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THE AVALANCHE UPDATE: Once-in-a-generation snowstorms and an avalanche in California have stranded Dr. Tony Phillips in the mountains of the Eastern Sierra with only 10 sled dogs and a satellite dish to update Spaceweather.com. Everything is okay! Work on our web site proceeds mostly as usual, albeit a little more slowly, and the crisis is expected to end later this week with everyone safe and sound. The well wishes of many readers have been very much appreciated. Thank you!
'EXTREMELY RARE' FARSIDE CME: Something big just happened on the farside of the sun. During the early hours of March 13th, SOHO coronagraphs recorded a farside halo CME apparently leaving the sun faster than 3000 km/s:
Note: The bright object at 4 o'clock is Mercury
Because of its extreme speed, this CME may be classified as "extremely rare," a fast-mover that occurs only once every decade or so. A NASA model of the event shows the CME heading almost directly away from Earth. Good thing!
Although the CME is not Earth-directed, it has nevertheless touched our planet. See all the snowy dots and streaks in the coronagraph movie above? Those are energetic particles accelerated by shock waves in the CME. They create short-lived luminous speckles when they hit SOHO's digital camera.
NOAA's GOES-16 satellite has detected the particles reaching Earth--all from the CME's backside. Imagine what a frontside blast would have been like! Earth's magnetic field is funneling the particles toward the poles where a type of radio blackout is underway--a polar cap absorption (PCA) event:
Note the red areas. Airplanes flying over these regions may find that their shortwave radios won't work due to the ionizing effect of infalling protons. This PCA could persist for a day or more. You can monitor its progress here. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text.
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THIS IS PROBABLY NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT: On Valentine's Day 2046, almost every telescope in the world will be doing the same thing: Watching asteroid 2023 DW streak past Earth. The newly-discovered space rock will come perilously close to our planet with an approximately 1/560 chance of actually hitting, according to NASA. Red dots in this map show possible impact sites on Feb. 14, 2046:
Above: The impact zone of asteroid 2023 DW and (inset) an image of the space rock from the Sormano Observatory in Italy
Now for the good news: This is probably nothing to worry about. The odds of a collision are only 0.18%, which means there is a 99.82% of a miss. These odds will probably tilt further in our favor as the asteroid's orbit is refined by additional observations.
"I have worked out almost 65,000 different possible orbits of 2023 DW and
only 150 of these indicate an impact," says astronomer Enrico Colzani of the Sormano Observatory in Italy, who made the impact map. "New observations in the coming days will probably eliminate even this small possibility."
Discovered by Georges Attard and Alain Maury in San Pedro de Atacama on Feb. 26th, asteroid 2023 DW is approximately 50 meters in diameter, roughly the size of the object that caused the Tunguska Event in 1908. So if it *did* hit, people in the impact zone would certainly notice. Stay tuned for updates.
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18K GOLD CUPID'S COMPASS: Are you looking for a romantic gift? Consider Cupid's Compass. This premuim 18K gold-filled pendant flew to the stratosphere on Jan. 6th onboard an Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray research balloon:
You can have it for $259.95. Engraved with the words "I'd be lost without you", the hypoallergenic pendant has a 5-star cubic zirconia crystal in the middle surrounded by a ring of equally high-grade 5A cubic zirconia nuggets. It is a visually striking pendant that makes a once-in-a-lifetime Valentine's, anniversary or birthday gift.
The students are selling space pendants to pay the helium bill for their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the jewelry in flight and telling the story of its trip to the stratosphere and back again.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
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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 Mar 11 2023, the network reported 8 fireballs.
(8 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 March 13, 2023 there were 2325 potentially hazardous asteroids.
 |
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: | Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
| 2023 DQ | 2023-Mar-08 | 6.2 LD | 22.8 | 159 |
| 2020 FQ | 2023-Mar-09 | 14 LD | 6.3 | 13 |
| 2023 EO | 2023-Mar-09 | 17.8 LD | 13.4 | 68 |
| 2023 EN | 2023-Mar-09 | 0.4 LD | 12.8 | 9 |
| 2023 ER | 2023-Mar-09 | 2.7 LD | 13 | 54 |
| 2020 FV4 | 2023-Mar-13 | 17.6 LD | 8.2 | 30 |
| 2023 CM | 2023-Mar-14 | 10.3 LD | 14 | 190 |
| 2023 DM | 2023-Mar-15 | 8.5 LD | 7.3 | 65 |
| 2018 UQ1 | 2023-Mar-17 | 10.7 LD | 11.7 | 143 |
| 2016 WH | 2023-Mar-19 | 18.1 LD | 11.8 | 14 |
| 2018 FE3 | 2023-Mar-21 | 10.1 LD | 5.4 | 13 |
| 2022 YK4 | 2023-Mar-29 | 11.9 LD | 2.3 | 25 |
| 2017 SE12 | 2023-Mar-30 | 5.2 LD | 8.4 | 15 |
| 2016 GH1 | 2023-Mar-30 | 7.7 LD | 5.8 | 11 |
| 2022 GO3 | 2023-Apr-02 | 17 LD | 11.6 | 15 |
| 2021 GN1 | 2023-Apr-02 | 17.7 LD | 14.2 | 18 |
| 2018 FD | 2023-Apr-07 | 17.9 LD | 8.2 | 47 |
| 2019 GK21 | 2023-Apr-13 | 15.2 LD | 8.1 | 27 |
| 2022 YK9 | 2023-Apr-13 | 19.9 LD | 9.9 | 175 |
| 436774 | 2023-Apr-13 | 12.5 LD | 17.6 | 719 |
| 2006 HV5 | 2023-Apr-26 | 6.3 LD | 17.4 | 400 |
| 2021 JF2 | 2023-Apr-28 | 16.6 LD | 8 | 19 |
| 2018 VS6 | 2023-May-01 | 5.2 LD | 11.6 | 14 |
Notes: LD means "Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance between Earth and the Moon. 1 LD also equals 0.00256 AU. | | 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 (July 2022): Atmospheric radiation is decreasing in 2022. Our latest measurements in July 2022 registered a 6-year low:
What's going on? Ironically, the radiation drop is caused by increasing solar activity. Solar Cycle 25 has roared to life faster than forecasters expected. The sun's strengthening and increasingly tangled magnetic field repels cosmic rays from deep space. In addition, solar coronal mass ejections (CMEs) sweep aside cosmic rays, causing sharp reductions called "Forbush Decreases." The two effects blend together to bring daily radiation levels down.
.Who cares? Cosmic rays are a surprisingly "down to Earth" form of space weather. They can alter the chemistry of the atmosphere, 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. A number of controversial studies (#1, #2, #3, #4) go even further, linking 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 graph labeled "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 |
| | current counts of failed and deployed Starlink satellites from Jonathan's Space Page |
| | Authoritative predictions of space junk and satellite re-entries |
| | 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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