Marianne's Heaven On Earth Aurora Chaser Tours Chasethelighttours.co.uk invites you to join them in their quest to find and photograph the Aurora Borealis. Experience the winter wonderland in the Tromsø Area. | | | CHANCE OF STORMS: NOAA forecasters estimate a 40% chance of minor G1-class geomagnetic storms today as Earth passes through a stream of high-speed solar wind. Arctic sky watchers should be alert for auroras. Aurora alerts: text or voice PLANETS AT DAWN: Waking up before sunrise can be hard to do. For the next two mornings, it's easy. One look at the dawn sky will bring you to full attention thanks to a beautiful conjunction of Venus and Saturn. Alan Dyer caught the two planets converging over Gleichen, Alberta, on Jan. 6th: "This was the scene on a very cool (-20 C) January morning in southern Alberta," says Dyer, who took the shot from his back deck. The view will improve in the mornings ahead. On Friday morning, Jan. 8th, the two planets will be about 1° apart--twice the width of a full Moon. On Saturday morning, the 9th, the distance will shrink to less than 1/2°--a tight pair that you can hide behind your pinky fingertip held at arm's length. They'll be at their very closest, a mere 0.1° apart, around 04:00 UT excellent timing for observers Europe who will see the two planets practically touching. This is the closest conjunction of two planets since March of 2013. So set your alarm for dawn and look east. It's a great way to start the day. Realtime Spaceweather Photo Gallery DIAMOND DUST ICE HALOS: As winter deepens in the northern hemisphere, the Arctic atmosphere is filling with crystals of ice. This is producing some beautiful ice halos. They form not only around the sun during the day, but also around headlights at night. Pekka Lähteenmäki photographed samples of both in Jalasjärvi, Finland: These luminous shapes are caused by light shining through jewel-like crystals called "diamond dust.' Lähteenmäki notes that "You can see individual ice crystals glinting in my photos--especially the night shot." Atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley has seen halos like these before. He finds the night halos most interesting: "Artificial light halos can have strange forms compared with those made by the sun or moon. The difference is because, unlike sun rays, those from nearby lights are not parallel. The equivalents of sundogs become long streaks. There are even super sundogs. The trumpet-shaped night halo Lähteenmäki photographed was made by hexagonal column crystals floating nearby with their long axes horizontal. It is a cousin of the familiar upper tangent arc--similar, but not the same. Look out at night for a whole new world of halos!" Realtime Meteor Photo Gallery Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery Realtime Comet 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 Jan. 7, 2016, the network reported 18 fireballs. (13 sporadics, 3 Quadrantids, 1 December Leonis Minorid, 1 alpha Hydrid) 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 7, 2016 there were 1650 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. | Cosmic Rays in the Atmosphere | Situation Report -- Oct. 30, 2015 | Stratospheric Radiation (+37o N) | Cosmic ray levels are elevated (+6.1% above the Space Age median). The trend is flat. Cosmic ray levels have increased +0% in the past month. | Sept. 06: 4.14 uSv/hr (414 uRad/hr) | Sept. 12: 4.09 uSv/hr (409 uRad/hr) | Sept. 23: 4.12 uSv/hr (412 uRad/hr) | Sept. 25: 4.16 uSv/hr (416 uRad/hr) | Sept. 27: 4.13 uSv/hr (413 uRad/hr) | Oct. 11: 4.02 uSv/hr (402 uRad/hr) | Oct. 22: 4.11 uSv/hr (411 uRad/hr) | These measurements are based on regular space weather balloon flights: learn more. 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. Our measurements show that someone flying back and forth across the continental USA, just once, can absorb as much ionizing radiation as 2 to 5 dental X-rays. Here is the data from our latest flight, Oct. 22nd: Radiation levels peak at the entrance to the stratosphere in a broad region called the "Pfotzer Maximum." This peak is named after physicist George Pfotzer who discovered it using balloons and Geiger tubes in the 1930s. Radiation levels there are more than 80x sea level. Note that the bottom of the Pfotzer Maximim is near 55,000 ft. This means that some high-flying aircraft are not far from the zone of maximum radiation. Indeed, according to the Oct 22th measurements, a plane flying at 45,000 feet is exposed to 2.79 uSv/hr. At that rate, a passenger would absorb about one dental X-ray's worth of radiation in about 5 hours. 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 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 | | Web-based high school science course with free enrollment | |