You are viewing the page for Mar. 13, 2008
  Select another date:
<<back forward>>
SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids
SPACE WEATHER
Current conditions
Solar wind
speed: 582.0 km/sec
density: 1.2 protons/cm3
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 2247 UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: A0
2040 UT Mar13
24-hr: A0
2040 UT Mar13
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 2245 UT
Daily Sun: 13 Mar 08
The sun is blank--no sunspots. Credit: SOHO/MDI
Sunspot number: 0
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 13 Mar 2008
Far side of the Sun:
This holographic image reveals no sunspots on the far side of the sun. Image credit: SOHO/MDI
Planetary K-index
Now: Kp= 3 quiet
24-hr max: Kp= 4
unsettled
explanation | more data
Current Auroral Oval:

Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica
Credit: NOAA/POES
What is the auroral oval?
Interplanetary Mag. Field
Btotal: 4.5 nT
Bz: 3.0 nT north
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 2247 UT
Coronal Holes:
Earth is inside a solar wind stream flowing from the indicated coronal hole. Credit:SOHO Extreme UV Telescope
SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts
Updated at: 2008 Mar 13 2203 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: 2008 Mar 13 2203 UTC
Mid-latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
25 %
10 %
MINOR
05 %
05 %
SEVERE
01 %
01 %
High latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
30 %
10 %
MINOR
10 %
05 %
SEVERE
05 %
01 %

What's up in Space
March 13, 2008
Where's Saturn? Is that a UFO--or the ISS? What's the name of that star? Get the answers from mySKY--a fun new astronomy helper from Meade.   mySKY

PREPARE FOR PI DAY: Tomorrow, March 14th (3.14) is day--so get ready to celebrate a most compelling and mysterious constant of Nature. Pi appears in equations describing the orbits of planets, the colors of auroras, the structure of DNA. It's part of the fabric of our Universe.

Humans have been struggling to calculate for thousands of years. Divide the circumference of a circle by its diameter; the ratio is . Sounds simple, but the devil is in the digits. While the value of is finite (a smidgen more than 3), the decimal number is infinitely long:

3.1415926535897932384626433832795
02884197169399375105820974944592307
81640628620899862803482534211706...more

Supercomputers have succeeded in calculating more than 200 billion digits and they're still crunching. The weirdest way to compute : throw needles at a table or frozen hot dogs on the floor. Party time!

RUSSIAN AIRSPACE: Last week, on March 8th, spaceweather reader Alan Cheung was drifting to sleep onboard a long night flight from Hong Kong to New York when a solar wind stream hit Earth. He opened his eyes, turned to the window and saw this:


Photo details: Canon EOS 20D, ISO800, 10-20s exposure.

"We were above the Arctic Circle cruising through Russian airspace at 33100 ft. The auroras danced around us for more than 30 minutes until the sun came up," he says. "The pictures are sort of blurry because the aircraft was moving and I didn't have a tripod. Nevertheless I hope it gives everyone a different view of auroras from the sky."

Polar flyers should keep an eye out the window for more auroras tonight. The solar wind continues to blow and NOAA forecasters expect a 40% chance of geomagnetic activity at high latitudes..

March 2008 Aurora Gallery
[aurora alerts] [night-sky cameras]

UPSIDE DOWN WORLD: With the approach of northern spring, icicles are starting to melt. Find one, examine the tip, and behold--an upside down world:

Photographer Lois Reinert sends this picture and others from Tracy, Minnesota. "The water drop acts like a convex lens and inverts any scenery in the background. Images in these droplets are always fun to observe." But look quickly, because you know what happens next!

more images: from Iain Petrie of London, England

Near-Earth Asteroids
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. [comment]
On March 13, 2008 there were 943 potentially hazardous asteroids.
March 2008 Earth-asteroid encounters:
Asteroid
Date(UT)
Miss Distance
Mag.
Size
2008 DH5
Mar. 5
7.1 LD
18
60 m
2008 EZ7
Mar. 9
0.4 LD
18
18 m
2008 ED8
Mar. 10
1.4 LD
12
64 m
1620 Geographos
Mar. 17
49 LD
13
3 km
2003 FY6
Mar. 21
6.3 LD
15
145 m
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.
Essential Links
NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center
  The official U.S. government bureau for real-time monitoring of solar and geophysical events, research in solar-terrestrial physics, and forecasting solar and geophysical disturbances.
Atmospheric Optics
  The first place to look for information about sundogs, pillars, rainbows and related phenomena.
Solar and Heliospheric Observatory
  Realtime and archival images of the Sun from SOHO.
Daily Sunspot Summaries
  From the NOAA Space Environment Center
Current Solar Images
  from the National Solar Data Analysis Center
  more links...
©2008, SpaceWeather.com -- This site is penned daily by Dr. Tony Phillips.
©2019 Spaceweather.com. All rights reserved.