| | Solar wind speed: 355.0 km/sec density: 11.8 protons/cm3 explanation | more data Updated: Today at 2347 UT X-ray Solar Flares 6-hr max: A8 1714 UT Nov28 24-hr: A8 1121 UT Nov28 explanation | more data Updated: Today at: 2300 UT Daily Sun: 28 Nov 19 The sun is blank--no sunspots. Credit: SDO/HMI Sunspot number: 0 What is the sunspot number? Updated 28 Nov 2019 Spotless Days Current Stretch: 15 days 2019 total: 251 days (76%) 2018 total: 221 days (61%) 2017 total: 104 days (28%) 2016 total: 32 days (9%) 2015 total: 0 days (0%) 2014 total: 1 day (<1%) 2013 total: 0 days (0%) 2012 total: 0 days (0%) 2011 total: 2 days (<1%) 2010 total: 51 days (14%) 2009 total: 260 days (71%) 2008 total: 268 days (73%) 2007 total: 152 days (42%) 2006 total: 70 days (19%) Updated 28 Nov 2019 Thermosphere Climate Index today: 3.68x1010 W Cold Max: 49.4x1010 W Hot (10/1957) Min: 2.05x1010 W Cold (02/2009) explanation | more data: gfx, txt Updated 28 Nov 2019 The Radio Sun 10.7 cm flux: 72 sfu explanation | more data Updated 28 Nov 2019 Cosmic Rays Solar minimum is underway. The sun's magnetic field is weak, allowing extra cosmic rays into the solar system. Neutron counts from the University of Oulu's Sodankyla Geophysical Observatory show that cosmic rays reaching Earth in 2019 are near a Space Age peak. Oulu Neutron Counts Percentages of the Space Age average: today: +9.7% High 7-day change: +0.2% Max: +11.7% Very High (12/2009) Min: -32.1% Very Low (06/1991) explanation | more data Updated 28 Nov 2019 @ 0700 UT Since 2015, Earth to Sky cosmic ray balloons launched weekly from California have also detected significant increases in atmospheric radiation. Dose rates reported below are in the stratosphere at approx. 100,000 ft. California Cosmic Ray Balloons Monitoring started in March 2015 now: 4.46 uGy/hr High change since 2015: +18% Max: 4.79 uGy/hr High (10/2019) Min: 3.80 uGy/hr Low (05/2015) explanation | more data Updated 16 Nov 2019 Current Auroral Oval: Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica Credit: NOAA/Ovation Planetary K-index Now: Kp= 2 quiet 24-hr max: Kp= 2 quiet explanation | more data Interplanetary Mag. Field Btotal: 4.4 nT Bz: 4.2 nT north more data: ACE, DSCOVR Updated: Today at 2346 UT Coronal Holes: 28 Nov 19 Solar wind flowing from this southern coronal hole could graze Earth's magnetic field on Nov. 28th, but it is not expected to spark a full-fledged geomagnetic storm. Credit: SDO/AIA Noctilucent Clouds The southern hemisphere season for noctilucent clouds began on Nov. 15th--the earliest start in recorded history. Check here for daily images from NASA's AIM spacecraft. Switch view: Europe, USA, Asia, Polar Updated at: 11-28-2019 15:55:03 UT SPACE WEATHER NOAA Forecasts | | Updated at: 2019 Nov 28 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: 2019 Nov 28 2200 UTC Mid-latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 10 % | 10 % | MINOR | 01 % | 01 % | SEVERE | 01 % | 01 % | High latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 15 % | 15 % | MINOR | 15 % | 15 % | SEVERE | 10 % | 10 % | | | | | | | | | | | | Solar minimum is here - but even now strangely beautiful auroras are dancing around the poles. Deep inside the Arctic Circle, the expert guides of Aurora Holidays in Utsjoki, Finland, can help you chase them. Book now! | | | THANKSGIVING SKY SHOW: When the sun goes down tonight, step outside and look southwest. A whisper-thin crescent Moon is passing by Venus in the sunset sky. Jupiter is there, too, if you know where to look. Happy Thanksgiving! VENUS, JUPITER, AND A NORTH KOREAN ROCKET: North Korea kicked off the American Thanksgiving holiday with an unexpected rocket launch. Two short-range projectiles were launched from Ryonpo around 5 p.m. local time, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. Shortly thereafter, Filipp Romanov of Yuzhno-Morskoy, Russia, went outside to see the sunset and noticed rocket exhaust meandering among the planets: "I took this picture from the coast of the Sea of Japan (in my small homeland, in Yuzhno-Morskoy, near Nakhodka, Russia)," says the 22-year old amateur astronomer. "At the time I did not know anything about the launch of the rocket, but noticed the trail in my photographs. As the sky darkened the exhaust became more visible." Analysts familiar with stalled denuclearization talks between the USA and North Korea believe this could be the start of a busy campaign of launches to end 2019--a gambit by North Korea to tilt negotiations in its favor. Stay tuned for more exhaust? Realtime Spaceweather Photo Gallery Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter WALKING THE DOG IN NORWAY: On Nov. 27th, a minor stream of solar wind brushed Earth's magnetic field. In Tromsø, Norway, minor is often enough. "While out walking the dog, this amazing display appeared in the skies near my home," reports aurora tour guide Marianne Bergli. "Kara is a trained rescue dog, trained by my daughter Sara, and when Kara sees aurora and snow she is very very happy indeed," says Bergli. In that case, Tromsø is the perfect place for Kara. She's living beneath Earth's persistent auroral oval. A gentle rain of solar wind electrons, guided to Earth by our planet's curved magnetic field creates a polar ring of Northern Lights that intersects the latitude of Tromsø. Even the gentlest stream of solar wind can spark a howling-good display. Aurora alerts: SMS Text. ANNIE JUMP CANNON IN THE STRATOSPHERE: Pioneering astronomer Annie Jump Cannon invented the modern system of stellar classification. To honor her, the US Mint has created a $1 American Innovation coin featuring Cannon's silhouette and a spray of stars. On Nov. 11th, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus flew some to the stratosphere, 111,221 feet above the Sierra Nevada mountains of central California: You can have a roll of 25 for $149.95. The students are selling the coins to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each roll contains 25 one dollar coins with uncirculated finishes. Cannon is shown on one side and the Statue of Liberty on the other. Individual coins make great Christmas stocking stuffers for young scientists--or give the whole roll as a special gift. Your order comes with a greeting card showing the coins in flight. Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store All sales support hands-on STEM education Realtime Aurora 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 Nov. 28, 2019, the network reported 24 fireballs. (20 sporadics, 3 Nov. omega Orionids, 1 Quadrantid) 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 28, 2019 there were 2018 potentially hazardous asteroids. | Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) | 2019 WG2 | 2019-Nov-23 | 0.5 LD | 14.9 | 36 | 2019 WK2 | 2019-Nov-23 | 2.7 LD | 14.6 | 28 | 2019 WU1 | 2019-Nov-23 | 8.7 LD | 9.3 | 19 | 2008 EA9 | 2019-Nov-23 | 10.5 LD | 2.2 | 10 | 2019 WU | 2019-Nov-24 | 5.7 LD | 11.4 | 13 | 2019 VF1 | 2019-Nov-25 | 13.3 LD | 17.2 | 88 | 2019 WH2 | 2019-Dec-01 | 3.4 LD | 10.2 | 14 | 2019 WD3 | 2019-Dec-01 | 12.6 LD | 8.3 | 34 | 2019 WN1 | 2019-Dec-01 | 4.3 LD | 10.1 | 18 | 2017 AP4 | 2019-Dec-03 | 8.5 LD | 7.5 | 15 | 2019 WW | 2019-Dec-05 | 8.6 LD | 9.8 | 41 | 2018 XW2 | 2019-Dec-07 | 17.4 LD | 13 | 28 | 2019 VH5 | 2019-Dec-08 | 18 LD | 9.8 | 73 | 2019 WO2 | 2019-Dec-09 | 4.8 LD | 7.6 | 33 | 216258 | 2019-Dec-20 | 15.3 LD | 11.8 | 324 | 2013 XY20 | 2019-Dec-21 | 18.3 LD | 1.9 | 28 | 2017 XQ60 | 2019-Dec-22 | 11 LD | 15.6 | 47 | 310442 | 2019-Dec-26 | 19 LD | 12.3 | 372 | 2019 AE3 | 2020-Jan-02 | 4.9 LD | 8.2 | 13 | 2019 UO | 2020-Jan-10 | 11.8 LD | 9.4 | 367 | 2011 EP51 | 2020-Jan-15 | 19.6 LD | 7.1 | 32 | 2017 RZ15 | 2020-Jan-15 | 12.1 LD | 7.4 | 14 | 2009 BH2 | 2020-Jan-18 | 14.6 LD | 17.9 | 118 | 2013 DU | 2020-Jan-20 | 15.3 LD | 6.4 | 59 | 2019 TF2 | 2020-Jan-23 | 16.2 LD | 1.6 | 18 | 2018 BM5 | 2020-Jan-23 | 13.1 LD | 8.6 | 12 | 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 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. 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 and easy for all. | | 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. | |