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ALL QUIET: Barring an unexpected solar flare (full disclosure: almost all solar flares are unexpected), space weather should remain calm for the rest of the week. No CMEs are coming, and the next solar wind stream isn't expected to reach Earth until Aug. 29th. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text
PLASMA FOREST: Astronomers are monitoring a large prominence on the southeastern limb of the sun. If trees were made of plasma, this is what the forest would look like:
Photographer Philippe Tosi inserted a picture of Earth for scale; the 'trees' are ten times taller than our entire planet. "The seeing was only medium today in Nîmes, France, but the prominence is so large I was able to take a good picture anyway," says Tosi.
Got a solar telescope? Point it here. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
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AURORAS ON JUPITER: This week, NASA released the first James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) images of auroras on Jupiter. The red rings of light circling Jupiter's poles were big enough to swallow Earth:
Image credit: JWST's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). The camera's F360M filter picked up the 3.3 - 3.6 micron glow of excited H3+ in Jupiter's auroral zone.
But Jupiter's auroras are more then just oversized versions of our own. They are formed in a completely different way. One of the key ingredients is volcanoes, and--so much for space weather--solar activity is not required.
For the most part, Jupiter makes its own Northern and Southern Lights. It does this by spinning--like crazy. Jupiter turns on it axis once every 10 hours, dragging its giant planetary magnetic field around with it. Spinning a magnet is a great way to generate a few volts; kids do it all the time for science fair projects. Jupiter's spin produces 10 million volts around its poles.
These voltages set the stage for non-stop auroras. The fuel comes from Jupiter's volcanic moon Io, where active vents spew ions such as O+ and S+ into Jupiter's magnetosphere. Polar electric fields grab these ions and slam them into Jupiter's upper atmosphere. The resulting glow can be seen almost anytime JWST wants to look. Jupiter's volcano-powered auroras are usually "on."
Above: This JWST image of Jupiter and its surroundings uses a different color table, so the auroras look blue. They are still infra-red.
Solar wind and CMEs can also help. However, solar storm clouds are naturally weakened by the time they travel all the way to Jupiter, five times farther from the sun than Earth. Also, Jupiter's powerful magnetic field forms a potent shield. Io is already inside Jupiter's "defenses," so it can be more effective.
Two distinct auroras coexist over the poles of Jupiter: Ultraviolet auroras created by atmospheric hydrogen in its molecular form (H2) and infrared auroras created by the hydrogen ion H3+. JWST saw the infrared variety. In fact, the telescope is well instrumented to monitor these auroras. Its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) has a filter that nicely captures the 3.3 to 3.6 micron glow of H3+. NASA, we want more!
Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
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STERLING SILVER RAINBOW DRAGONFLY: Are you looking for a far-out gift? Consider a rainbow dragonfly from the edge of space. On June 3, 2022, this sterling silver pendant hitched a ride onboard an Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray research balloon:
You can have it for $172.95. The dragonfly's heart is a golden Celtic love knot, and its wings are decorated with a spray of rainbow-colored crystals. The students are selling dragonfly pendants to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the pendant 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 Aug 23, 2022, 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 August 24, 2022 there were 2288 potentially hazardous asteroids.
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Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: | Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
| 2022 QH2 | 2022-Aug-19 | 3.5 LD | 16.4 | 30 |
| 2022 QC | 2022-Aug-20 | 2.6 LD | 17.5 | 31 |
| 2022 QO2 | 2022-Aug-20 | 0.5 LD | 18.1 | 10 |
| 2022 QA1 | 2022-Aug-20 | 11 LD | 8.3 | 32 |
| 2022 QW1 | 2022-Aug-20 | 0.5 LD | 10.9 | 13 |
| 2022 QE1 | 2022-Aug-20 | 0.5 LD | 6.3 | 8 |
| 2019 AV13 | 2022-Aug-20 | 13.8 LD | 9.2 | 135 |
| 2022 QB1 | 2022-Aug-20 | 5.5 LD | 3.7 | 6 |
| 2022 QU3 | 2022-Aug-21 | 4.8 LD | 8.7 | 16 |
| 2020 QW3 | 2022-Aug-22 | 14.1 LD | 18.1 | 30 |
| 2022 QM | 2022-Aug-22 | 18.8 LD | 5.1 | 20 |
| 2022 QV | 2022-Aug-22 | 2.2 LD | 21.8 | 23 |
| 2022 QH3 | 2022-Aug-22 | 1.3 LD | 9.5 | 15 |
| 2015 QH3 | 2022-Aug-22 | 5.6 LD | 7 | 14 |
| 2022 QX | 2022-Aug-23 | 7.3 LD | 12.7 | 19 |
| 2022 QR | 2022-Aug-24 | 3.6 LD | 8.6 | 13 |
| 2022 QP3 | 2022-Aug-28 | 14.4 LD | 7.9 | 34 |
| 2017 BU | 2022-Aug-29 | 15.8 LD | 7 | 32 |
| 2022 QX1 | 2022-Aug-31 | 5.4 LD | 21.2 | 47 |
| 2021 CQ5 | 2022-Sep-01 | 8.7 LD | 13.5 | 7 |
| 2022 QB2 | 2022-Sep-01 | 10.3 LD | 15.9 | 30 |
| 2022 QF2 | 2022-Sep-11 | 19.1 LD | 8.5 | 46 |
| 2008 RW | 2022-Sep-12 | 17.5 LD | 10.2 | 98 |
| 2020 PT4 | 2022-Sep-15 | 19.7 LD | 10.8 | 39 |
| 2022 QD1 | 2022-Sep-16 | 19.5 LD | 9.5 | 71 |
| 2016 HF2 | 2022-Sep-29 | 19.2 LD | 5.6 | 21 |
| 2018 ER1 | 2022-Oct-02 | 14.7 LD | 4 | 27 |
| 2018 VG | 2022-Oct-05 | 18.5 LD | 6.7 | 12 |
| 2021 TJ10 | 2022-Oct-06 | 19.6 LD | 8.1 | 6 |
| 2006 SG7 | 2022-Oct-07 | 16.7 LD | 18.4 | 93 |
| 2013 TJ6 | 2022-Oct-07 | 11.7 LD | 14.4 | 32 |
| 2013 SL20 | 2022-Oct-14 | 6.2 LD | 12.1 | 45 |
| 2020 TO2 | 2022-Oct-15 | 1.4 LD | 12.6 | 18 |
| 2020 BD | 2022-Oct-16 | 12.1 LD | 11.4 | 20 |
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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