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. | | | CO-ROTATING INTERACTION REGION: NOAA forecasters estimate a 55% chance of polar geomagnetic storms on Jan. 12th when a co-rotating interaction region (CIR) is expected to hit Earth's magnetic field. CIRs are transition zones between fast- and slow-moving solar wind streams. Solar wind plasma piles up in these regions, producing density gradients and shock waves that do a good job of sparking auroras. Aurora alerts: text or voice QUIET SUNSPOTS: Solar activity is very low. The reason is, these two sunspots are so quiet: Karzaman Ahmad took the picture on Jan. 10th from the Langkawi National Observatory in Malaysia. AR2480 (lower left) and AR2483 (upper right) are the largest sunspots on the solar disk. Neither has the type of unstable magnetic field that poses a threat for strong solar flares. As a result, the sun's X-ray output has flatlined. Energetically, these sunspots are dull. Photogenically, however, there are features of interest. The primary dark core of AR2480 is about twice as wide as Earth, which makes it an easy target for backyard solar telescopes. Indeed, Ahmad captured the photo using an ordinary 11-inch Celestron capped with a solar filter. Also, the sunspots are surrounded by thousands of granules.The sun is so hot, it literally boils. Granules are bumps on the boiling surface, much like the bumpy surface of water boiling on a hot stove. One difference: While the granules on your stove are only a few centimeters across, granules on the sun are as wide as Texas. Realtime Spaceweather Photo Gallery COLD HAS ITS REWARDS: A few days ago, the temperature in Östersund, Sweden, dropped to -24 C. "It was my favorite kind of day," says photographer Göran Strand. "The 'warm' light is just amazing to work with and often there are lots of ice crystals in the air that can produce exciting atmospheric phenomena." Like these: "The setting sun was flanked by two prominent sundogs, surrounded by a 22° halo, and split down the middle by a towering sun pillar," says Strand. The colder it gets, the more of these ice halos appear. "The coming days also looks to be really cold," he says. "My camera is ready." Realtime Spaceweather Photo Gallery 'VENETIAN BLIND' SHADOWS IN THE MIST: This week, photographer Mark Marquette got up before sunrise--not to see the planets, but rather to observe the surface of the Colorado river near Austin, Texas. The attraction was the spooky mist that rises from the water when the first rays of warming sunlight arrive after a long, cool winter's night. However, Marquette saw something he didn't expect: 'venetian blind' shadows cutting through the fog: "What causes this?" he asks. "My guess is light reflected from ripples in the river cast shadows upward in the dancing mist." Essentially, that is correct. A careful look at the waters' surface reveals organized ripples reflecting the glow of the rising sun: Sheets of light bouncing off those ripples lanced through the mist to create bands of light and dark. Atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley says the phenomenon is related to caustics--sharp and thin sheets of light produced by reflection from a wavy surface. Here is an example of caustics criss-crossing the hull of a fishing boat. "Waves and ripples on water usually produce caustic patterns," says Cowley. "Although themselves highly structured, caustics are not regular bands. So I am surprised that the shadows Marquette saw were so regular." Venetian blind shadows: beautiful and a little mysterious. Look for them the next time you encounter a spooky mist! Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery Realtime Meteor 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. 11, 2016, the network reported 7 fireballs. (6 sporadics, 1 Quadrantid) 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 11, 2016 there were 1651 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 | |