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THAT SUPER-BRIGHT RED STAR ... IT'S MARS: Today, Oct. 6th, Mars is having a close encounter with Earth. It won't pass this close (62 million km) again until Sept. 2035. The Red Planet rises in the east at sunset, shining almost three times brighter than Sirius, and stays up all night long. The view through a backyard telescope might remind you of Hubble. Don't miss it! Browse: Sky Map, Mars Photo Gallery.
AURORA SURPRISE: Auroras were not in the forecast for Oct. 5th. "We headed out with a small tour group with rather low expectations," says Markus Varik of Tromsø Norway. "Little did we know, we were about to get completely blown away." This is what they saw:
"The sky was filled with pinks, ripples, waves, dragons, angels, jellyfish, and more," says Varik. "Amazing evening and it lasted for at least a hour straight."
What happened? The forecast did not anticipate a crack in Earth's magnetic field. In the jargon of forecasters "BsubZ tipped south," opening a fissure through which solar wind flowed. The result was an aurora surprise.
Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
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RADIO SIGNALS FROM MARS: How close is Mars? Close enough for radio reception. On Oct. 4th, amateur radio operator Scott Tilley picked up a carrier wave from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) circling the Red Planet. Turn up the volume and listen to the Martian Doppler shift:
Tilley is a leader in the field of satellite radio. Dead satellites, zombie satellites, spy satellites: He routinely finds and tracks them. "But this was a first for me," he says. "A satellite around Mars!"
It's not easy picking up radio signals from distant planets. NASA does it using the giant antennas of the Deep Space Network. Tilley uses a modest 60 cm dish in his backyard in Roberts Creek, BC. This week's close encounter with Mars set the stage for his detection.
"MRO's signal is weak, but it is one of the louder signals in Mars orbit," says Tilley. "The spacecraft has a large dish antenna it uses as a relay for other Mars missions. With the proximity of Mars these days, it was the perfect time to try."
Above: Scott Tilley's backyard dish antenna in Roberts Creek, BC
The signal Tilley picked up is a simple X-band carrier wave containing no data or telemetry. "Its purpose is to allow for Doppler tracking," he explains. "The rapid change in pitch of the signal is caused by the relative motion of the satellite and the observer. Using the Doppler shift, I was able to calculate the period and semi-major axis of MRO's orbit. MRO was about 274 km over Mars at the time of my observation, a result confirmed by JPL Horizons."
Now that Tilley has detected one Martian spacecraft, he's eager for more. "I'm improving my station to monitor objects in deep space," he says. "Mars is a busy place and I'm sure it will produce many more interesting observations during this close encounter." Stay tuned.
Realtime Mars Photo Gallery
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THE PINK AURORA PEARL: Inspired by the color of rare pink auroras, Spaceweather.com and the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched a pink pearl to the stratosphere on Sept. 25th. It hitched a ride onboard the students' cosmic ray balloon, and reached an altitude 112,205 feet above the Sierra Nevada mountains of central California:
You can have it for $249.95. The students are selling space pearls to support their cosmic ray monitoring program. Measuring 9 mm in diameter, the Aurora Pearl is mounted on a 925 sterling silver infinity twist and suspended on a matching 17 inch long sterling silver chain. Each pearl comes with a greeting card showing the pendant in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space.
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 Oct. 6, 2020, the network reported 18 fireballs.
(18 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 October 6, 2020 there were 2037 potentially hazardous asteroids.
 |
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: | Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
| 2020 SM4 | 2020-Oct-01 | 8.2 LD | 7.6 | 10 |
| 2020 SU5 | 2020-Oct-01 | 5.4 LD | 9.4 | 16 |
| 2020 RJ3 | 2020-Oct-01 | 15.3 LD | 15.5 | 72 |
| 2020 TA | 2020-Oct-01 | 0.6 LD | 11.9 | 28 |
| 2020 SW6 | 2020-Oct-01 | 2.8 LD | 2.1 | 6 |
| 2020 SN6 | 2020-Oct-01 | 2.5 LD | 5.8 | 6 |
| 2001 GP2 | 2020-Oct-01 | 6.1 LD | 2.2 | 15 |
| 2020 RZ3 | 2020-Oct-02 | 15.6 LD | 13.3 | 37 |
| 2020 SY3 | 2020-Oct-03 | 16.6 LD | 7.8 | 20 |
| 2010 UC | 2020-Oct-04 | 14.6 LD | 3.2 | 12 |
| 2020 RV2 | 2020-Oct-05 | 14.8 LD | 4.2 | 26 |
| 2020 RR2 | 2020-Oct-06 | 16.3 LD | 4.1 | 29 |
| 2020 RK2 | 2020-Oct-07 | 10 LD | 6.7 | 49 |
| 2020 TB | 2020-Oct-07 | 11.5 LD | 7.8 | 41 |
| 2019 SB6 | 2020-Oct-07 | 11.9 LD | 7.6 | 16 |
| 2020 SR6 | 2020-Oct-08 | 7.1 LD | 5.3 | 26 |
| 2020 SX3 | 2020-Oct-08 | 4.4 LD | 10.9 | 51 |
| 2020 RO1 | 2020-Oct-09 | 17.4 LD | 3.2 | 30 |
| 2018 GD2 | 2020-Oct-13 | 16.4 LD | 6.7 | 5 |
| 2020 RM6 | 2020-Oct-15 | 13 LD | 7.7 | 38 |
| 2017 UH5 | 2020-Oct-20 | 8.9 LD | 5.9 | 18 |
| 2020 SG3 | 2020-Oct-20 | 19.5 LD | 5.3 | 34 |
| 2018 VG | 2020-Oct-21 | 15.1 LD | 6.7 | 12 |
| 2017 TK6 | 2020-Oct-24 | 17.3 LD | 12.4 | 41 |
| 2008 GM2 | 2020-Oct-25 | 17.7 LD | 3.6 | 8 |
| 2020 QD5 | 2020-Oct-26 | 10.1 LD | 8.6 | 80 |
| 2020 OK5 | 2020-Oct-29 | 6.4 LD | 1.3 | 28 |
| 2018 VP1 | 2020-Nov-02 | 1.1 LD | 9.7 | 2 |
| 2020 HF4 | 2020-Nov-03 | 16.2 LD | 2.9 | 11 |
| 2010 JL88 | 2020-Nov-05 | 10.5 LD | 15.7 | 16 |
| 2019 XS | 2020-Nov-07 | 15.4 LD | 9.4 | 51 |
| 2018 VS4 | 2020-Nov-09 | 14.9 LD | 10.1 | 25 |
| 2020 ST1 | 2020-Nov-14 | 19.1 LD | 8.1 | 162 |
| 2019 VL5 | 2020-Nov-15 | 8.5 LD | 8.2 | 23 |
| 2017 WJ16 | 2020-Nov-23 | 5 LD | 4.8 | 49 |
| 2018 RQ4 | 2020-Nov-26 | 8.1 LD | 7.4 | 15 |
| 2020 KZ2 | 2020-Nov-28 | 5.7 LD | 3.9 | 10 |
| 153201 | 2020-Nov-29 | 11.2 LD | 25.1 | 490 |
| 2020 SO | 2020-Dec-01 | 0.1 LD | 3.9 | 8 |
| 2019 XH2 | 2020-Dec-02 | 16.1 LD | 6.4 | 6 |
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 Regener-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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