| | Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica Credit: NOAA/Ovation Planetary K-index Now: Kp= 1 quiet 24-hr max: Kp= 2 quiet explanation | more data Interplanetary Mag. Field Btotal: 4.4 nT Bz: 1.3 nT north more data: ACE, DSCOVR Updated: Today at 2353 UT Coronal Holes: 31 Jan 18 There are no equatorial coronal holes on the sun. Credit: SDO/AIA Noctilucent Clouds Our connection with NASA's AIM spacecraft has been restored! New images from AIM show that the southern season for noctilucent clouds (NLCs) is underway. Come back to this spot every day to see AIM's "daily daisy," which reveals the dance of electric-blue NLCs around the Antarctic Circle.. Switch view: Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctic Peninsula, East Antarctica, Polar Updated at: 01-30-2018 18:55:03 SPACE WEATHER NOAA Forecasts | | Updated at: 2018 Jan 31 2200 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: 2018 Jan 31 2200 UTC Mid-latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 15 % | 10 % | MINOR | 05 % | 01 % | SEVERE | 01 % | 01 % | High latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 15 % | 15 % | MINOR | 20 % | 15 % | SEVERE | 20 % | 15 % | | | | | | | | | | | | Lights Over Lapland is excited to announce that we now have TWO aurora webcams covering nearly a 200° view of Abisko National Park in Sweden! Watch the auroras dance live, all season long here. | | | TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE MOON: Earlier today, Jan. 31st, the full Moon passed directly through the shadow of Earth, producing a total lunar eclipse. The shadowed Moon turned a coppery shade of orange visible in Asia, Australia and much of North America. Chirag Upreti sends this picture from New York City: "The eclipse was gorgeous," says Upreti. "As morning twilight illuminated the landscape, the Moon was already low on the horizon. What a stunning scene to absorb on a really cold morning! Just as I was taking the picture, an airplane passed over the Statue of Liberty and a sea gull photobombed the eclipsed Moon at the same time." More moonshots--lots more--may be found in the realtime photo gallery: Realtime Lunar Eclipse Photo Gallery LUNAR ECLIPSE BALLOON LAUNCH: At 4 o'clock this morning (Jan. 31st), Spaceweather.com and the students of Earth to Sly Calculus launched a balloon in the dark. Its mission: To photograph a total lunar eclipse. The full Moon was just entering Earth's shadow at the time of the launch, and totality was underway by the time balloon reached the stratosphere. (continued below) A Sony A7s camera photographed the orange lunar disk more than 100,000 feet above Earth's surface--or at least we think it did. After the balloon exploded (as planned), the payload parachuted back to Earth, landing in a remote area of the Sierra Nevada mountains.The footage may require a few days to recover. Fingers crossed! Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery UNIQUE VALENTINE'S GIFT: Nothing says "I love you" like a moonstone from space. On Jan. 27, 2018, using a space weather balloon, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus flew a payload-full of moonstone pendants 115,158 ft above Earth's surface. This one passed through an icy sun halo en route to the stratosphere: You can have one for $179.95. Each necklace comes with a greeting card showing the jewelry in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space. Sales support the Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray ballooning program and hands-on STEM research. Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store All proceeds support hands-on STEM education Realtime Aurora 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 Jan. 31, 2018, the network reported 10 fireballs. (10 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] 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 January 31, 2018 there were 1882 potentially hazardous asteroids. | Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) | 2018 BR6 | 2018-Jan-25 | 18.2 LD | 7.8 | 19 | 2018 BU6 | 2018-Jan-26 | 4.8 LD | 15.8 | 40 | 2018 AL12 | 2018-Jan-26 | 8.1 LD | 19.6 | 37 | 2018 BM5 | 2018-Jan-26 | 4.8 LD | 9.1 | 12 | 2018 BT6 | 2018-Jan-26 | 18.3 LD | 26.4 | 204 | 2018 BU1 | 2018-Jan-27 | 3.1 LD | 11.3 | 43 | 2018 BQ | 2018-Jan-27 | 9.3 LD | 3.4 | 27 | 2018 BS6 | 2018-Jan-28 | 7.2 LD | 11 | 38 | 2018 BE6 | 2018-Jan-30 | 3.4 LD | 17 | 45 | 2018 BQ6 | 2018-Jan-30 | 3.6 LD | 10.2 | 13 | 2018 AQ2 | 2018-Feb-02 | 13.4 LD | 17.3 | 130 | 2002 CB19 | 2018-Feb-02 | 10.5 LD | 15.6 | 36 | 2018 BN5 | 2018-Feb-03 | 15.9 LD | 9.4 | 23 | 2018 BG3 | 2018-Feb-03 | 11.9 LD | 14.2 | 60 | 2018 AH12 | 2018-Feb-04 | 5.3 LD | 5 | 15 | 276033 | 2018-Feb-04 | 11 LD | 34 | 646 | 2018 BP6 | 2018-Feb-05 | 3.7 LD | 13.7 | 42 | 2018 BL1 | 2018-Feb-09 | 16.5 LD | 20.3 | 72 | 2015 BN509 | 2018-Feb-09 | 12.9 LD | 17.7 | 257 | 1991 VG | 2018-Feb-11 | 18.4 LD | 2.1 | 7 | 2014 WQ202 | 2018-Feb-11 | 15.1 LD | 19.8 | 62 | 2016 CO246 | 2018-Feb-22 | 15.3 LD | 5.4 | 21 | 2017 DR109 | 2018-Feb-24 | 3.7 LD | 7.4 | 11 | 2016 FU12 | 2018-Feb-26 | 13.2 LD | 4.5 | 15 | 2014 EY24 | 2018-Feb-27 | 14.8 LD | 8 | 54 | 2015 BF511 | 2018-Feb-28 | 11.7 LD | 5.7 | 39 | 2003 EM1 | 2018-Mar-07 | 16.6 LD | 8 | 45 | 2017 VR12 | 2018-Mar-07 | 3.8 LD | 6.3 | 280 | 2015 DK200 | 2018-Mar-10 | 6.9 LD | 8 | 27 | 2016 SR2 | 2018-Mar-28 | 18.7 LD | 7.3 | 20 | 2010 GD35 | 2018-Mar-31 | 15.5 LD | 11.6 | 45 | 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 | | 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 | | 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. | |