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QUIET SUN: With no sunspots actively flaring, the sun has grown quiet. NOAA forecasters put the odds of an X-flare today at no more than 1%. Solar flare alerts: text, voice
GEMINID METEOR SHOWER: Earth is moving deeper into the debris stream of rock comet 3200 Phaethon, source of the annual Geminid meteor shower. This morning in the countryside near Tavistock, Ontario, the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar (CMOR) detected a "hot spot" in the sky where Geminid meteoroids are hitting Earth's atmosphere at 78,000 mph:
Note the position of the Moon in the radar sky map. To human eyes, most Geminid activity would have been invisible, wiped out by glare from the nearby Moon. The Canadian radar is unaffected by moonlight, however, so it was able to pinpoint the Geminid radiant anyway.
Visibility will improve in the nights ahead as the Moon wanes and Earth moves deeper into the Geminid debris stream. Forecasters expect the shower to peak on Dec. 13-14 with as many as 120 meteors per hour. Wherever you live, the best time to look is during the hours between midnight and dawn on Saturday and Sunday.
Got clouds? No problem. You can still experience the Geminids by listening for their echoes in this live audio stream from Spaceweather.com's forward scatter meteor radar.
Realtime Meteor Photo Gallery
GROWING PERIL FOR ASTRONAUTS? NASA's successful test flight of Orion on Dec. 5th heralds a renewed capability to send astronauts into deep space. A paper just published in the journal Space Weather, however, points out a growing peril to future deep space explorers: cosmic rays. The title of the article, penned by Nathan Schwadron of the University of New Hampshire and colleagues from seven other institutions, asks the provocative question, "Does the worsening galactic cosmic ray environment preclude manned deep space exploration?" Using data from a cosmic ray telescope onboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, they conclude that while increasing fluxes of cosmic rays "are not a show stopper for long duration missions (e.g., to the Moon, an asteroid, or Mars), galactic cosmic radiation remains a significant and worsening factor that limits mission durations." This figure from their paper shows the number of days a 30 year old astronaut can spend in interplanetary space before they reach their career limit in radiation exposure:
According to the plot, in the year 2014, a 30 year old male flying in a spaceship with 10 g/cm2 of aluminum shielding could spend approximately 700 days in deep space before they reach their radiation dose limit. The same astronaut in the early 1990s could have spent 1000 days in space.
What's going on? Cosmic rays are intensifying. Galactic cosmic rays are a mixture of high-energy photons and subatomic particles accelerated to near-light speed by violent events such as supernova explosions. Astronauts are protected from cosmic rays in part by the sun: solar magnetic fields and the solar wind combine to create a porous 'shield' that fends off energetic particles from outside the solar system. The problem is, as the authors note, "The sun and its solar wind are currently exhibiting extremely low densities and magnetic field strengths, representing states that have never been observed during the Space Age. As a result of the remarkably weak solar activity, we have also observed the highest fluxes of cosmic rays in the Space Age."
The shielding action of the sun is strongest during solar maximum and weakest during solar minimum--hence the 11-year rhythm of the mission duration plot. At the moment we are experiencing Solar Max, which should be a good time for astronauts to fly--but it's not a good time. The solar maximum of 2011-2014 is the weakest in a century, allowing unusual numbers of cosmic rays to penetrate the solar system.
This situation could become even worse if, as some researchers suspect, the sun is entering a long-term phase of the solar cycle characterized by relatively weak maxima and deep, extended minima. In such a future, feeble solar magnetic fields would do an extra-poor job keeping cosmic rays at bay, further reducing the number of days astronauts can travel far from Earth.
To learn more about this interesting research, read the complete article in the online edition of Space Weather.
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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 Dec. 9, 2014, the network reported 23 fireballs.
(17 sporadics, 5 sigma Hydrids, 1 Geminid)
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 December 9, 2014 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 |