Listen to radar echoes from satellites and meteors, live on listener-supported Space Weather Radio. | | |
QUIET WITH A CHANCE OF FLARES: Solar activity is low. However, departing sunspot AR2065 has developed a 'beta-gamma-delta' magnetic field that harbors energy for X-class solar flares. If such an explosion does occur, it would be well-connected to Earth. The sun's spiralling magnetic field leads from the sun's western limb, where AR2065 is located, almost directly back to our planet. Solar flare alerts: text, voice
MAY CAMELOPARDALID METEOR SHOWER: Note to sky watchers: That's not what a meteor storm looks like. On May 24th, as predicted, Earth passed through a stream of debris from Comet 209P/LINEAR, and the encounter did produce a number of fine meteors. However, contrary to some forecasts, there was no intense outburst. Typical naked-eye meteor rates were no more than 5 or 10 per hour, a far cry from the "meteor storm" some headlines anticipated.
"Even though the meteor shower was less than spectacular, it was still nice to spend the night camping out under dark skies," says Kevin Palmer of Illinois. " I captured this fireball over the Green River State Wildlife Area at 2:24 am."
The modest display was hardly surprising. The parent comet, 209P/LINEAR, is faint and currently produces only a small amount of dust. Most forecasters acknowledged that there might be less debris in Earth's path than their models suggested.
It is worth noting, and perhaps marveling, that forecasters correctly predicted the onset of a never-before-seen meteor shower. They got the timing almost perfectly correct; only the rates were off. Such a prediction would have beeen impossible only 20 years ago before the development of physics-based dust stream models. In this respect, the May Camelopardalids were a success if not a spectacle.
Realtime Meteor Photo Gallery
MEANWHILE IN THE STRATOSPHERE: As seen from ground level, the May Camelopardalids were a bit of a dud. But what was the shower like in the stratosphere? To find out, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched a helium balloon equipped with a low-light meteor camera. Here they are inflating the balloon and releasing it into the midnight sky above the Sierra Nevadas of central California:
The balloon's 3 hour flight coincided with the predicted peak of the shower. During that time the payload was floating above 99% of Earth's atmosphere for almost an hour. The student's camera had a front row seat for the meteor display, such as it was.
The next step is to recover the camera, which is not as easy as launching it. The payload and its digital cache of photos landed in a remote area of the Sierra Nevada backcountry. Today, My 25th, a student recovery team will enter the Sierra National Forest to retrieve the payload from a forested area near Paradise Peak. Stay tuned for updates.
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
Realtime Mars 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 May. 26, 2014, the network reported 10 fireballs.
( 10 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 26, 2014 there were 1477 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. | 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 |