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. | | | SIDESWIPED WITH BEAUTY: As expected, a CME sideswiped Earth's magnetic field this morning April 14th, at approximately 0700 UT. The glancing blow produced a G1-class geomagnetic storm and auroras around the both poles. Taichi Nakamura photographed the distant glow of south polar lights from a beach in Dunedin New Zealand: 
"The warmth at the beach disappeared as the night darkened and with it the aurora starting to rise," says Nakamura. "The aurora shined brightly in the moonlit sky in between moments of clearance in the clouds." The storm has subsided now, but isolated substorms could trigger more outbursts of light in the hours ahead as Earth moves through the CME's magnetized wake. High-latitude sky watchers should remain alert for auroras on April 14-15. Aurora alerts: text or voice Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery I HEART SUNSPOT: You gotta love AR2529. The giant sunspot has morphed into a heart more than three times wider than Earth. Karzaman Ahmad of the Langkawi National Observatory in Malaysia photographed the active region on April 13th: 
"I used an 11-inch Celestron telescope with solar filters to photograph the sunspot," says Ahmad. "It is very easy to see." The dark heart of this sunspot is made of magnetism, a tangle of magnetic fields that blocks the upward flow of heat from the sun's interior. That's why it is dark, because it is cool compared to its fiery surroundings. NOAA forecasters say there is a 10% chance of M-class solar flares from AR2529 on April 13th. If such a flare does occur, it will be geoeffective. The sunspot is directly facing Earth. Solar flare alerts: text or voice Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery SPACE ROSES: Last week, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched a daring experiment. Daring for the flowers, that is. A bouquet of live roses flew to the edge of space onboard a helium balloon to find out if if they could survive the trip. The answer, apparently, is "yes." Here are the blossoms floating 35.4 km (116,000 feet) above Earth's surface:  .
The roses were hitchikers on a cosmic ray payload, which went to the stratosphere to monitor increasing levels of space radiation. En route to the top, the flowers were exposed to a dose of cosmic rays 100x Earth normal, air pressures as low as 0.2% of sea level, and temperatures as low as -63 C. Three hours later, the roses parachuted back to Earth and landed ... in Death Valley! Talk about a rough trip. And now we come to Mother's Day. These flowers, which were pressed after recovery, are available as gifts. Buy one here and give mom something truly out of this world on May 8th. Each pressed rose comes with a unique card showing the flowers in flight. All proceeds support the student space weather research of Earth to Sky Calculus.
Solar Eclipse Photo Gallery
Realtime Comet Photo Gallery
[More about Comet 252P: brightness measurements, 3D orbit, orbital elements] 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 Apr. 14, 2016, the network reported 9 fireballs.
(9 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 April 14, 2016 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. For example, here is the data from a flight on Oct. 22, 2015: 
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 | | 
