| | Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica Credit: NOAA/Ovation Planetary K-index Now: Kp= 0 quiet 24-hr max: Kp= 2 quiet explanation | more data Interplanetary Mag. Field Btotal: 3.3 nT Bz: 0.2 nT north more data: ACE, DSCOVR Updated: Today at 2352 UT Coronal Holes: 30 Aug 17 Solar wind flowing from this coronal hole could reach Earth on Aug. 31st. 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: 08-30-2017 19:55:04 SPACE WEATHER NOAA Forecasts | | Updated at: 2017 Aug 30 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 30 2200 UTC Mid-latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 35 % | 35 % | MINOR | 30 % | 30 % | SEVERE | 05 % | 05 % | High latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 15 % | 15 % | MINOR | 20 % | 20 % | SEVERE | 30 % | 20 % | | | | | | | | | | | | 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! | | | BIG NEW SUNSPOT: A big new sunspot is rotating into view over the sun's eastern limb: movie. AR2674 has two dark cores larger than Earth and sprawls more than 150,000 km from end to end. The active region is crackling with minor C-class solar flares. It is too soon to say if bigger explosions are in the offing. Amateur astronomers with safe solar telescopes are encouraged to monitor developments. Free: Solar Flare Alerts AURORAS LIKELY THIS WEEK: For reasons researchers do not fully understand, the weeks around equinoxes have more geomagnetic disturbances than any other time of year. Data prove it: Auroras love equinoxes. We are now just weeks away from the northern autumnal equinox and, right on cue, the auroras have appeared: This is a picture taken through the window of an aircraft flying just south of Greenland on August 24th. Photographer Sebastian Voltmer explains: "During our flight from Detroit (USA) to Frankfurt (GER) we saw these impressive and fast-moving Northern Lights. What a fantastic start to the season!" More auroras are in the offing this week. A canyon-shaped hole in the sun's atmosphere is spewing solar wind toward Earth. Estimated time of arrival: Aug. 31st. NOAA forecasters estimate a 30% chance of polar geomagnetic storms (G1-class) when the gaseous material arrives. Free: Aurora Alerts Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery EDGE OF SPACE ECLIPSE PENDANTS: On Aug. 21st during the Great American Solar Eclipse, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched 11 space weather balloons from the path of totality. They aimed to photograph the Moon's shadow from the stratosphere--and they succeeded! As a fundraiser, some of the balloons carried pendants into the eclipse. You can have one for $149. The composite image, above, shows a pendant dipping in and out of the Moon's shadow more than 86,000 feet above the Malheur National Forest in eastern Oregon. During the 2.5 hour flight, pendants were wrapped in the Moon's shadow for more than two minutes, experiencing a spooky darkness colder than -50 C. Each pendant comes with a unique gift card showing the jewelry passing through the Moon's shadow and 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 SAVING THE BEST FOR LAST: Connoisseurs of total eclipses don't always agree on what is the best part. Some prefer the beginning, when the sudden appearance of the sun's corona draws startled gasps from onlookers. Others prefer the middle, when the starry-dark core of the Moon's shadow turns the landscape into an alien wonderland. After looking at this picture, however, you might be inclined to cast a vote in favor of the end: Photographer John Chumack took the picture Aug. 21st during the Great American Solar Eclpse just as the disk of the Moon was uncovering the sun. Piercing beams of sunlight shot through gaps in lunar mountains creating a dazzling "Diamond Ring" effect. "The Diamond Ring was so beautiful, plus the large pink prominences were amazing to see," says Chumack. "I was so fortunate to have decent clear weather at my friends' home in Hopkinsville, KY." Solar Eclipse 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. 30, 2017, the network reported 11 fireballs. (10 sporadics, 1 Northern iota 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 30, 2017 there were 1803 potentially hazardous asteroids. | Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) | 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 | 39 | 2017 QU1 | 2017-Aug-27 | 16.2 LD | 10.1 | 37 | 2017 PL26 | 2017-Aug-28 | 14.2 LD | 8.4 | 130 | 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 QG18 | 2017-Sep-01 | 4.4 LD | 6.6 | 12 | 2017 QV32 | 2017-Sep-02 | 12 LD | 11 | 21 | 2017 QR32 | 2017-Sep-02 | 2.8 LD | 18 | 17 | 2017 OP68 | 2017-Sep-10 | 20 LD | 11.7 | 296 | 2017 QK18 | 2017-Sep-11 | 14.8 LD | 7.8 | 46 | 2014 RC | 2017-Sep-11 | 15.1 LD | 8.9 | 16 | 2017 PR25 | 2017-Sep-23 | 17.9 LD | 13.5 | 234 | 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. | |