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RETURN OF A POTENTIALLY-DANGEROUS SUNSPOT: A sunspot emerging over the sun's northeastern limb appears to be old sunspot AR3663 returning after a 2-week trip around the farside of the sun. In early May, this sunspot unleashed multiple X-class solar flares. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text
ROCKS AND SOIL ELECTRIFIED BY THE SUPERSTORM: Across the USA on May 10th and 11th, sky watchers marveled at bright displays of aurora borealis during the biggest geomagnetic storm in decades. Little did they know, something was also happening underfoot.
Strong electrical currents were surging through rocks and soil. The biggest voltages along the US eastern seaboard and in the Midwest were as much as 10,000 times normal. A map from NOAA and the US Geological Survey shows some of the 'hot spots' during the early hours of May 11th:
Back in March 1989, voltages only a little stronger than the ones shown above brought down the entire Hydro-Québec power system. The resulting Great Québec Blackout plunged millions of Canadians into darkness.
This time, however, power grids stayed up. "We haven't heard of any serious problems so far," reports Christopher Balch of NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center.
Balch leads an effort at NOAA to model geoelectric fields during solar storms. The map, above, is a snapshot from a real-time display that takes into account the 3D conductivity of the Earth and ongoing geomagnetic activity. A computer at the Space Weather Prediction Center crunches the data to produce minute-by-minute estimates of electricity in the ground.
"I started working on this in 2011 after a NOAA Space Weather Workshop where representatives from the power industry asked for a geoelectric field model," recalls Balch. "It's a collaboration between NOAA, the US Geological Survey and others; we now have a version that covers much of Canada and the United States"
A power blackout (left) and transformer damage (right) during the March 1989 storm.
When researchers talk about geoelectric fields they use units of volts per km (V/km). Earth's crust naturally contains quiet-time fields measuring as little as 0.01 V/km. During geomagnetic storms, these values skyrocket.
"On May 10-11, geoelectric amplitudes exceeded 10 V/km in Virginia and 9 V/km in the upper Midwest," says Jeffrey Love, a key member of the collaboration at the USGS. "These are very high. For comparison, we estimate that geoelectric amplitudes reached almost 22 V/km in Virginia during the March 1989 storm."
This means the May 2024 storm was, electrically speaking, about half as intense as the storm that blacked out Québec 35 years ago. That's too close for comfort. "Although power companies have taken measures to improve the resilience of their systems, no one would welcome another storm as intense as that of March 1989," says Love.
Realtime electric field maps are published 24/7 on the NOAA website. During the next geomagnetic storm, click here to see what's happening underfoot!
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18K GOLD TOTAL ECLIPSE PENDANT: This pendant has touched the shadow of the Moon. On April 8, 2024, during a total eclipse of the sun in Texas, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched it to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon. Floating more than 118,110 feet high, the locket spent 3 minutes and 45 seconds wrapped in lunar shadow:
You can have it for $199.95. The 18K gold-plated locket is inscribed with the words "I love you to the Moon and back," and opens to hold a personal photo or other small item. It comes with a greeting card showing the locket in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space during the total eclipse.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
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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 25, 2024, the network reported 9 fireballs.
(9 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 May 25, 2024 there were 2349 potentially hazardous asteroids.
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Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: | Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
| 2024 JD1 | 2024-May-20 | 19 LD | 5.5 | 27 |
| 2015 WO1 | 2024-May-20 | 7.4 LD | 15.6 | 86 |
| 2024 JP12 | 2024-May-21 | 11 LD | 6.3 | 19 |
| 2024 JZ17 | 2024-May-21 | 6.6 LD | 10.3 | 23 |
| 2024 KC | 2024-May-21 | 4.3 LD | 4.6 | 7 |
| 2019 VB5 | 2024-May-21 | 7.8 LD | 6.3 | 2 |
| 2024 JG15 | 2024-May-22 | 6.6 LD | 10.8 | 63 |
| 2024 JZ6 | 2024-May-23 | 14.6 LD | 13.8 | 243 |
| 2024 HP | 2024-May-23 | 15.5 LD | 7.7 | 186 |
| 2024 JX14 | 2024-May-23 | 16.4 LD | 6.2 | 27 |
| 2024 HP2 | 2024-May-25 | 5.8 LD | 2.3 | 19 |
| 2024 JY1 | 2024-May-26 | 17.5 LD | 10.3 | 52 |
| 2024 JO16 | 2024-May-27 | 8 LD | 8.8 | 20 |
| 2008 LD | 2024-May-28 | 7.7 LD | 4.5 | 6 |
| 2024 JV17 | 2024-May-28 | 17.3 LD | 8.4 | 44 |
| 2021 LV | 2024-May-29 | 12 LD | 15.5 | 9 |
| 2024 JG | 2024-May-29 | 8.7 LD | 7.4 | 29 |
| 2024 JA3 | 2024-May-30 | 6.2 LD | 8.5 | 36 |
| 2008 XH | 2024-May-31 | 13.8 LD | 14.7 | 102 |
| 2024 JP1 | 2024-Jun-01 | 18.5 LD | 4.7 | 25 |
| 2024 JC1 | 2024-Jun-01 | 15.1 LD | 4.8 | 32 |
| 1998 KY26 | 2024-Jun-01 | 12 LD | 5.3 | 25 |
| 2016 JC6 | 2024-Jun-01 | 19.9 LD | 7.1 | 188 |
| 2024 JR17 | 2024-Jun-05 | 19.4 LD | 14.6 | 87 |
| 2008 YN2 | 2024-Jun-05 | 10.5 LD | 7.7 | 20 |
| 2021 LW3 | 2024-Jun-06 | 9.7 LD | 9.8 | 86 |
| 2024 CR9 | 2024-Jun-11 | 19.2 LD | 7.4 | 447 |
| 2022 XC1 | 2024-Jun-12 | 16.5 LD | 6.5 | 21 |
| 2022 WW11 | 2024-Jun-17 | 19.7 LD | 14.4 | 15 |
| 2019 NJ | 2024-Jun-27 | 17.2 LD | 10.1 | 66 |
| 415029 | 2024-Jun-27 | 17.3 LD | 25.9 | 2304 |
| 2022 MM1 | 2024-Jun-28 | 7.8 LD | 10.9 | 39 |
| 2010 XN | 2024-Jun-28 | 14.1 LD | 11.3 | 52 |
| 2022 HD1 | 2024-Jun-29 | 17.3 LD | 7.2 | 63 |
| 2017 MB3 | 2024-Jun-30 | 5 LD | 6.5 | 30 |
| 2022 BY39 | 2024-Jul-02 | 13.2 LD | 3 | 4 |
| 2022 YS5 | 2024-Jul-11 | 11 LD | 5.8 | 38 |
| 2024 BY15 | 2024-Jul-16 | 16.2 LD | 0.7 | 16 |
Notes: LD means "Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance between Earth and the Moon. 1 LD also equals 0.00256 AU. | | Cosmic Rays in the Atmosphere |
SPACE WEATHER BALLOON DATA: Almost 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 sensors that detect secondary cosmic rays, a form of radiation from space that can penetrate all the way down to Earth's surface. Our monitoring program has been underway without interruption for 7 years, resulting in a unique dataset of in situ atmospheric measurements.
Latest results (July 2022): Atmospheric radiation is decreasing in 2022. Our latest measurements in July 2022 registered a 6-year low:
What's going on? Ironically, the radiation drop is caused by increasing solar activity. Solar Cycle 25 has roared to life faster than forecasters expected. The sun's strengthening and increasingly tangled magnetic field repels cosmic rays from deep space. In addition, solar coronal mass ejections (CMEs) sweep aside cosmic rays, causing sharp reductions called "Forbush Decreases." The two effects blend together to bring daily radiation levels down.
.Who cares? Cosmic rays are a surprisingly "down to Earth" form of space weather. They can alter the chemistry of the atmosphere, trigger lightning, and penetrate commercial airplanes. According to a study from the Harvard T.H. Chan school of public health, crews of aircraft have higher rates of cancer than the general population. The researchers listed cosmic rays, irregular sleep habits, and chemical contaminants as leading risk factors. A number of controversial studies (#1, #2, #3, #4) go even further, linking cosmic rays with cardiac arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death.
Technical notes: 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.
Data points in the graph labeled "Stratospheric Radiation" 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 Regener 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. |
| | information about sunspots based on the latest NOAA/USAF Active Region Summary |
| | current counts of failed and deployed Starlink satellites from Jonathan's Space Page. See also, all satellite statistics. |
| | Authoritative predictions of space junk and satellite re-entries |
| | 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 |
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