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CHANCE OF MAGNETIC STORMS THIS WEEK: NOAA forecasters say there is a 45% chance of polar geomagnetic storms on Oct. 18th and 19th when Earth enters a new stream of solar wind. The New Moon will provide a velvety-dark backdrop for auroras around the Arctic Circle. Free: Aurora Alerts.
HURRICANE + DESERT DUST = WEIRD SKIES: For the past two days, sky watchers in parts of Europe have reported strange colors in the daytime sky. "There's a red glow overhead and the sun looks like a big Orange," says Vincent Phillips, who sends this picture from Hale village near Liverpool UK:
"This is apparently due to ex-hurricane Ophelia, which dragged up tropical air and dust from the Sahara desert when it battered the western UK earlier this week," says Phillips. "The air is full of fine dust. We had several inbound flights into Liverpool Airport declare emergencies after strange smells in cockpits of aircraft yesterday."
Atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley adds his own report: "I was driving near London yesterday afternoon and I experienced the strange skies at first hand. At first the sky was yellowish orange with the sun showing through as a blurred and lurid red. But quite unlike a sunset color. Gradually the sun was fully obscured and at 3pm headlights were needed. The sky was an unearthly yellow red."
"Given that over the last few days the U.K. has had unseasonably high temperatures and southerly winds associated partly with Ophelia, I think that fine dust/sand carried from the Sahara was the culprit," says Cowley.
Similar reports are coming in from the Netherlands, Germany, and other parts of the UK, as forest fires in the Iberian peninsula add their ash to the desert dust, intensifying the phenomenon. Browse the realtime photo gallery for sightings.
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
SPOTLESS SUN SPARKS BRIGHT AURORAS: The sun just did something ironic. For a whole week, Oct. 9th - 15th, the face of the sun was utterly blank. There were no sunspots and no solar flares; NOAA classified solar activity as "very low." At the same time, space weather was remarkably stormy. From Oct. 11th through 15th, not a single day went by without a geomagnetic storm. This is what the sky looked like outside Fairbanks, Alaska, on Oct. 12th:
"It was an all-night, all-sky display that gave me 'aurora neck,' a stiff neck from spending 10 straight hours looking up!" says Todd Salat, who took the picture. "The reflection from Olnes Pond doubled our viewing pleasure."
Similar stories poured in from Sweden, Iceland, Norway, Canada, and Finland. In the USA, Northern Lights descended as far south as Michigan, Minnesota, Wyoming, and Washington--all without a single sunspot.
What happened? This:
This is a coronal hole, a place in the sun's atmosphere where the magnetic field peels back and allows solar wind to escape. Solar wind spewing from this hole hit Earth's magnetic field on Oct. 11th. It mimicked the effect of a CME (a cloud of gas hurled toward us by an exploding sunspot), rattling our planet's magnetic field and lighting up polar regions with beautiful lights. Five days of G1- and G2-class geomagnetic storms ensued.
In Preston, England, aerospace engineer Stuart Green captured the "rattling" of Earth's magnetic field on his backyard magnetometer, buried a half-meter beneath the surface of his garden. Click on the image to see the full 5 days of geomagnetic storming:
"Passing in two main waves, solar wind flowing from the coronal hole sparked beautiful auroras around both poles and clearly disturbed our local magnetic field," he says. "The activity now appears to be subsiding ahead of the next wave heading our way in the coming days."
Coronal holes are present throughout the solar cycle, even during Solar Minimum when sunspots are scarce, and they are a key reason why space weather never stops. Stay tuned for more!
Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
PYRAMID FLIES THROUGH SOLAR STORM: On Sept. 10, 2017, giant sunspot AR2673 exploded, producing an X8-class solar flare. The powerful blast accelerated a stream of electrons and protons toward Earth. By the time the particles arrived, this crystal pyramid was waiting for them at the top of Earth's atmosphere:
What was it doing up there? It hitched a ride onboard a space weather balloon, launched by the students of Earth to Sky Calculus to measure radiation from the flare. In addition to the pyramid (flown for fundraising), the balloon's payload carried an array of X-ray/gamma-ray detectors, cameras, temperature/pressure sensors, GPS altimeters and, of course, extra pyramids.
You can have one for $119.95. Each pyramid comes with a unique gift card showing the crystal floating at the top of Earth's atmosphere. 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 Oct. 17, 2017, the network reported 53 fireballs.
(30 sporadics, 12 Orionids, 4 epsilon Geminids, 4 Southern Taurids, 2 October delta Aurigids, 1 Leonis Minorid)
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 October 17, 2017 there were 1847 potentially hazardous asteroids.
|
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
2017 RV1 | 2017-Oct-12 | 17.8 LD | 10.9 | 344 |
2012 TC4 | 2017-Oct-12 | 0.1 LD | 7.6 | 16 |
2017 TZ5 | 2017-Oct-12 | 7 LD | 9.7 | 16 |
2017 TT1 | 2017-Oct-13 | 2.5 LD | 10.7 | 13 |
2017 TK2 | 2017-Oct-13 | 4.9 LD | 11.6 | 25 |
2017 TU5 | 2017-Oct-13 | 6.9 LD | 7.7 | 13 |
2017 UE | 2017-Oct-13 | 4.4 LD | 8.4 | 15 |
2017 TU1 | 2017-Oct-13 | 5.2 LD | 10.4 | 21 |
2005 TE49 | 2017-Oct-13 | 8.5 LD | 11.2 | 16 |
2017 TJ4 | 2017-Oct-13 | 10.2 LD | 7.2 | 35 |
2017 TV1 | 2017-Oct-14 | 5.6 LD | 10.4 | 20 |
2017 UD | 2017-Oct-14 | 3.9 LD | 15.7 | 27 |
2017 UF | 2017-Oct-15 | 1 LD | 23.1 | 10 |
2017 UC | 2017-Oct-15 | 13.3 LD | 5.4 | 20 |
2013 UM9 | 2017-Oct-15 | 17 LD | 7.8 | 39 |
2017 TK4 | 2017-Oct-15 | 4.2 LD | 4.2 | 11 |
2017 TH5 | 2017-Oct-16 | 0.3 LD | 12.1 | 8 |
2017 TU3 | 2017-Oct-17 | 8.2 LD | 12 | 41 |
2017 TE5 | 2017-Oct-17 | 1.3 LD | 10.9 | 24 |
2017 UA | 2017-Oct-17 | 1.2 LD | 8 | 7 |
2017 TW5 | 2017-Oct-17 | 3.1 LD | 15.5 | 14 |
2017 TX5 | 2017-Oct-18 | 4.6 LD | 10.2 | 24 |
2017 TD5 | 2017-Oct-18 | 11.2 LD | 18.7 | 36 |
2006 TU7 | 2017-Oct-18 | 18.7 LD | 13.3 | 148 |
2017 UJ | 2017-Oct-19 | 2.8 LD | 12 | 29 |
2017 TG2 | 2017-Oct-19 | 19.9 LD | 19.2 | 168 |
2017 TD6 | 2017-Oct-19 | 0.5 LD | 9.2 | 13 |
2017 TA6 | 2017-Oct-19 | 6.7 LD | 4.4 | 18 |
2017 UG | 2017-Oct-20 | 4.3 LD | 10.6 | 10 |
2017 SY20 | 2017-Oct-20 | 19 LD | 7.2 | 49 |
2017 TO2 | 2017-Oct-20 | 13.9 LD | 13.7 | 80 |
2017 SH14 | 2017-Oct-20 | 15.4 LD | 6.9 | 45 |
2017 TG4 | 2017-Oct-21 | 4.8 LD | 11.4 | 51 |
2017 TC5 | 2017-Oct-21 | 15.6 LD | 8.3 | 20 |
2017 TV5 | 2017-Oct-22 | 3.4 LD | 10.7 | 14 |
171576 | 2017-Oct-22 | 5.8 LD | 21.2 | 677 |
2017 TQ5 | 2017-Oct-22 | 5.5 LD | 5.8 | 11 |
2017 TQ4 | 2017-Oct-22 | 11.2 LD | 11 | 39 |
2017 TK6 | 2017-Oct-23 | 19.3 LD | 11.7 | 50 |
2017 UH | 2017-Oct-25 | 15.1 LD | 10.9 | 19 |
2017 TL4 | 2017-Oct-25 | 14.7 LD | 11.4 | 49 |
2017 TZ4 | 2017-Oct-31 | 19.3 LD | 13.1 | 102 |
2003 UV11 | 2017-Oct-31 | 15 LD | 24.5 | 447 |
2017 TZ3 | 2017-Nov-09 | 10.4 LD | 8.7 | 33 |
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 |
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 |
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