You are viewing the page for Apr. 26, 2015
  Select another date:
<<back forward>>
SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids Internet Shopping Sites high quality binoculars excellent weather stations all-metal reflector telescopes rotatable microscopes
 
Solar wind
speed: 305.8 km/sec
density: 3.9 protons/cm3
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 2349 UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: C1
2057 UT Apr26
24-hr: C1
2057 UT Apr26
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 2300 UT
Daily Sun: 26 Apr 15
Sunspot AR2331 has a 'beta-gamma' magnetic field that harbors energy for M-class solar flares. Credit: SDO/HMI

Sunspot number: 77
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 26 Apr 2015

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 0 days
2015 total: 0 days (0%)

2014 total: 1 day (<1%)
2013 total: 0 days (0%)
2012 total: 0 days (0%)
2011 total: 2 days (<1%)
2010 total: 51 days (14%)
2009 total: 260 days (71%)

Updated 26 Apr 2015


The Radio Sun
10.7 cm flux: 126 sfu
explanation | more data
Updated 26 Apr 2015

Current Auroral Oval:
Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica
Credit: NOAA/Ovation
Planetary K-index
Now: Kp= 0 quiet
24-hr max: Kp= 1
quiet
explanation | more data
Interplanetary Mag. Field
Btotal: 4.3 nT
Bz: 0.1 nT south
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 2349 UT
Coronal Holes: 26 Apr 15

There are no large coronal holes on the Earthside of the sun. Credit: SDO/AIA.
Noctilucent Clouds The southern season for NLCs has come to an end. The last clouds were observed by NASA's AIM spacecraft on Feb. 20, 2015. Now attention shifts to the northern hemisphere, where the first clouds of 2015 should appear in mid-May.
Switch view: Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctic Penninsula, East Antarctica, Polar
Updated at:
SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts
Updated at: 2015 Apr 26 2200 UTC
FLARE
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
CLASS M
05 %
05 %
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: 2015 Apr 26 2200 UTC
Mid-latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
10 %
10 %
MINOR
01 %
01 %
SEVERE
01 %
01 %
High latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
20 %
20 %
MINOR
20 %
20 %
SEVERE
10 %
10 %
 
Sunday, Apr. 26, 2015
What's up in space
 

Learn to photograph Northern Lights like a pro. Sign up for Peter Rosen's Aurora Photo Courses in Abisko National Park.

 
Lapland tours

QUIET WITH A SLIGHT CHANCE OF FLARES: Solar activity is low, but one sunspot could break the quiet. AR2331 has a 'beta-gamma' magnetic field that harbors energy for M-class flares. NOAA forecasters estimate a 10% chance of such an eruption on April 26th. Solar flare alerts: text, voice.

MAGNETIC FILAMENT: For the 5th day in a row, amateur astronomers around the world are monitoring a filament of magnetism snaking over the sun's northeastern limb. Sergio Castillo photographed the structure on April 26th from his backyard observatory in Corona, CA:

.

"After several days of poor weather, a break in the clouds finally allowed me to photograph this awesome filament that everyone is talking about," says Castillo. "I'm glad because it is truly an amazing structure. "

Filled with hot-glowing plasma, the filament is more than 5 times taller than Earth and 25 times as long. These dimensions make it an easy target for backyard solar telescopes. The possibility of an eruption adds motivation to look: Bushy solar filaments like this one often become unstable and explode. Debris falling to the sun's surface can produce secondary explosions called Hyder flares--a type of flare that happens without an underlying sunspot.

SpaceWeather Realtime Photo Gallery

VOLCANIC BULLS-EYE: When Chile's Calbuco volcano erupted on April 22nd, plumes of ash and volcanic gas shot more than 50,000 ft above Earth's surface. Orbiting overhead in the darkness of space, the NOAA/NASA Suomi NPP satellite observed the ripple effect of the blast. Night had fallen over the volcano during the early hours of April 23rd when a low-light camera on the satellite photographed a "bulls-eye" pattern of waves centered on the rising plume:

Ripples like these have been observed before, high above powerful thunderstorms. They are called "gravity waves"--essentially, waves of pressure and temperature excited by the upward motion of air. (Gravity does not vary inside the waves; the waves get their name from the fact that gravity acts as a vertical restoring force that tries to restore equilibrium to up-and-down moving air.)

The waves are visible because they glow. Readers of spaceweather.com have seen the phenomenon before--it's called "airglow." Airglow is caused by an assortment of chemical reactions in the upper atmosphere driven mainly by solar ultraviolet radiation. Gravity waves rippling away from the central axis of a thunderstorm or, in this case, a volcano, cause temperature and density perturbations in the upper atmosphere. Those perturbations alter the chemical reaction rates of airglow, leading to more-bright or less-bright bands depending on whether the rates are boosted or diminished, respectively.

Airglow occurs about 100 km above Earth's surface alongside meteors, noctilucent clouds and even some auroras. This makes airglow--and the bullseye above Calbuco--a true space weather phenomenon.

Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery

SPACE YEAST MAKES SPACE BREAD: Thought experiment: Suppose you flew a packet of baker's yeast high above Earth's surface, to the edge of space itself, and exposed the microbes to a blast of cosmic rays. Then you made some bread. How would it taste? "Delicious," reports Eileen Weingram of Highland Lakes, New Jersey, who actually did the experiment:

On March 17th, during the strongest geomagnetic storm of the current solar cycle, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus flew a Space Weather Buoy to the stratosphere. Along with radiation detectors and other sensors, the payload carried packets of brewer's and baker's yeast. En route to the stratosphere, the microbes experienced temperatures as low as -63 C and cosmic ray doses 40x Earth-normal.

To support the students' research, Eileen Weingram bought a packet of the baker's yeast. "It made a huge loaf of bread," she says. "Very yummy."

If this story whets your appetite, you can bake some "space bread" of your own. Packets of yeast are still available for only $49.95. Contact Dr. Tony Phillips to place your order--and let the baking begin! All sales support high altitude balloon flights to measure the effect of solar storms on Earth's atmosphere.

Realtime Meteor Photo Gallery


Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery


Realtime Comet Photo Gallery


  All Sky Fireball Network

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 Apr. 26, 2015, the network reported 3 fireballs.
(3 sporadics)

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]

  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.
On April 26, 2015 there were potentially hazardous asteroids.
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:
Asteroid
Date(UT)
Miss Distance
Size
2015 HW10
Apr 23
9.7 LD
31 m
2015 HQ11
Apr 25
1.3 LD
16 m
2015 HE10
Apr 25
8 LD
26 m
2015 HO116
Apr 27
1.7 LD
35 m
2015 GB14
Apr 28
9 LD
37 m
2015 HD10
Apr 29
1.6 LD
17 m
2015 HS11
May 1
7.1 LD
15 m
5381 Sekhmet
May 17
62.8 LD
2.1 km
2015 HT9
May 25
12.2 LD
24 m
2005 XL80
Jun 4
38.1 LD
1.0 km
2012 XB112
Jun 11
10.1 LD
2 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 web links
NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center
  The official U.S. government space weather bureau
Atmospheric Optics
  The first place to look for information about sundogs, pillars, rainbows and related phenomena.
Solar Dynamics Observatory
  Researchers call it a "Hubble for the sun." SDO is the most advanced solar observatory ever.
STEREO
  3D views of the sun from NASA's Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory
Solar and Heliospheric Observatory
  Realtime and archival images of the Sun from SOHO.
Daily Sunspot Summaries
  from the NOAA Space Environment Center
Heliophysics
  the underlying science of space weather
Space Weather Alerts
   
  more links...
©2015 Spaceweather.com. All rights reserved. This site is penned daily by Dr. Tony Phillips.
©2019 Spaceweather.com. All rights reserved.