Marianne's Heaven On Earth Aurora Chaser Tours Chasethelighttours.co.uk invites you to join them in their quest to find and photograph the Aurora Borealis. Experience the winter wonderland in the Tromsø Area. | | | WAITING FOR THE CME (UPDATED): A CME hurled toward Earth on Dec. 28th by an explosion in the magnetic canopy of sunspot AR2473 is still en route. Forecasters expect the storm cloud to arrive during the late hours of Dec. 30th. According to NOAA, there is a 90% chance of geomagnetic activity in the wake of the CME's impact. New Year's Eve auroras are in the offing. Aurora alerts: text or voice DECAYING SUNSPOT: Big sunspot AR2473, the source of the incoming CME, is no longer as potent as it was earlier this week. Philippe Tosi of Nîmes, France, photographed the sunspot's decaying core on Dec. 30th: Tosi inserted a picture of Earth for scale. Even in decay, the sunspot is an awesome thing, with dark condensations and filaments of magnetism that dwarf the largest continents of our planet. Terrifying appearances notwithstanding, the sunspot's overall magnetic field has decayed and no longer poses a threat for very strong flares. A stretch of quiet is in the offing. Aurora alerts: text or voice Realtime Spaceweather Photo Gallery POLAR STRATOSPHERIC CLOUDS: Earth's stratosphere is *not* a cloudy place. Nevertheless, on rare occasions during the coldest weeks of northern winter, tiny crystals of ice in the stratosphere gather themselves into swarms called "PSCs"--polar stratospheric clouds. On Dec. 29th, Frank Olsen photographed a rare PSC floating over Sortland, Norway: "The pastel-colored clouds appeared alongside some faint green auroras," says Olsen. "I have never seen PSCs and auroras together before." Also known as "nacreous" or "mother of pearl" clouds, PSCs form in the lower stratosphere when temperatures drop to around minus 85ºC. That's how cold it has to be for ice to crystalize in the dry stratosphere. "I took the picture around 6 PM, long after sunset," continues Olsen. "This makes me wonder if the rising moon, just below the horizon, is what illuminated the PSCs." High-altitude sunlight--or, in this case, moonlight--shining through tiny ice particles ~10µm across produce the characteristic bright iridescent colors of PSCs. "Polar stratospheric clouds far outshine and have much more vivid colours than ordinary iridescent clouds, which are very much poor relations and seen frequently all over the world," writes atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley. "Once seen they are never forgotten." Realtime PSC Photo Gallery ARMY OF GREEN MEN -- IN SPACE: On Dec. 20th, Spaceweather.com and the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched their weekly helium balloon to measure cosmic radiation in Earth's atmosphere. This time, there were 56 hitchikers--a platoon of green army men: Their mission: to raise awareness of spinal cord injuries. #QuaidsArmy sponsored the flight. On September 20th, 2013, twenty-four year old Quaid Mobus of Warren NJ was in a near fatal ATV accident the night before his sister's wedding. Quaid was left paralyzed, requiring extensive lifelong medical attention. Since then, the Army of Green Men have been traveling far and wide to support Quaid and others like him. Dec. 20th marked their first trip to the stratosphere. Learn more at http://www.armyofgreenmen.com/ Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery Realtime Meteor 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 Dec. 30, 2015, the network reported 26 fireballs. (26 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 December 30, 2015 there were 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 | Situation Report -- Oct. 30, 2015 | Stratospheric Radiation (+37o N) | Cosmic ray levels are elevated (+6.1% above the Space Age median). The trend is flat. Cosmic ray levels have increased +0% in the past month. | Sept. 06: 4.14 uSv/hr (414 uRad/hr) | Sept. 12: 4.09 uSv/hr (409 uRad/hr) | Sept. 23: 4.12 uSv/hr (412 uRad/hr) | Sept. 25: 4.16 uSv/hr (416 uRad/hr) | Sept. 27: 4.13 uSv/hr (413 uRad/hr) | Oct. 11: 4.02 uSv/hr (402 uRad/hr) | Oct. 22: 4.11 uSv/hr (411 uRad/hr) | These measurements are based on regular space weather balloon flights: learn more. 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. Our measurements show that someone flying back and forth across the continental USA, just once, can absorb as much ionizing radiation as 2 to 5 dental X-rays. Here is the data from our latest flight, Oct. 22nd: Radiation levels peak at the entrance to the stratosphere in a broad region called the "Pfotzer Maximum." This peak is named after physicist George Pfotzer who discovered it using balloons and Geiger tubes in the 1930s. Radiation levels there are more than 80x sea level. Note that the bottom of the Pfotzer Maximim is near 55,000 ft. This means that some high-flying aircraft are not far from the zone of maximum radiation. Indeed, according to the Oct 22th measurements, a plane flying at 45,000 feet is exposed to 2.79 uSv/hr. At that rate, a passenger would absorb about one dental X-ray's worth of radiation in about 5 hours. 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 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 | | Web-based high school science course with free enrollment | |