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GEOMAGNETIC UNREST EXPECTED: A stream of solar wind is expected to reach Earth on Jan. 8th, passing mainly north of our planet's magnetic field. The grazing encounter could spark auroras around the Arctic Circle, albeit not a full-fledged geomagnetic storm. The gaseous material is flowing from a northern hole in the sun's atmosphere. Free: Aurora Alerts.
MARS VISITS JUPITER: Seeing two planets in a telescope at the same time is rare. This morning in Brisbane, Australia, amateur astronomer Dennis Simmons saw two planets and four moons. Mars, Jupiter, and the Galilean satellites appeared together during the closest conjunction of the two worlds in years:
"I was hoping that the tightly spaced Jupiter/Mars pair would clear the trees before the dawn sky brightened too much," says Simmons. "The trees blocking my Eastern horizon had grown considerably in the last 12 months. Tantalizing glimpses of Jupiter and the four Galilean moons materialized on the LCD on the back of the camera as the topmost branches swayed in the light breeze when finally, Jupiter and Mars cleared the top of the trees and I could get to work recording this close conjunction."
He used a Canon 5D digital camera looking through a 210 mm telescope to record the extraordinary gathering. "I took several frames at varying ISO speeds (ISO100 to ISO3200) and shutter speeds (1/8 sec to 30 secs), then combined them to show the planets, moons, and background stars in a single image," he explains.
At closest approach on Jan. 6-7, Mars and Jupiter were approximately 0.25 degrees apart--half the diameter of a full Moon. They won't meet again this way until March of 2020. Rare indeed! Browse the Space Weather photo gallery for more snapshots.
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
SPACE STATION VISITS THE BAY OF RAINBOWS: Sometimes, the best astronomy happens in a fraction of a second. On Jan. 5th, astrophotographer Maximilian Teodorescu experienced one of those moments. "I took a short trip outside Bucharest for a much shorter astro-event: the transit of the International Space Station (ISS) over the Moon."
"The station passed in front of the large lava-filled crater Sinus Iridum (Bay of Rainbows)," he says. "This short video shows the transit happening about 10 times slower than real time."
Lunar transits by the ISS are not rare, but they are challenging to observe because the space station traveling 17,000 mph crosses the 0.5o face of the Moon in a split second. Usually the human behind the camera sees nothing until a later search through video frames reveals the fleeting silhouette. Teodorescu knew when to look, and where, thanks to predictions from Calsky.com.
Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
VALENTINE'S DAY IS ONLY 6 WEEKS AWAY: Christmas is over. Next up: Valentine's Day. If you are looking for a far-out Valentine's gift, consider this:
On Dec. 29, 2017, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus flew a payload-full of these 18k rose gold plated Valentine's pendants to the stratosphere onboard a high-altitude helium balloon. The necklaces traveled alongside an array of cosmic ray sensors, which the students use to monitor deep-space radiation penetrating Earth's atmosphere.
You can have one for $119.95. Each glittering pendant comes with a greeting card showing the jewelry in flight and telling the story of its journey 36 km (118,110 feet) above the Sierra Nevada mountains of central California. Sales support the Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray ballooning program and hands-on STEM research.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All proceeds support hands-on STEM education
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, 2018, the network reported 15 fireballs.
(13 sporadics, 2 Quadrantids)
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, 2018 there were 1872 potentially hazardous asteroids.
|
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
2017 YD | 2018-Jan-01 | 19.1 LD | 4.1 | 29 |
2018 AH | 2018-Jan-02 | 0.8 LD | 13.8 | 114 |
2015 RT1 | 2018-Jan-02 | 20 LD | 9 | 30 |
2017 YD7 | 2018-Jan-03 | 4.7 LD | 10.5 | 12 |
2017 YJ7 | 2018-Jan-07 | 11.9 LD | 5.7 | 20 |
2017 YK7 | 2018-Jan-07 | 10.6 LD | 10.7 | 43 |
2017 YX4 | 2018-Jan-08 | 15 LD | 7.3 | 66 |
2017 XT61 | 2018-Jan-08 | 11.3 LD | 10.8 | 83 |
2004 FH | 2018-Jan-10 | 20 LD | 8.5 | 26 |
2017 YU3 | 2018-Jan-14 | 18.3 LD | 13.1 | 57 |
306383 | 2018-Jan-22 | 14.4 LD | 17.4 | 178 |
2018 AJ | 2018-Jan-23 | 4.6 LD | 5.5 | 41 |
2002 CB19 | 2018-Feb-02 | 10.5 LD | 15.6 | 36 |
276033 | 2018-Feb-04 | 11 LD | 34 | 646 |
2015 BN509 | 2018-Feb-09 | 12.9 LD | 17.7 | 257 |
1991 VG | 2018-Feb-11 | 18.4 LD | 2.1 | 7 |
2014 WQ202 | 2018-Feb-11 | 15.1 LD | 19.8 | 62 |
2016 CO246 | 2018-Feb-22 | 15.3 LD | 5.4 | 21 |
2017 DR109 | 2018-Feb-24 | 3.7 LD | 7.4 | 11 |
2016 FU12 | 2018-Feb-26 | 13.2 LD | 4.5 | 15 |
2014 EY24 | 2018-Feb-27 | 14.8 LD | 8 | 54 |
2015 BF511 | 2018-Feb-28 | 11.7 LD | 5.7 | 39 |
2003 EM1 | 2018-Mar-07 | 16.6 LD | 8 | 45 |
2017 VR12 | 2018-Mar-07 | 3.8 LD | 6.3 | 285 |
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 |
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