Solar minimum is here - but even now strangely beautiful auroras are dancing around the poles. Deep inside the Arctic Circle, the expert guides of Aurora Holidays in Utsjoki, Finland, can help you chase them. Book now! | | |
ARCTIC LIGHT PILLARS: They look like auroras, but they're not. "I saw a brilliant display of light pillars on Jan. 20th," reports Andy Pritchard of Saariselka, Finland. "They were sparkling like static noise."
Pritchard had just finished skiing when the pillars appeared. "We were walking to our cabin and looked back toward the ski slopes to see the lights. They were amazing!"
Light pillars are caused by ice crystals in the air, which intercept manmade lights and spread them into vertical columns. The "sparkling" Pritchard observed was a glinting of light from facets of the blowing, falling crystals. No solar activity is required for the phenomenon. The only ingredients are ice and light bulbs.
Light pillars get their color from the hue of the underlying light bulb. Warm orange corresponds to traditional high pressure sodium lamps, while bright white typically comes from new LED lamps. The slopes in Saariselka appear to be illuminated by a mixture of both.
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UNDER THE AURORAL OVAL: Heavy snow. Cloudy skies. Almost no solar wind. With conditions like these, no wonder tourists in Abisko, Sweden, didn't expect to see any auroras last night. Then, suddenly, this happened:
"It was a beautiful display!" says Allison Stevenson, who took the picture on Jan. 20th. "I'm a tour guide for Lights over Lapland, and I was leading a group of 10 people," she explains. "At first they didn't believe me when I told them there was a good chance of auroras despite the gloomy forecast. Now they are very happy!"
How did she know? Everyone in Abisko knows. The Arctic village is located underneath Earth's persistent auroral oval--a flickering ring of Northern Lights that waxes and wanes, but never completely goes out. Residents see it, more often than not, thanks to a local meteorological phenomenon called "The Blue Hole of Abisko." Nearby mountains conspire with winds to create a clear patch of sky that can open up even during the gloomiest weather, revealing the auroras overhead. Aurora alerts: SMS Text.
Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
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NEUTRONS ON A PLANE: Spaceweather.com and the students of Earth to Sky Calculus have just landed in Stockholm. They'll be in Scandinavia for the next week launching cosmic ray balloons. During the 8 hour flight from the USA to Sweden, the team used bubble chambers to measure neutrons inside the airplane. Here's what one of the chambers looked like midway through the flight:
In the photo, above, each bubble shows where a neutron passed through the chamber and vaporized a superheated droplet. By the time the flight was over, we measured almost 20 uSv (microsieverts) of radiation from neutrons–double the dose from a typical X-ray at your dentist's office.
Where do these neutrons come from? Outer space. When cosmic rays hit Earth's atmosphere, they produce a spray of subatomic debris including neutrons, protons, and alpha particles. Because they are uncharged, neutrons find it relatively easy to reach the ground--passing through airplanes on the way down.
Among the many types of particles that come crashing down through Earth's atmosphere, neutrons are of special interest. They have a knack for interacting with human cells--that is, they are "biologically effective." This quality makes neutrons ironically useful for cancer treatment: Concentrated neutrons beams can kill cancer cells that survive other forms of radiation. Clearly, neutrons on airplanes are important to know about.
Later this week, these same neutron chambers will fly to the polar stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray balloon. X-ray and gamma-ray sensors will go as well, providing a complete profile of low-energy cosmic rays in the atmosphere over this part of the world. Stay tuned.
INFINITY PENDANT FOR VALENTINE'S DAY: Valentine's Day is less than one month away. Nothing says "I Love You" like an Infinity Pendant from the edge of space. On Jan. 8, 2020, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched a cosmic ray balloon. This authentic Swarovski crystal pendant hitched a ride, traveling 113,209 feet above the Sierra Nevada mountains of central California:
You can have it for $179.95. The students are selling these pendants to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. The glittering heart-shaped crystal is wrapped in a silver-embossed infinity clasp, symbolizing unending love. Each one comes with a romantic card showing the pendant in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space and back again.
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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 Jan. 20, 2020, the network reported 13 fireballs.
(13 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 January 21, 2020 there were 2018 potentially hazardous asteroids.
|
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
2020 AZ1 | 2020-Jan-16 | 8.3 LD | 4 | 17 |
2020 BD1 | 2020-Jan-16 | 4 LD | 17.6 | 12 |
2019 YD3 | 2020-Jan-16 | 6.9 LD | 4.8 | 22 |
2020 BY1 | 2020-Jan-16 | 4.2 LD | 16.8 | 21 |
2010 AE30 | 2020-Jan-17 | 11.9 LD | 12.3 | 68 |
2020 AN3 | 2020-Jan-17 | 8 LD | 17.2 | 302 |
2020 AL3 | 2020-Jan-17 | 6.1 LD | 12.5 | 21 |
2019 YG1 | 2020-Jan-17 | 17.5 LD | 4.5 | 32 |
2020 BZ | 2020-Jan-17 | 10.8 LD | 10.8 | 14 |
2020 BL | 2020-Jan-17 | 8.2 LD | 7 | 14 |
2020 BN1 | 2020-Jan-17 | 3.4 LD | 9.7 | 11 |
2019 YQ3 | 2020-Jan-17 | 18.3 LD | 3.1 | 19 |
2020 AD1 | 2020-Jan-17 | 9.1 LD | 4.5 | 20 |
2020 BO | 2020-Jan-18 | 12.4 LD | 10.6 | 30 |
2020 BH1 | 2020-Jan-18 | 10.9 LD | 14.1 | 44 |
2020 AH1 | 2020-Jan-18 | 15.9 LD | 8 | 45 |
2009 BH2 | 2020-Jan-18 | 14.6 LD | 17.9 | 118 |
2020 BQ | 2020-Jan-18 | 12.7 LD | 17.6 | 42 |
2020 AQ3 | 2020-Jan-18 | 16.8 LD | 12.4 | 69 |
2020 AM3 | 2020-Jan-19 | 7.5 LD | 17.5 | 37 |
2020 BK | 2020-Jan-19 | 6.4 LD | 4.5 | 17 |
2020 BO1 | 2020-Jan-19 | 13.4 LD | 20.7 | 136 |
2019 YA5 | 2020-Jan-19 | 11.7 LD | 5.2 | 22 |
2020 AQ1 | 2020-Jan-20 | 10.5 LD | 27.5 | 135 |
2020 BX1 | 2020-Jan-20 | 18.6 LD | 13.1 | 34 |
2013 DU | 2020-Jan-20 | 14.9 LD | 6.4 | 56 |
2020 BP1 | 2020-Jan-21 | 14 LD | 5.2 | 13 |
2020 BS1 | 2020-Jan-21 | 6.6 LD | 5.5 | 20 |
2020 BP | 2020-Jan-21 | 3.7 LD | 16.7 | 27 |
2020 BB | 2020-Jan-21 | 2 LD | 3.7 | 7 |
2020 BY | 2020-Jan-21 | 3.8 LD | 16.7 | 45 |
2020 BN | 2020-Jan-21 | 9.8 LD | 6.1 | 10 |
2020 BU | 2020-Jan-22 | 19.4 LD | 4.2 | 23 |
2019 TF2 | 2020-Jan-23 | 16.2 LD | 1.6 | 19 |
2020 BB1 | 2020-Jan-23 | 2.6 LD | 11.4 | 8 |
2018 BM5 | 2020-Jan-23 | 13.1 LD | 8.6 | 12 |
2020 BF1 | 2020-Jan-24 | 7.8 LD | 4.6 | 22 |
2020 AK3 | 2020-Jan-25 | 8.3 LD | 6.9 | 22 |
2020 BJ1 | 2020-Jan-29 | 15.5 LD | 11 | 50 |
2018 AL12 | 2020-Jan-30 | 18.2 LD | 17.7 | 39 |
2017 AE5 | 2020-Feb-01 | 13.6 LD | 9 | 123 |
2018 BU1 | 2020-Feb-02 | 19.4 LD | 10 | 41 |
2013 BA74 | 2020-Feb-04 | 3.7 LD | 7.4 | 28 |
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 | 25 |
2012 DS30 | 2020-Feb-26 | 12.3 LD | 5.4 | 22 |
2015 BK509 | 2020-Feb-29 | 18.7 LD | 12.5 | 118 |
2017 BM123 | 2020-Mar-01 | 10.5 LD | 8.1 | 65 |
2018 RF6 | 2020-Mar-10 | 11.2 LD | 12.6 | 36 |
2008 UB95 | 2020-Mar-11 | 18.5 LD | 7.6 | 41 |
2018 GY | 2020-Mar-15 | 6.2 LD | 9.5 | 39 |
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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