| | Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica Credit: NOAA/Ovation Planetary K-index Now: Kp= 4 unsettled 24-hr max: Kp= 5 storm explanation | more data Interplanetary Mag. Field Btotal: 8.9 nT Bz: -7.6 nT south more data: ACE, DSCOVR Updated: Today at 2348 UT Coronal Holes: 05 May 18 Solar wind flowing from this equatorial coronal hole should reach Earth on May 7th. Credit: SDO/AIA Noctilucent Clouds Our connection with NASA's AIM spacecraft has been restored! New images from AIM show that the southern season for noctilucent clouds (NLCs) is underway. Come back to this spot every day to see AIM's "daily daisy," which reveals the dance of electric-blue NLCs around the Antarctic Circle.. Switch view: Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctic Peninsula, East Antarctica, Polar Updated at: 02-07-2018 17:55:05 SPACE WEATHER NOAA Forecasts | | Updated at: 2018 May 05 2200 UTC FLARE | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | CLASS M | 01 % | 01 % | CLASS X | 01 % | 01 % | Geomagnetic Storms: Probabilities for significant disturbances in Earth's magnetic field are given for three activity levels: active, minor storm, severe storm Updated at: 2018 May 05 2200 UTC Mid-latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 40 % | 40 % | MINOR | 30 % | 25 % | SEVERE | 05 % | 05 % | High latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 10 % | 10 % | MINOR | 25 % | 30 % | SEVERE | 55 % | 55 % | | | | | | | | | | | | All-inclusive Northern Lights trips in Tromsø, Norway. Small groups, big experiences! Highly qualified guides ensure unique and unforgettable adventures with a personal touch. Visit Explore the Arctic | | | THE SOLAR WIND HAS ARRIVED--AND IT'S EARLY: Earth is moving into a stream of solar wind flowing from a wide hole in the sun's atmosphere. Originally expected to reach our planet on May 6th or 7th, the fast-moving gas is here now instead. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras, particularly in the southern hemisphere where deepening autumn darkness favors the visibility of Southern Lights. Free: Aurora Alerts. WEST COAST ROCKET BLASTS OFF FOR MARS: This morning, for the first time, NASA launched a rocket to Mars from the US west coast. Carrying the InSight Mars lander, an Atlas 5 rocket blasted off from the Vandenberg Air Force Base at 4:05 am and headed south, parallel to the coast. Dennis Mammana saw the Atlas 5 climb into the sky more than 300 miles away at the Joshua Tree National Park: "With a waning gibbous moon illuminating the landscape and sky, the Atlas V appeared first as a cherry red glow on the west-northwestern horizon and continued toward the south as it crossed the Pacific Ocean on its way to Mars," says Mammana. "The shot is a quick blending of 35 separate exposures; the breaks within the rocket trail occur between exposures." Because the launch occurred at the earliest possible moment in the launch window, 4:05 a.m., the rocket's exhaust had time to completely disperse before morning sunlight hit Earth's upper atmosphere about an hour later. As a result no noctilucent clouds were observed. Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery FAR-OUT MOTHER'S DAY GIFT: Mother's Day is only a week away. To get ready, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched an array of cosmic ray sensors to the stratosphere onboard a helium balloon. This sterling silver Mother's Day gift went along for the ride: You can have it for $129.95. The students are selling these pendants as a fund-raiser for their cosmic ray monitoring program. All proceeds support atmospheric radiation measurements and hands-on STEM education. Each pendant comes with a greeting card showing the jewelry in flight and telling the story of its journey to the stratosphere and back again. Mom-satisfaction guaranteed. Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store All proceeds support hands-on STEM education METEORS FROM HALLEY'S COMET: This weekend, Earth is passing through a stream of debris from Halley's Comet, source of the annual eta Aquariid meteor shower. Forecasters expect the shower to peak on May 6-7 with 20 meteors per hour in the northern hemisphere, and twice that number in the southern hemisphere. No matter where you live, the best time to look is during the hours before local sunrise on Monday morning, May 7th. [sky maps] Programmer Ian Webster created this interactive visualization of Comet Halley's dusty debris stream passing through Earth's orbit: Realtime Meteor Photo Gallery
Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery 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. 5, 2018, the network reported 26 fireballs. (15 sporadics, 11 eta Aquariids) 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 5, 2018 there were 1907 potentially hazardous asteroids. | Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) | 2018 HF2 | 2018-Apr-30 | 18.6 LD | 6.8 | 20 | 2018 HM2 | 2018-Apr-30 | 8.8 LD | 6.5 | 65 | 2018 HB1 | 2018-May-02 | 10.1 LD | 9.2 | 38 | 2018 HR1 | 2018-May-04 | 17.5 LD | 16.5 | 51 | 1999 FN19 | 2018-May-07 | 9.7 LD | 5.7 | 118 | 2016 JQ5 | 2018-May-08 | 6.3 LD | 10.4 | 9 | 388945 | 2018-May-09 | 6.5 LD | 9 | 295 | 2018 GR2 | 2018-May-11 | 13.4 LD | 9.8 | 111 | 1999 LK1 | 2018-May-15 | 13.3 LD | 10 | 141 | 2018 GL1 | 2018-May-18 | 14.3 LD | 5.2 | 67 | 68347 | 2018-May-29 | 9.5 LD | 13.3 | 389 | 2013 LE7 | 2018-May-31 | 17.8 LD | 1.7 | 12 | 2018 EJ4 | 2018-Jun-10 | 5.6 LD | 6.2 | 195 | 2015 DP155 | 2018-Jun-11 | 9 LD | 4.4 | 170 | 2017 YE5 | 2018-Jun-21 | 15.6 LD | 15.5 | 513 | 467309 | 2018-Jun-23 | 17.9 LD | 14 | 355 | 441987 | 2018-Jun-24 | 7.3 LD | 12.6 | 178 | 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 | Readers, thank you for your patience while we continue to develop this new section of Spaceweather.com. We've been working to streamline our data reduction, allowing us to post results from balloon flights much more rapidly, and we have developed a new data product, shown here: This plot displays radiation measurements not only in the stratosphere, but also at aviation altitudes. 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. These measurements are made by our usual cosmic ray payload as it passes through aviation altitudes en route to the stratosphere over California. What is this all about? 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 13% since 2015: 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 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 data points in the graph above correspond to the peak of the Reneger-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. | 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 | | Reviews here can help you to pick up best memory foam mattresses. | | These links help Spaceweather.com stay online. Thank you to our supporters! | | | | | | | | | | | | ©2017 Spaceweather.com. All rights reserved. This site is penned daily by Dr. Tony Phillips. | |