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UPDATED CME FORECAST: A partial halo CME that left the sun on July 8th (movie) might not hit Earth after all. A new analysis by NOAA suggests a near miss on July 11th instead of the hoped-for glancing blow. Near misses can still spark geomagnetic activity, but this updated forecast lowers the odds of a full-fledged geomagnetic storm. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text.
THE STARFISH PRIME GEOMAGNETIC STORM: Sixty years ago, one of the biggest geomagnetic storms of the Space Age struck Earth. It didn't come from the sun.
"We made it ourselves," recalls Clive Dyer of the University of Surrey Space Centre in Guildford UK. "It was the first anthropogenic space weather event."
On July 9, 1962, the US military detonated a thermonuclear warhead 250 miles above the Pacific Ocean--a test called "Starfish Prime." What happened next surprised everyone. Witnesses from Hawaii to New Zealand reported auroras overhead, magnificent midnight "rainbow stripes" that tropical sky watchers had never seen before. Radios fell silent, then suddenly became noisy as streetlights went dark in Honolulu.
'Nuclear auroras' viewed from Honolulu (left) and a surveillance aircraft (right) on July 9, 1962.
Essentially, Starfish Prime created an artificial solar storm complete with auroras, geomagnetic activity, and blackouts. Much of the chaos that night was caused by the electromagnetic pulse (EMP)--a ferocious burst of radiation that ionized the upper atmosphere. Ionized air over the Pacific pinned down Earth's magnetic field, then let it go again when the ionization subsided. The rebound created a manmade geomagnetic storm for hundreds of miles around the blast zone.
"The explosion led to the early demise of all the spacecraft in orbit at the time," says Dyer. "These included Ariel-1, the UK's first spacecraft, and Telstar-1, a US communications satellite which had the bad luck to be launched the very next day."
Normally, geomagnetic storms bring down satellites via orbital decay. The upper atmosphere heats up and expands to the point where it can pull satellites down toward Earth. Starfish Prime was different.
"The explosion filled Earth's magnetosphere with energetic electrons, adding them to our planet's natural radiation belts," explains Dyer. These artificial electrons hit satellites hard, degrading their electronics and solar arrays.
Credit: R.E. Fischell, “ANNA-1B Solar Cell Damage Experiment,” Transcript of the Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, April 10, 1963, Washington DC.
"Ariel-1 became almost unusable after only 4 days due to power degradation and tape recorder failure," recalls Dyer. "The Telstar satellite lasted until November 1962 when its command decoder failed. It still managed to provide the first transatlantic TV feed, synchronize UK/US time to 1 microsecond and inspired the Tornado's rock classic 'Telstar,' which used recordings of a flushing toilet played backwards."
The flux of energetic electrons trapped in Earth's magnetosphere remained high for years, hammering satellites deep into the 1960s.
Dyer, who is widely known for his studies of extreme space weather, was still in school when the explosion occured. It set the stage for his entire career. "Starfish Prime," he says, "was a defining event."
An expanded and sharable version of this story may be found here.
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"I LOVE YOU MORE" OPAL: Nothing says "I love you" like jewelry from space. On June 3, 2022, this sterling silver opal pendant hitched a ride on an Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray research balloon. At the apex of the flight it floated 101,326 feet above the Sierra Nevada mountains of central California:
You can have it for $142.95. The opal's infinity wrap is engraved with "I Love You More." It's the perfect birthday, anniversary or (never too early!) Christmas gift for that special someone who loves space. Each pendant comes with a greeting card showing the pendant in flight and telling the story of its trip to the stratosphere and back.
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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 July 10, 2022, the network reported 5 fireballs.
(5 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 July 10, 2022 there were 2279 potentially hazardous asteroids.
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Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: | Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
| 2022 NV | 2022-Jul-05 | 19.4 LD | 15.6 | 41 |
| 2022 MY | 2022-Jul-05 | 13 LD | 7.2 | 28 |
| 2022 NZ | 2022-Jul-05 | 7.9 LD | 5.2 | 20 |
| 2021 EL4 | 2022-Jul-05 | 19.9 LD | 9.5 | 25 |
| 2022 NO | 2022-Jul-06 | 13.2 LD | 10.9 | 31 |
| 2022 NE | 2022-Jul-06 | 0.4 LD | 10.7 | 7 |
| 2022 NE1 | 2022-Jul-06 | 1.6 LD | 13.7 | 20 |
| 2022 NQ | 2022-Jul-07 | 15.6 LD | 8.5 | 25 |
| 2022 NF | 2022-Jul-07 | 0.2 LD | 11.4 | 7 |
| 2022 NR | 2022-Jul-10 | 1 LD | 8.3 | 25 |
| 2022 NS | 2022-Jul-10 | 3.4 LD | 11.9 | 15 |
| 2019 NW5 | 2022-Jul-10 | 14.9 LD | 16 | 62 |
| 2022 NC1 | 2022-Jul-11 | 16.9 LD | 9 | 32 |
| 2022 NH | 2022-Jul-11 | 3.9 LD | 10.1 | 21 |
| 2015 OQ21 | 2022-Jul-12 | 18.3 LD | 6.6 | 9 |
| 2022 NF1 | 2022-Jul-12 | 5.1 LD | 12.8 | 34 |
| 2022 NX | 2022-Jul-12 | 11.5 LD | 4.6 | 17 |
| 2022 NY | 2022-Jul-14 | 7.2 LD | 8.2 | 26 |
| 2022 NC | 2022-Jul-14 | 7.6 LD | 7.5 | 33 |
| 2022 NJ | 2022-Jul-15 | 3.4 LD | 8.9 | 23 |
| 2022 LR1 | 2022-Jul-16 | 9.3 LD | 4.7 | 42 |
| 2022 KY4 | 2022-Jul-17 | 15.9 LD | 7.6 | 91 |
| 2021 OT | 2022-Jul-17 | 16.5 LD | 11.2 | 20 |
| 349068 | 2022-Jul-19 | 17.6 LD | 22.9 | 756 |
| 2017 RX2 | 2022-Jul-24 | 17.2 LD | 14.2 | 17 |
| 2022 ML3 | 2022-Jul-26 | 7.6 LD | 1.5 | 13 |
| 2016 CZ31 | 2022-Jul-29 | 7 LD | 15.6 | 129 |
| 531944 | 2022-Jul-30 | 18.2 LD | 5.9 | 192 |
| 2020 PP1 | 2022-Aug-01 | 13.1 LD | 3.7 | 17 |
| 2020 PN1 | 2022-Aug-03 | 9.7 LD | 4.6 | 29 |
| 2015 FF | 2022-Aug-12 | 11.2 LD | 9.2 | 17 |
| 2019 AV13 | 2022-Aug-22 | 19.1 LD | 8.8 | 135 |
| 2020 QW3 | 2022-Aug-22 | 14.1 LD | 18.1 | 30 |
| 2015 QH3 | 2022-Aug-22 | 5.6 LD | 7 | 14 |
| 2017 BU | 2022-Aug-29 | 15.8 LD | 7 | 32 |
| 2021 CQ5 | 2022-Sep-01 | 8.7 LD | 13.5 | 7 |
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 |
SPACE WEATHER BALLOON DATA: Almost 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 sensors that detect secondary cosmic rays, a form of radiation from space that can penetrate all the way down to Earth's surface. Our monitoring program has been underway without interruption for 7 years, resulting in a unique dataset of in situ atmospheric measurements.
Latest results (Nov. 2021): Our balloons have just measured a sudden drop in atmospheric radiation. It happened during the strong geomagnetic storms of Nov. 3-4, 2021. Here are the data:
This is called a "Forbush decrease," named after American physicist Scott Forbush who studied cosmic rays in the early 20th century. It happens when a CME from the sun sweeps past Earth and literally pushes cosmic rays away from our planet. Radiation from deep space that would normally pepper Earth's upper atmosphere is briefly wiped out.
We have measured Forbush decreases before. For example, here's one from Sept. 2014. The Forbush Decrease of Nov. 3-4, 2021, was the deepest in the history of our 7-year atmospheric monitoring program. Radiation levels in the stratosphere over California dropped nearly 20%, more than doubling the previous record from our dataset.
En route to the stratosphere, our sensors also pass through aviation altitudes, so we can sample radiation where planes fly. This plot shows how the Forbush decrease was restricted to the stratosphere; it did not affect lower levels of the atmosphere:
The dose rates shown above are expressed 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 higher you fly, the more radiation you will absorb.
.Who cares? Cosmic rays are a surprisingly "down to Earth" form of space weather. They can seed clouds, trigger lightning, and penetrate commercial airplanes. According to a study from the Harvard T.H. Chan school of public health, crews of aircraft have higher rates of cancer than the general population. The researchers listed cosmic rays, irregular sleep habits, and chemical contaminants as leading risk factors. Somewhat more controversial studies (#1, #2, #3, #4) link cosmic rays with cardiac arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death.
.Technical notes: 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.
Data points in the first graph ("Stratospheric Radiation") 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 Regener and Georg Pfotzer discovered the maximum using balloons in the 1930s and it is what we are measuring today.
| | 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. |
| | information about sunspots based on the latest NOAA/USAF Active Region Summary |
| | 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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