Thirty-five new items have just been added to our Meteorite Jewelry collection. Browse the Space Weather Store for something out of this world. | | | CHANCE OF FLARES: Sunspot AR1560 has more than quadrupled in size since August 30th, and now the fast growing active region is directly facing our planet: movie. NOAA forecasters estimate a 40% chance of M-class solar fares during the next 48 hours. Solar Flare alerts: text, phone. MAGNIFICENT ERUPTION: A filament of magnetism curling around the sun's southeastern limb erupted on August 31st, producing a coronal mass ejection (CME), a C8-class solar flare, and one of the most beautiful movies ever recorded by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory: The explosion hurled a CME away from the sun traveling faster than 500 km/s (1.1 million mph). The cloud, shown here, is not heading directly toward Earth, but it will deliver a glancing blow to our planet's magnetic field. NOAA forecasters estimate a 40% chance of strong polar geomagnetic storms when the cloud arrives on Sept. 3rd. Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery Realtime Noctilucent Cloud Photo Gallery [previous years: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011] 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 September 2, 2012 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. | 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 | |