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EARTH-DIRECTED CME--CONFIRMED: Today's X-class solar flare (described below) did indeed produce a CME, and it has an Earth-directed component. NASA and NOAA forecast models suggest the southern flank of the CME will arrive on May 5th after 1800 UT. The impact could cause G1 to G2-class geomagnetic storms on May 5th and 6th. Aurora alerts: SMS Text
X-CLASS SOLAR FLARE (UPDATED): New sunspot AR3663 erupted this morning, May 3rd @ 0222 UT, producing an X1.6-class solar flare. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the extreme ultraviolet flash:
Radiation from the flare ionized the top of Earth's atmosphere and caused a deep shortwave radio blackout over Australia, Japan, and much of China: map. Ham radio operators may have noticed loss of signal below 30 MHz for a half an hour after the flare's peak.
Update: Shortly after the flare, the US Air Force reported a Type II solar radio burst, a type of natural radio signal emitted by shocked gas at the leading edge of a CME. Drift rates within the burst indicate a launch speed of 960 km/s (3.6 million mph). SOHO coronagraph images have since confirmed the existence of a CME. The bulk of the cloud will pass north of our planet, with its southern flank delivering a glancing blow late on May 5th. G1 to G2-class geomagnetic storms are possible when the CME arrives. CME alerts: SMS Text
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GLOWING SPIRAL SIGHTED DURING GEOMAGNETIC STORM: Last night, sky watchers in Europe went outside to observe the fading glow of a strong (G3) geomagnetic storm. "I was looking for aurora borealis after sunset, when suddenly a bright yellow spiral appeared near Polaris," reports Gabriel Murawski from Dusia Lake, Lithuania. This is what he saw:
"It looked amazing!" says Murawski. "The spiral gliding next to the violet aurora borealis made a spectacular scene."
What caused this? We're still not sure. At first it appeared to be a 'SpaceX spiral,' an increasingly common form in the night sky produced by the deorbit burns of Falcon 9 rockets. If the rocket's second stage is spinning, it twists the exhaust into a spiral. This happens all the time.
Indeed, there was a SpaceX launch earlier the same night. On May 2nd at 10:37 pm EDT (May 3rd at 02:37 UT), a Falcon 9 rocket left Cape Canaveral carrying 23 Starlink satellites to orbit, and its second stage performed the required burn. However, the details don't add up. The deorbit burn was observed in Arizona, far to the west of Europe, and it did not have a spiral shape.
This is a mystery we are still investigating. Stay tuned!
Update: This might be a SpaceX spiral, after all. The company launched another Falcon 9 rocket on May 2nd (1948 UTC) from Vandenberg Space Force Base--the Worldview Legion mission. The orbit passes over Europe and may account for the spiral.
more images: from Petr Horálek of Zahorice, Czech Republic; from David Blanchard of Flagstaff, AZ; from Andrzej Błoński of Subcarpathia, Poland;
TAHITIAN BLACK SOLAR ECLIPSE PEARL: It came from Tahiti, and now it has touched the shadow of the Moon. On April 8, 2024, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched this black pearl into a total eclipse of the sun over Texas. Riding on a cosmic ray research balloon, the pearl was 86,564 feet high when lunar darkness swallowed it for 3 minutes 45 seconds:
You can have it for $299.95. Measuring 9 mm in diameter, this genuine Tahitian pearl has an 18K rose gold clasp and is suspended from a matching 925 Sterling Silver chain. It comes with a greeting card showing the pearl in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space during the 2024 total eclipse.
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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 May 02, 2024, the network reported 13 fireballs.
(7 eta Aquarid, 6 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 May 3, 2024 there were 2349 potentially hazardous asteroids.
|
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
2024 HF1 | 2024-Apr-28 | 5 LD | 10.9 | 25 |
2024 GS4 | 2024-Apr-28 | 10.6 LD | 12.8 | 33 |
2024 JP | 2024-Apr-28 | 6.7 LD | 4.2 | 14 |
2024 JS | 2024-Apr-28 | 4.9 LD | 10.3 | 12 |
2024 JV | 2024-Apr-29 | 2.1 LD | 13.8 | 43 |
2024 GK5 | 2024-Apr-29 | 12.9 LD | 5.2 | 39 |
2024 HO2 | 2024-Apr-29 | 0.1 LD | 9.2 | 5 |
2021 GD3 | 2024-Apr-30 | 11.2 LD | 3.5 | 14 |
2024 HQ1 | 2024-Apr-30 | 2.2 LD | 5.5 | 8 |
2024 JT | 2024-Apr-30 | 2.9 LD | 6.6 | 8 |
2024 HZ2 | 2024-Apr-30 | 14.8 LD | 13.1 | 35 |
2024 HX2 | 2024-Apr-30 | 11.1 LD | 11.8 | 21 |
2022 TN1 | 2024-Apr-30 | 18.6 LD | 17.7 | 314 |
2024 HK2 | 2024-May-01 | 7.6 LD | 18.3 | 26 |
2022 AA5 | 2024-May-03 | 13.5 LD | 9 | 67 |
2024 JE | 2024-May-04 | 13.8 LD | 7.8 | 50 |
2024 HK1 | 2024-May-04 | 1.8 LD | 8.6 | 30 |
2024 HV1 | 2024-May-05 | 3.4 LD | 8.8 | 22 |
2024 HW1 | 2024-May-05 | 5 LD | 11 | 19 |
2024 FR5 | 2024-May-05 | 4.9 LD | 5.2 | 49 |
2024 HL2 | 2024-May-06 | 7.6 LD | 13.4 | 26 |
2024 HM2 | 2024-May-06 | 17.4 LD | 25 | 55 |
2024 HE2 | 2024-May-06 | 3.2 LD | 12.1 | 25 |
2024 JF | 2024-May-06 | 1.2 LD | 11.7 | 8 |
2024 JD | 2024-May-08 | 0.7 LD | 3.3 | 11 |
2021 JG9 | 2024-May-10 | 16.9 LD | 16.1 | 32 |
2016 FT14 | 2024-May-10 | 19.9 LD | 5.9 | 39 |
2024 JN | 2024-May-12 | 4.4 LD | 3.3 | 8 |
2015 KJ19 | 2024-May-14 | 15.8 LD | 23.1 | 112 |
2014 WF6 | 2024-May-14 | 7.2 LD | 18.9 | 47 |
2021 JN10 | 2024-May-14 | 17.5 LD | 13.2 | 33 |
2021 JJ | 2024-May-15 | 16.8 LD | 5.7 | 28 |
2022 WN2 | 2024-May-17 | 13.7 LD | 5.5 | 6 |
2019 VB5 | 2024-May-21 | 7.8 LD | 6.3 | 2 |
2024 HP | 2024-May-23 | 15.5 LD | 7.7 | 208 |
2024 HP2 | 2024-May-25 | 5.8 LD | 2.3 | 19 |
2008 LD | 2024-May-28 | 7.7 LD | 4.5 | 6 |
2021 LV | 2024-May-29 | 12 LD | 15.5 | 9 |
2024 JG | 2024-May-29 | 8.7 LD | 7.4 | 29 |
1998 KY26 | 2024-Jun-01 | 12 LD | 5.3 | 25 |
2016 JC6 | 2024-Jun-01 | 19.9 LD | 7.1 | 188 |
2008 YN2 | 2024-Jun-05 | 10.5 LD | 7.7 | 20 |
2021 LW3 | 2024-Jun-06 | 9.7 LD | 9.8 | 86 |
2024 CR9 | 2024-Jun-11 | 19.2 LD | 7.4 | 447 |
2022 XC1 | 2024-Jun-12 | 16.5 LD | 6.5 | 21 |
2022 WW11 | 2024-Jun-17 | 19.7 LD | 14.4 | 15 |
2019 NJ | 2024-Jun-27 | 17.2 LD | 10.1 | 66 |
415029 | 2024-Jun-27 | 17.3 LD | 25.9 | 2304 |
2022 MM1 | 2024-Jun-28 | 7.8 LD | 10.9 | 39 |
2010 XN | 2024-Jun-28 | 14.1 LD | 11.3 | 52 |
2022 HD1 | 2024-Jun-29 | 17.3 LD | 7.2 | 63 |
2017 MB3 | 2024-Jun-30 | 5 LD | 6.5 | 30 |
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. See also, all satellite statistics. |
| 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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