| | Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica Credit: NOAA/Ovation Planetary K-index Now: Kp= 3 quiet 24-hr max: Kp= 3 quiet explanation | more data Interplanetary Mag. Field Btotal: 7.7 nT Bz: -1.9 nT south more data: ACE, DSCOVR Updated: Today at 2351 UT Coronal Holes: 27 Aug 17 Solar wind flowing from this coronal hole could reach Earth on Sept. 1st. Credit: NASA/SDO. Noctilucent Clouds They're back! Images of noctilucent clouds from NASA's AIM spacecraft are available again. The spacecraft's orbit had recently changed, requiring a new way to point AIM's science instruments. This problem has now been solved, and "daily daisies" have returned to Spaceweather.com. Switch view: Europe, USA, Asia, Polar Updated at: 08-23-2017 16:55:04 SPACE WEATHER NOAA Forecasts | | Updated at: 2017 Aug 27 2200 UTC FLARE | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | CLASS M | 10 % | 10 % | 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: 2017 Aug 27 2200 UTC Mid-latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 10 % | 10 % | MINOR | 01 % | 05 % | SEVERE | 01 % | 01 % | High latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 15 % | 15 % | MINOR | 15 % | 15 % | SEVERE | 15 % | 15 % | | | | | | | | | | | | Lights Over Lapland is excited to announce that our Customisable Aurora Adventures are available for immediate booking! Reserve your adventure of a lifetime in Abisko National Park, Sweden today! | | | QUIET, WITH A SLIGHT CHANCE OF FLARES: Solar activity is low, and it is likely to stay that way through the weekend. NOAA forecasters say there is only a slight 15% chance of M-class solar flares for the next 24 hours. Free: Solar Flare Alerts SPRITE-Y NIGHT IN SLOVAKIA: It was a dark and stormy night. After sunset on Friday, Aug. 18th, photographer Ondrej Kralik was hiking through the Low Tatras, a mountain range in central Slovakia. He could see stars overhead, but the horizon was flashing with the impulsive glow of lightning. "I thought a storm was coming," says Kralik, who trained his camera in the direction of the flashes. Instead of capturing the downward strike of lightning, however, he saw sprites: "I quickly realized that the storm was far away, and I could see over the top of the thunderheads. Sprites were dancing along the cloudtops," says Kralik. "I saw this bright cluster of sprites with the naked eye and my camera captured it as well. Its brightness is approximately -6.7 mag, and it was located about 510 km far above southeast Germany." "In the foreground under the sprites you can see the main ridge of Low Tatras, (Chabenec 1995 m) and Kotliska (1937 m) on the left," he says. "I was lucky to witness one of the brightest sprites, but as they say, fortune favors the prepared." Sometimes called "space lightning," sprites are a true space weather phenomenon. They inhabit the upper atmosphere alongside auroras, meteors and noctilucent clouds. Some researchers believe they are linked to cosmic rays: subatomic particles from deep space striking the top of Earth's atmosphere produce secondary electrons that, in turn, kickstart sprites in the highly-charged environment above thunderstorms. The link to cosmic rays is particularly interesting at this time. For the past two years, space weather balloons have observed a steady increase in cosmic rays penetrating our atmosphere. This increase is largely due to the decline of the solar cycle. Flagging solar wind pressure and weakening sunspot magnetic fields allow more cosmic rays into the inner solar system--a trend which is expected to continue for years to come. So stay tuned for more sprites. Realtime Sprite Photo Gallery SOLAR ECLIPSE IN THE STRATOSPHERE: During the Great American Solar Eclipse on August 21st, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus and Spaceweather.com launched 11 high-altitude balloons from 5 states in the path of totality. We hoped to catch the Moon's shadow sweeping across the landscape from a vantage point in the stratosphere--and we succeeded. These pictures show the inky-black shadow of the Moon darkening a 70 mile-wide patch of Wyoming/Nebraska: The camera, a Panasonic GH4, belonged to professional photographer Josh Stansfield. He helped students launch the balloon from Ft. Laramie, Wyoming, and later processed these unique images after the payload was recovered from its landing site in Nebraska. Another Earth to Sky balloon launched from Wyoming captured a complete HD video of the Moon's shadow racing across the landscape. The launch team is processing it now, and it will be posted soon. Photography was just one reason for launching so many balloons. We also flew cosmic ray sensors that sampled atmospheric radiation over 7 states (Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri and Illinois) while temperature and pressure sensors measured the effect of the Moon's shadow on the thermal structure of the atmosphere. A first look at the data suggests that the Moon's space-cold shadow might have the power to make helium balloons explode! Processing all of the data may take days or weeks; right now we're just scratching the surface. Stay tuned for more results. Solar Eclipse Photo Gallery Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store All proceeds support hands-on STEM education Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery Realtime Space Weather 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 Aug. 27, 2017, the network reported 25 fireballs. (24 sporadics, 1 Northern delta Aquariid) 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 August 27, 2017 there were 1803 potentially hazardous asteroids. | Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) | 2017 QS16 | 2017-Aug-22 | 3.5 LD | 7.7 | 32 | 2017 PV25 | 2017-Aug-22 | 5.5 LD | 6.5 | 42 | 2017 QT1 | 2017-Aug-22 | 2.6 LD | 20.6 | 15 | 2017 QF3 | 2017-Aug-23 | 1.4 LD | 12.7 | 9 | 2017 PE | 2017-Aug-24 | 19.4 LD | 7.1 | 47 | 2017 QJ2 | 2017-Aug-25 | 9.1 LD | 20.2 | 22 | 2017 QQ17 | 2017-Aug-26 | 1 LD | 21.2 | 8 | 2017 QX1 | 2017-Aug-26 | 12.9 LD | 7 | 38 | 2017 QU1 | 2017-Aug-27 | 16.2 LD | 10.1 | 37 | 2017 PL26 | 2017-Aug-28 | 14.2 LD | 8.4 | 126 | 2017 QN1 | 2017-Aug-30 | 5.5 LD | 10.5 | 17 | 2017 QP2 | 2017-Aug-30 | 10.1 LD | 7.5 | 33 | 2017 QQ1 | 2017-Aug-31 | 4.8 LD | 10.2 | 39 | 3122 | 2017-Sep-01 | 18.5 LD | 13.5 | 5376 | 2017 QT17 | 2017-Sep-01 | 17.3 LD | 10 | 55 | 2017 OP68 | 2017-Sep-10 | 20 LD | 11.7 | 296 | 2014 RC | 2017-Sep-11 | 15.1 LD | 8.9 | 16 | 2017 PR25 | 2017-Sep-23 | 17.9 LD | 13.5 | 224 | 1989 VB | 2017-Sep-29 | 7.9 LD | 6.3 | 408 | 2012 TC4 | 2017-Oct-12 | 0.1 LD | 7.6 | 16 | 2005 TE49 | 2017-Oct-13 | 8.5 LD | 11.2 | 16 | 2013 UM9 | 2017-Oct-15 | 17 LD | 7.8 | 39 | 2006 TU7 | 2017-Oct-18 | 18.7 LD | 13.3 | 148 | 171576 | 2017-Oct-22 | 5.8 LD | 21.2 | 677 | 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 | | a proud supporter of science education and Spaceweather.com | | 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 | | the underlying science of space weather | | Beautyz for top beauty products reviews and their buying guides | | Reviews here can help you to pick up best memory foam mattresses. | | These links help Spaceweather.com stay online. Thank you to our supporters! | | | | | | | | | | | | ©2017 Spaceweather.com. All rights reserved. This site is penned daily by Dr. Tony Phillips. | |