realtime Comet NEOWISE Photo Gallery Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter ARCTIC WOLF PENDANT: This wolf glows in the dark--and it's been to space. The students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched this special pendant to the stratosphere on April 15, 2020, on board a high-altitude cosmic ray balloon. The payload of radiation sensors (and lupine jewelry) traveled 107,611 feet above Earth's surface: You can have it for $99.95. The students are selling these pendants to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the wolf in flight and describing its journey to the stratosphere 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 Realtime Noctilucent Cloud 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 14, 2020, the network reported 19 fireballs. (18 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 14, 2020 there were 2037 potentially hazardous asteroids. | Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) | 2020 MU1 | 2020-Jul-11 | 18.8 LD | 2.7 | 38 | 2020 ML | 2020-Jul-12 | 11.4 LD | 4.4 | 23 | 2020 KJ7 | 2020-Jul-13 | 11.8 LD | 3.4 | 33 | 2009 OS5 | 2020-Jul-13 | 17.6 LD | 2.6 | 45 | 2020 MQ2 | 2020-Jul-14 | 17.1 LD | 8.3 | 44 | 2020 NM | 2020-Jul-16 | 10.6 LD | 5.7 | 20 | 2020 MX | 2020-Jul-17 | 15 LD | 5.3 | 51 | 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 NO | 2020-Jul-22 | 2.1 LD | 7.7 | 15 | 2020 ND | 2020-Jul-24 | 14.5 LD | 13.6 | 169 | 2020 NN | 2020-Jul-25 | 16.3 LD | 10.1 | 47 | 2020 MX3 | 2020-Jul-29 | 9.4 LD | 8.5 | 68 | 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, or check out the new Avenger Slots Casino and Slot Strike Casino Sites with over 500 online slots and casino games. . | | These links help Spaceweather.com stay online. Thank you to our supporters! | | | | | | | | | | | | ©2019 Spaceweather.com. All rights reserved. This site is penned daily by Dr. Tony Phillips. | |