Special Offer: SAVE 600nok per person. Book a combination aurora borealis chase and scenic day tour during the months of September, October or November 2019 for the special price of 1800 kr. Check Marianne's webpage for details! | | |
GEOMAGNETIC STORM WARNING: A solar wind stream is heading for Earth (see story below) and it could arrive as early as Aug. 31st. NOAA forecasters say there is a 40% chance of G2-class geomagnetic storms, an upgrade from earlier forecasts of a minor G1 event. Auroras could descend to northern-tier US states such as Minnesota, Michigan, Montana, and Washington during Labor Day weekend. Stay tuned. Aurora alerts: SMS Text.
A GIGANTIC JET OVER CHINA: You never know what you might see in the wake of a big storm. On Aug. 25th, Chinese astrophotographer Chao Shen of Shaoxing City went outside to photograph the Milky Way. A typhoon named "White Deer" had passed through the day before, and the storm clouds were parting. "I saw the stars--but that's not all," says Shen. "A Gigantic Jet leaped up right before my eyes!"
Think of them as sprites on steroids: Gigantic Jets are lightning-like discharges that spring from the tops of thunderstorms, reaching all the way to the edge of space. They're enormous and powerful.
"Shen definitely caught a Gigantic Jet," confirms Oscar van der Velde of the Lightning Research Group at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. "It looks like it may have reached as high as 90 km above the ground."
"Gigantic Jets are much more rare than sprites," says van der Velde. "While sprites were discovered in 1989 and have since been photographed by the thousands, it was not until 2001-2002 that Gigantic Jets were first recorded from Puerto Rico and Taiwan." Only dozens of Gigantic Jets have ever been photographed.
Shen says that "the Jet came from a storm about 100 km southwest of me. It was so huge, I was able to see it clearly despite the distance."
Above: The arrow in this weather map points from Chao Shen's camera toward the jet-producing storm.
Observers of sprites may be wondering if Shen really saw this jet. The answer is "yes." Unlike sprites, which flicker so rapidly that they are difficult to see with the unaided eye. Gigantic Jets can lasts for hundreds of milliseconds, long enough for human eyes to register their purple glow.
Gigantic jets are part of a growing menagerie of strange forms that appear above intense thunderstorms, including sprites, elves, trolls, and blue jets. Some researchers believe that cosmic rays help trigger these "transient luminous events" by ionizing the air in and around thunderheads. If so, now is a good time to look for Gigantic Jets, because cosmic rays are nearing a Space Age high. Thank you, Solar Minimum!
Realtime Sprite Photo Gallery
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A CRACK IN EARTH'S MAGNETIC FIELD: There was no geomagnetic storm on Aug. 26th. Auroras appeared anyway. Unexpected by forecasters, a crack opened in Earth's magnetic field, allowing solar wind into our planet's magnetosphere. Alan Dyer photographed the resulting glow from southern Saskatchewan in the Grasslands National Park:
"It was quite photogenic," says Dyer. "To the naked eye, the display was diffuse and pale, but my camera picked up the colors with no trouble." Auroras like these are called "deep sky auroras" because they require some exposure with a camera for full effect.
Photographers, would you like an instant text message when cracks open in Earth's magnetic field? Subscribe to the Pro Plan of Spaceweather Alerts. Your phone will tell you when deep sky auroras are waiting outside.
Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter
THE ANTARES PENDANT: Are you looking for a far-out gift? Consider the Antares Pendant. On Aug. 19, 2019, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched a cosmic ray balloon to the edge of space, 104,002 ft high. This ruby-red crystal necklace went along for the ride:
You can have it for $149.95. The students are selling these white gold-plated pendants to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. The glittering Swarovski crystal has a deep ruby hue inspired by the red-supergiant star Antares in Scorpio. Each one comes with greeting card showing the pendant in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space and back again.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
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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 Aug. 30, 2019, the network reported 75 fireballs.
(72 sporadics, 3 alpha Aurigids)
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 August 30, 2019 there were 1983 potentially hazardous asteroids.
|
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
2019 QQ | 2019-Aug-25 | 10 LD | 12.2 | 32 |
2016 PD1 | 2019-Aug-26 | 11.3 LD | 5.9 | 65 |
2019 QQ3 | 2019-Aug-26 | 0.2 LD | 19.7 | 5 |
2019 QR | 2019-Aug-27 | 11.8 LD | 7.2 | 20 |
2002 JR100 | 2019-Aug-27 | 19.4 LD | 8.4 | 49 |
2019 QS | 2019-Aug-28 | 5.5 LD | 22.5 | 39 |
2019 OU1 | 2019-Aug-28 | 2.7 LD | 13 | 102 |
2019 QV4 | 2019-Aug-29 | 10 LD | 8.6 | 47 |
2019 QR3 | 2019-Aug-30 | 5.7 LD | 11.4 | 13 |
2019 QU4 | 2019-Aug-30 | 4.6 LD | 8.4 | 39 |
2019 QP1 | 2019-Aug-31 | 10.5 LD | 8.9 | 18 |
2019 QD4 | 2019-Aug-31 | 5.9 LD | 22.5 | 23 |
2019 QY5 | 2019-Aug-31 | 10.8 LD | 10.1 | 24 |
2019 QA5 | 2019-Sep-02 | 5.7 LD | 13.5 | 21 |
2019 QX1 | 2019-Sep-02 | 18.9 LD | 16.8 | 30 |
2019 OF2 | 2019-Sep-03 | 18.3 LD | 10.7 | 53 |
2018 DE1 | 2019-Sep-03 | 12.7 LD | 6.6 | 28 |
2019 QX3 | 2019-Sep-04 | 11.2 LD | 17.8 | 32 |
2019 QE1 | 2019-Sep-05 | 13.2 LD | 6.6 | 34 |
2019 GT3 | 2019-Sep-06 | 19.5 LD | 13.6 | 218 |
2019 QZ | 2019-Sep-08 | 15.7 LD | 4.3 | 21 |
2019 QZ3 | 2019-Sep-09 | 9.7 LD | 7.5 | 38 |
2019 QY4 | 2019-Sep-10 | 2.5 LD | 7.8 | 9 |
2010 RM82 | 2019-Sep-13 | 18.2 LD | 14.6 | 23 |
2013 CV83 | 2019-Sep-13 | 16.1 LD | 13.1 | 62 |
504800 | 2019-Sep-14 | 13.9 LD | 14.4 | 155 |
467317 | 2019-Sep-14 | 13.9 LD | 6.4 | 389 |
2019 JF1 | 2019-Sep-16 | 11.2 LD | 4.3 | 62 |
2018 FU1 | 2019-Sep-16 | 18.4 LD | 4.7 | 16 |
2017 SL16 | 2019-Sep-21 | 7.9 LD | 6.5 | 25 |
2017 SM21 | 2019-Sep-21 | 11.5 LD | 9.6 | 20 |
2019 QZ1 | 2019-Sep-22 | 12.5 LD | 8.2 | 77 |
523934 | 2019-Sep-24 | 10.9 LD | 22.3 | 257 |
2019 QY3 | 2019-Sep-26 | 13.9 LD | 8.4 | 39 |
2017 KP27 | 2019-Sep-26 | 6.2 LD | 4.8 | 25 |
2006 QV89 | 2019-Sep-27 | 18.1 LD | 4.1 | 31 |
2018 FK5 | 2019-Oct-01 | 13.3 LD | 10.5 | 8 |
2018 LG4 | 2019-Oct-02 | 13.8 LD | 8.1 | 12 |
2017 TJ4 | 2019-Oct-05 | 13.5 LD | 8.9 | 32 |
162082 | 2019-Oct-25 | 16.2 LD | 11.2 | 589 |
2017 TG5 | 2019-Oct-25 | 14.4 LD | 11.9 | 34 |
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 |
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