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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: 398.2 km/sec
density: 1.2 protons/cm3
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 2346 UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: A0
2335 UT Mar30
24-hr: A0
0550 UT Mar30
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 2340 UT
Daily Sun: 30 Mar 09
The sun is blank--no sunspots. Credit: SOHO/MDI

more images: from Larry Alvarez of Flower Mound, Texas
Sunspot number: 0
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 28 Mar. 2009
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= 1 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: 1.8 nT
Bz: 0.6 nT north
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 2347 UT
Coronal Holes:
There are no large coronal holes on the Earth-facing side of the sun. Credit: SOHO Extreme UV Telescope
SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts
Updated at: 2009 Mar 30 2201 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: 2009 Mar 30 2201 UTC
Mid-latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
05 %
05 %
MINOR
01 %
01 %
SEVERE
01 %
01 %
High latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
10 %
10 %
MINOR
01 %
01 %
SEVERE
01 %
01 %
What's up in Space
March 30, 2009

AURORA ALERT: Did you sleep through the Northern Lights? Next time get a wake-up call: Spaceweather PHONE.

 

ATLANTIC COAST FIREBALL: Last night, March 29th around 9:45 pm EDT, people along the Atlantic coast of the USA from Maryland to North Carolina witnessed bright lights in the sky and heard thunderous booms. It was almost certainly a meteoritic bolide--a random asteroid hitting Earth's atmosphere and exploding in flight. Another possibility is being discussed: A spent Russian rocket body reentered the atmosphere on March 29th. According to data published by US Strategic Command, however, the rocket reentered near Taiwan (24° N, 125° E) more than two hours after the Atlantic Coast event. A natural meteor remains the most likely explanation. Stay tuned for updates and more eyewitness reports.

VOLCANIC CLOUDS IN MOTION: Alaska's Mt. Redoubt volcano has erupted at least 19 times since March 22nd, and several of the larger blasts have hurled plumes of ash and gas into the lower stratosphere. The GOME-2 (Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment) sensor onboard Europe's MetOp-A satellite is tracking Mt. Redoubt's sulfur dioxide clouds, colored red in this 5-day animation:


Click to view a full-sized animation with labels

The sequence begins on March 25th and ends on the 29th. One cloud has just crossed North America en route to Europe; a second cloud is leaving Alaska on the same east-west track. The last time an Alaskan volcano blew its top (Kasatochi in 2008), clouds like these caused fantastic sunsets around the northern hemisphere. More could be in the offing. If you live along the SO2 ground track, keep an eye on the twilight sky for signs of Redoubt.

UPDATE: Flying photographer Brian Whittaker has spotted one of these clouds from an airplane 39,000 ft above the Canadian Rockies. Click here for his account and a spectacular photo.

SOLAR ACTIVITY: With no sunspots to break the monotony, the face of the sun has been blank and quiet for nearly a month. The edge of the sun is another matter. "There are plenty of prominences dancing around the solar limb," reports Pete Lawrence, who sends this picture from his backyard observatory in Selsey, UK:

Prominences are clouds of hydrogen held aloft by solar magnetic fields. They are in constant motion, shape-shifting from one exposure to the next. "Yesterday, I photographed a prominence that looked like a giant tidal wave," says Alan Friedman of Buffalo, New York. "The sun was ablaze with [such dynamic forms]."

Readers, if you have a solar telescope, point it at the limb; that's where the action is.

more images: from Robert Arnold of Isle of Skye, Scotland; from Franck Charlier of Marines, Val d'Oise, France; from Mike Strieber of Las Vegas, Nevada;; from Monty Leventhal of Sydney Australia; from Sylvain Weiller of Saint Rémy lès Chevreuse, France; from Cai-Uso Wohler of Bispingen, Germany


UPDATED: March 2009 Aurora Gallery
[previous Marches: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002]


Explore the Sunspot Cycle

       
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 March 30, 2009 there were 1049 potentially hazardous asteroids.
March 2009 Earth-asteroid encounters:
Asteroid
Date(UT)
Miss Distance
Mag.
Size
2009 DS43
Mar. 1
6.9 LD
18
32 m
2009 DD45
Mar. 2
0.2 LD
11
35 m
2009 DN4
Mar. 3
8.1 LD
21
27 m
2009 EA
Mar. 4
7.4 LD
19
24 m
2009 EW
Mar. 6
0.9 LD
16
23 m
161989 Cacus
Mar. 7
70.5 LD
16
1.7 km
2009 EH1
Mar. 8
1.6 LD
18
12 m
2009 ET
Mar. 9
9.5 LD
21
15 m
2009 DV43
Mar. 10
8.5 LD
18
80 m
2009 EU
Mar. 11
3.5 LD
18
21 m
1998 OR2
Mar. 12
69.8 LD
14
3.3 km
2009 DR3
Mar. 14
7.2 LD
16
225 m
2009 FR
Mar. 16
6.7 LD
19
22 m
2009 FJ
Mar. 16
4.9 LD
17
46 m
2009 FW4
Mar. 17
2.8 LD
16
53 m
2009 FH
Mar. 18
0.2 LD
14
21 m
2009 FK
Mar. 19
1.0 LD
17
9 m
2009 DO111
Mar. 20
1.2 LD
13
117 m
2009 FX4
Mar. 23
6.1 LD
19
37 m
2009 FD
Mar. 27
1.6 LD
13
160 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 space weather bureau
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.
STEREO
  3D views of the sun from NASA's Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory
Daily Sunspot Summaries
  from the NOAA Space Environment Center
Current Solar Images
  from the National Solar Data Analysis Center
Science Central
   
  more links...
   
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