Based in Tromsø directly under the Arctic Circle, Marianne's Arctic Xpress offers a comfortable 7 seater minivan for aurora, fjord, whale, and wildlife tours day and night. 100% PASSION and a very high % of finding aurora. Book Now | | | SUBSIDING CHANCE OF STORMS: Earth is exiting a stream of high-speed solar wind. As a result, the chance of magnetic storms and auroras is decreasing. NOAA forecasters say the odds of a G1-class storm on Nov. 15th are no more than 10%. Browse: aurora photo gallery. SUPERMOON OVER ANTARCTICA (AND ELSEWHERE): Around the world, billions of people marveled at last night's supermoon. Only a handful saw it from Antarctica. B. Sudarsan Patro was one of those few, and this is the picture he took from the Bharati Indian Base Station in Antarctica's Larsemann Hills: "We had a beautiful view of the big Moon rising above the frozen landscape," he says. "I feel so lucky to be here!" Located 50,000 km closer to Earth, the supermoon of Nov. 14th was 14% bigger and 30% brighter than lesser full moons of the past. It was so bright, it did something usually reserved for the sun. It made a rainbow: Alex Conu sends this photo from Reine in the Lofoten Islands of Norway. "I wanted to shoot the supermoon rising yesterday, but the weather was against me--or so I thought," he says. "Around 10 PM, I got a huge hole in the clouds. A shaft of moonlight shot through the gap and made a rainbow in the fjord--a supermoonbow!" "Moonbows are identical to normal rainbows, the only difference being the light source," Conu adds. "This one was a beauty." It was also cloudy in the French Alps when the supermoon rose. "I walked up the top of the Jura mountain to get above the clouds," says Sylvain Chapeland. "After enjoying a colorful sunset, I was surprised by an odd-looking moon, almost rectangular." "I regularly see deformations of the moon and sun at this site when there are strong temperature inversion layers, but this one was really impressive!" says Chapeland. "Definitely worth walking 2 hours in the snow." More views of the supermoon may be found in the realtime photo gallery: Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery Realtime Sprite Photo Gallery Realtime Airglow 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 Nov. 15, 2016, the network reported 64 fireballs. (53 sporadics, 8 Northern Taurids, 2 Leonids, 1 omicron Eridanid) 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 November 15, 2016 there were 1741 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 | 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 12% 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. | 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 | | a proud supporter of science education and Spaceweather.com | | the underlying science of space weather | | Find homes for sale in Ocala, Orlando and Tampa with the #1 real estate company in Central Florida Local Realty Service | | These links help Spaceweather.com stay online. Thank you to our supporters! | |