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SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids
SPACE WEATHER
Current conditions
Solar wind
speed: 361.9 km/sec
density: 6.7 protons/cm3
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 2244 UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: A0
1905 UT Jun24
24-hr: A0
1905 UT Jun24
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 2240 UT
Daily Sun: 24 Jun 08
The sun is blank--no sunspots. Credit: SOHO/MDI
Sunspot number: 0
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 22 June 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= 2 quiet
24-hr max: Kp= 2
quiet
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: 8.6 nT
Bz: 5 nT south
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 2246 UT
Coronal Holes:
A solar wind stream flowing from the indicated coronal hole should reach Earth on June 26th or 27th. Credit: SOHO Extreme UV Telescope
SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts
Updated at: 2008 Jun 24 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 Jun 24 2203 UTC
Mid-latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
10 %
10 %
MINOR
05 %
05 %
SEVERE
01 %
01 %
High latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
10 %
10 %
MINOR
05 %
05 %
SEVERE
01 %
01 %
What's up in Space
June 24, 2008
AURORA ALERTS: Did you miss the Northern Lights of June 14th? Next time get a wake-up call from Space Weather PHONE.  

APOLLO RELIC REVEALS ITS SECRETS: In 1967, Surveyor 3 landed on the Moon. Two years later, in 1969, Apollo astronauts visited the little unmanned spacecraft and brought pieces of it back home to Earth. Now, in 2008, the scoop from Surveyor's robotic arm is teaching researchers some long-lost secrets: full story.

SPACE STATION TRANSIT: Yesterday, in Sonnenbuehl-Genkingen, Germany, amateur astronomer Martin Wagner looked woefully out the window at his garden. Rain was falling, thunder crashed, and clouds blanketed the sun. If this continued, he worried, he was going to miss a very special event.

Namely, this:

"The clouds parted just in time for me to photograph the International Space Station passing in front of the sun," says Wagner. "I used a solar-filtered 10-inch telescope and a Canon EOS 400D to make this 1/4000s exposure. After the transit it became cloudy again, so this was a lucky shot!"

The snapshot crisply captures the station's newly-expanded silhouette: solar wings almost as wide as football field, a science lab the size of a Greyhound bus (Kibo), and three docked spaceships from Europe (Jules Verne) and Russia (Progress 29 and Soyuz TMA-12). Add them all together and you have one beautiful sunspot.

more transits: from Dirk Lucius of Leer, Germany; from E. Signorelli, C. Ryder and J. Stetson of Ocean Park, Maine;

PANCAKES, SOME FLIPPED: On June 15th, Danilo Linhares photographed the sun setting behind apartments in his hometown, Curitiba, Brazil. Later when he looked at the pictures, he discovered that a pancake-thin slice of sun had detached from the rest of the star. Solar System Calamity!? No, it was just a mirage:


Photo details: Celestron C8, Canon 350D, ISO 100, 1/2000s exposure

Atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley explains: "Mirages can slice up the sun into stacked pancakes when it is near the horizon and a slice near the top might turn, like this one, into a green flash. The mirages can flip the pancakes too so that two descend and set while a third rises. Layers of air at unusual temperatures produce these sunset spectacles for us."

more mirages: from Jeff Hapeman of Santa Monica, CA; from Mark Parrish of West Beach, Selsey UK; from Mila Zinkova of San Francisco, California;


May 2008 Aurora Gallery
[Aurora Alerts] [Night-sky Cameras]

       
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 June 24, 2008, there were 959 potentially hazardous asteroids.
June-July 2008 Earth-asteroid encounters:
Asteroid
Date(UT)
Miss Distance
Mag.
Size
2008 KO
June 1
4.4 LD
18
60 m
2008 KT
June 3
3.3 LD
20
9 m
2008 LB
June 9
3.3 LD
17
26 m
2008 LG2
June 13
9.2 LD
19
36 m
2008 LC
June 17
9.8 LD
18
55 m
2008 KN11
June 22
9.0 LD
18
110 m
2000 AD205
June 26
54 LD
17
800 m
1999 VU
June 29
65 LD
16
1.6 km
2008 BT18
July 14
5.9 LD
13
1.0 km
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.
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