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SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids
 
Solar wind
speed: 288.2 km/sec
density: 4.5 protons/cm3
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 2346 UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: A8
2119 UT Dec31
24-hr: A9
1300 UT Dec31
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 2300 UT
Daily Sun: 31 Dec 19
The sun is blank--no sunspots. Credit: SDO/HMI

Sunspot number: 0
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 31 Dec 2019

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 4 days
2019 total: 281 days (77%)
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 31 Dec 2019


Thermosphere Climate Index
today: 2.63
x1010 W Cold
Max: 49.4
x1010 W Hot (10/1957)
Min: 2.05
x1010 W Cold (02/2009)
explanation | more data: gfx, txt
Updated 31 Dec
2019

The Radio Sun
10.7 cm flux: 72 sfu
explanation | more data
Updated 31 Dec 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: +9.8% High
7-day change: -0.0%
Max: +11.7% Very High
(12/2009)
Min: -32.1% Very Low (06/1991)
explanation | more data
Updated 31 Dec 2019 @ 1700 UT

Current Auroral Oval:
Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica
Credit: NOAA/Ovation
Planetary K-index
Now: Kp= 1 quiet
24-hr max: Kp= 2
quiet
explanation | more data
Interplanetary Mag. Field
Btotal: 1.6 nT
Bz: -0.6 nT south
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 2346 UT
Coronal Holes: 31 Dec 19

Solar wind flowing from this minor coronal hole could reach Earth on Jan 1st or 2nd, sparking the first auroras of 2020.
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: 12-30-2019 18:55:02 UT
SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts
Updated at: 2019 Dec 30 2235 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 Dec 30 2235 UTC
Mid-latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
15 %
15 %
MINOR
05 %
05 %
SEVERE
01 %
01 %
High latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
15 %
15 %
MINOR
25 %
25 %
SEVERE
20 %
20 %
 
Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2019
What's up in space
       
 

Marianne’s Arctic tours: Operating in small groups of 7 to 14 persons--all needs supplied for safety, comfort and pleasure. Night & day photography or non-photographic landscape - wildlife tours. Click for details!

 

CENTURY-CLASS SOLAR MINIMUM: On the sun, 2019 is ending the same way it began--without sunspots. The sun has been blank for 281 days this year. To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go all the way back to 1913 (311 days). This means we are experiencing a century-class Solar Minimum. Forecasters expect these low sunspot counts to continue in 2020. Happy New Year! Aurora alerts: SMS Text.

POLAR STRATOSPHERIC CLOUDS, CONTINUED: A spectacular display of polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) that began two days ago is still going strong around the Arctic Circle. This picture, taken on Dec. 31st by Per-Anders Gustavsson in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden, shows why some onlookers mistake them for daytime auroras:

"The colors were amazing," says Gustavsson, who drives a tour bus for Visit Abisko. "I was driving by the world-famous Ice Hotel when we saw the clouds. We just had to stop for pictures."

"I've seen a lot of beautiful things during my years in the Arctic," he adds. "This was easily one of the greatest displays I have ever seen."

Polar stratospheric clouds are newsworthy because normally the stratosphere has no clouds at all. The stratosphere is arid and almost always transparent. Only when the temperature drops to a staggeringly cold -85C can sparse water molecules assemble themselves into icy stratospheric clouds. PSCs are far more rare than auroras.

The clouds are even visible at night, as shown in this Dec. 31st photo taken by Fredrik Broms in Kvaløya, Norway:

"Better than New Year fireworks – by far!" says Broms. "What an amazing way to end 2019."

"This really is a rare event," says Chad Blakley, who runs the Lights over Lapland aurora tour service in Abisko, Sweden. "Local villagers in both Abisko and Kiruna who are more than 70 years old confirmed they have never seen anything of the size, scale, or intensity. At one point I would say that close to 25% of the sky was filled with the clouds. PSCs we have seen in previous winters have been closer to 1% or 2%."

Polar stratospheric clouds are intensely colorful because they are made of a special type of ice. High-altitude sunlight shining through microscopic crystals only ~10µm across produce a bright iridescent glow unlike the lesser iridescence of ordinary tropospheric clouds.

Stay tuned for updates as the outbreak continues.

Realtime Spaceweather Photo Gallery
Free:
Spaceweather.com Newsletter

THE STRATOSPHERIC CLOUD PENDANT: The most beautiful clouds on Earth are located in the stratosphere: Polar Stratospheric Clouds. Their extraordinary colors inspired this authentic Swarovski pendant--and it has been to the stratosphere! On Nov. 2, 2019, it hitched a ride 109,580 feet high on board an Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray balloon:

You can have it for $169.95. The students are selling Stratospheric Cloud Pendants to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each heart-shaped pendant comes with a card showing it floating through the stratosphere like a real cloud, 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 Aurora Photo Gallery
Free:
Spaceweather.com Newsletter

  All Sky Fireball Network
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. 31, 2019, the network reported 10 fireballs.
(9 sporadics, 1 Leonis Minorid)

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]

  Near Earth Asteroids
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 31, 2019 there were 2018 potentially hazardous asteroids.
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:
Asteroid
Date(UT)
Miss Distance
Velocity (km/s)
Diameter (m)
310442
2019-Dec-26
19 LD
12.3
372
2019 YX2
2019-Dec-27
12.7 LD
5.5
19
2019 YQ
2019-Dec-28
13.6 LD
3.4
9
2019 YS2
2019-Dec-29
2.2 LD
5.8
13
2019 YM3
2019-Dec-29
17.9 LD
11.4
85
2019 YX
2019-Dec-29
18.5 LD
5.9
33
2019 YT2
2019-Dec-30
14.2 LD
8.4
39
2019 YW1
2019-Dec-30
13.2 LD
19.7
63
2019 YR3
2019-Dec-30
3.9 LD
26.1
45
2019 YL3
2019-Dec-30
1.7 LD
10
10
2019 YS3
2019-Dec-30
11.5 LD
7
41
2019 WR4
2019-Dec-31
11.7 LD
4.2
21
2019 YK
2020-Jan-01
14.1 LD
7.3
48
2019 YH2
2020-Jan-02
7.4 LD
14.3
85
2019 AE3
2020-Jan-02
4.9 LD
8.2
13
2019 YB4
2020-Jan-04
3.3 LD
6.1
16
2019 YT3
2020-Jan-07
13.2 LD
7.4
27
2019 YV
2020-Jan-10
17.3 LD
4.5
65
2019 YF4
2020-Jan-10
3.7 LD
2.9
15
2019 UO
2020-Jan-10
11.8 LD
9.4
332
2019 WC5
2020-Jan-11
6.4 LD
13
108
2011 EP51
2020-Jan-15
19.6 LD
7.1
32
2017 RZ15
2020-Jan-15
12.1 LD
7.4
14
2019 YD3
2020-Jan-16
6.9 LD
4.8
23
2019 YG1
2020-Jan-17
17.5 LD
4.5
31
2019 YQ3
2020-Jan-17
18.4 LD
3.1
19
2009 BH2
2020-Jan-18
14.6 LD
17.9
118
2013 DU
2020-Jan-20
14.9 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
2018 AL12
2020-Jan-30
18.2 LD
17.7
39
2018 BU1
2020-Feb-02
19.4 LD
10
41
163373
2020-Feb-15
15.1 LD
15.2
589
2018 CW2
2020-Feb-17
6 LD
10.2
28
2019 BE5
2020-Feb-20
13.9 LD
14.8
34
2011 DR
2020-Feb-23
14.7 LD
5.8
25
2016 CO246
2020-Feb-23
18.4 LD
5.9
23
2012 DS30
2020-Feb-26
12.3 LD
5.4
22
2015 BK509
2020-Feb-28
18.3 LD
12.5
118
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.

  Essential web links
NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center
  The official U.S. government space weather bureau
Atmospheric Optics
  The first place to look for information about sundogs, pillars, rainbows and related phenomena.
Solar Dynamics Observatory
  Researchers call it a "Hubble for the sun." SDO is the most advanced solar observatory ever.
STEREO
  3D views of the sun from NASA's Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory
Solar and Heliospheric Observatory
  Realtime and archival images of the Sun from SOHO.
Daily Sunspot Summaries
  from the NOAA Space Environment Center
NOAA 27-Day Space Weather Forecasts
  fun to read, but should be taken with a grain of salt! Forecasts looking ahead more than a few days are often wrong.
Aurora 30 min forecast
  from the NOAA Space Environment Center
Heliophysics
  the underlying science of space weather

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