| | Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica Credit: NOAA/Ovation Planetary K-index Now: Kp= 3 quiet 24-hr max: Kp= 4 unsettled explanation | more data Interplanetary Mag. Field Btotal: 3.2 nT Bz: 1.0 nT north more data: ACE, DSCOVR Updated: Today at 2349 UT Coronal Holes: 10 Nov 17 Earth is inside a stream of solar wind flowing from this wide northern coronal hole. Credit: SDO/AIA Noctilucent Clouds Latest images from NASA's AIM spacecraft show that the 2017 northern summer season for noctilucent clouds has finished. Switch view: Europe, USA, Asia, Polar Updated at: 09-03-2017 01:55:03 SPACE WEATHER NOAA Forecasts | | Updated at: 2017 Nov 10 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: 2017 Nov 10 2200 UTC Mid-latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 35 % | 20 % | MINOR | 25 % | 05 % | SEVERE | 05 % | 01 % | High latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 15 % | 15 % | MINOR | 25 % | 20 % | SEVERE | 45 % | 20 % | | | | | | | | | | | | Lights Over Lapland is excited to announce that our Customizable Aurora Adventures are available for immediate booking! Reserve your adventure of a lifetime in Abisko National Park, Sweden today! | | | VENUS-JUPITER CONJUNCTION: Set your alarm for dawn. Venus and Jupiter are about to have a spectacular conjunction in the early morning sky. On Nov. 13th, the two bright planets will converge just ahead of the rising sun only 0.3 degrees apart--so close that you can hide them together behind an outstretched pinky finger. A small telescope will show both planetary disks in the field of view at the same time. That's worth waking up for. Sky maps: Nov. 12, 13, 14. SOLAR WIND SPARKS AURORAS: For the 4th day in a row, Earth is inside a stream of solar wind flowing from a wide hole in the sun's atmosphere. Last night the action of this gaseous material from our star sparked a veritable explosion of auroras over Narvik, Norway. Photographer Oliver Wright witnessed the display and says "it was the brightest and fastest corona I have seen in my four years as an aurora tour guide." A "corona" is a form of aurora borealis that seems to rain down on observers from directly overheard. It is widely regarded as the holy grail of aurora watching--a kind of "bucket list" display. The corona over Narvik was moving so fast, it was a bit blurred in Wright's photo even with a lightning-fast 0.25 second exposure. "This just goes to show that there are still plenty of opportunities to see amazing auroras despite the fact that we are close to Solar Minimum," says Wright, whose adventures did not end with the light show: "On the way back from the photo shoot, I had to stop for a full grown male moose with antlers to move off the road!" Around the Arctic Circle, more auroras are in the offing. The solar wind continues to blow faster than 600 km/s, and NOAA forecasters say there is a 50% chance of G1-class geomagnetic storms on Nov. 10th. Free: Aurora Alerts. Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery SPACE WEATHER BALLOONING OVER MEXICO: For the rest of this week, Spaceweather.com is reporting from Mexico. We're here to launch the first-ever space weather balloon over this country, adding a new low-laltitude outpost to our growing global balloon network: Our collaborators are Prof. Juan Sumaya of the Universidad Autonoma del Estado de México and a group of his physics students. Together we will launch balloons over Mexico on Nov. 10th and 11th to measure cosmic radiation including X-rays, gamma-rays and neutrons. On Nov.11th, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus will launch an identical payload from the Sierra Nevada mountains near Bishop, California, for comparison. Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery SOLAR ECLIPSE CRYSTAL PYRAMID: On Aug. 21, 2017, during the Great American Solar Eclipse, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched 11 space weather balloons from the path of totality. The armada of balloons soared into the stratosphere, touching the shadow of the Moon more than 100,000 feet above Earth's surface. As a fundraiser, one of the balloons carried this pyramid, and you can have it for $139.95: With the sun, Earth, and Moon perfectly aligned, the faces of the 5-sided crystal caught the reflection of the eclipsed sun while wrapped in the space-cold shadow of our planet's gray cratered companion. Watch the video! The payload capsule contained more crystals just like it. Each pyramid comes with a unique gift card showing the crystal floating at the top of Earth's atmosphere and passing through the Moon's shadow. The interior of the card tells the story of the flight and confirms that this gift has been to the edge of space and back again. 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 Nov. 10, 2017, the network reported 19 fireballs. (15 sporadics, 3 Northern Taurids, 1 chi Taurid) 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 November 10, 2017 there were 1853 potentially hazardous asteroids. | Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) | 2017 VE | 2017-Nov-04 | 0.9 LD | 14.1 | 17 | 2017 UX42 | 2017-Nov-05 | 10.5 LD | 2.6 | 7 | 2017 US7 | 2017-Nov-05 | 7.1 LD | 8.8 | 13 | 2017 UJ7 | 2017-Nov-05 | 16.8 LD | 13 | 28 | 2017 UJ43 | 2017-Nov-05 | 4.6 LD | 7.3 | 10 | 2013 BD74 | 2017-Nov-06 | 10.6 LD | 9 | 51 | 2017 TZ3 | 2017-Nov-09 | 10.3 LD | 8.7 | 39 | 2017 VC | 2017-Nov-10 | 9.9 LD | 7.3 | 87 | 444584 | 2017-Nov-17 | 8.7 LD | 14.8 | 324 | 2008 WM61 | 2017-Dec-03 | 3.8 LD | 4.7 | 16 | 2015 XX169 | 2017-Dec-14 | 9.7 LD | 6.3 | 11 | 2011 YD29 | 2017-Dec-19 | 17.6 LD | 7.7 | 20 | 2006 XY | 2017-Dec-20 | 6.5 LD | 5 | 56 | 2017 TS3 | 2017-Dec-22 | 18.2 LD | 10.2 | 131 | 418849 | 2017-Dec-22 | 15.3 LD | 17.4 | 257 | 2015 YQ1 | 2017-Dec-22 | 17.3 LD | 11.1 | 9 | 2017 QL33 | 2017-Dec-30 | 13.3 LD | 8.2 | 191 | 2015 RT1 | 2018-Jan-02 | 19.7 LD | 9 | 30 | 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. | |