Listen to radar echoes from satellites and meteors, live on listener-supported Space Weather Radio. | | | WEAK IMPACT: Solar wind signatures suggest that a CME delivered a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field during the early hours of April 5th. The weak impact did not spark a geomagnetic storm. Nevertheless, high-latitude auroras are possible as Earth passes through the wake of the CME. Aurora alerts: text, voice FARSIDE SOLAR ACTIVITY: Earlier today the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) photographed CMEs billowing away from almost the entire circumference of the visible solar disk. Click to set the clouds in motion: None of the clouds is heading for Earth. They are farside CMEs. NASA's STEREO probes recorded multiple explosions on the solar farside just before the CMEs emerged. The active regions responsible for the CMEs will rotate around to the Earthside of the sun in 1 to 2 weeks, where they might pose a threat for Earth-directed explosions. Solar flare alerts: text, voice Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery DAYLIGHT REQUIRED: In the night sky, there are thousands of stars visible to the unaided eye, and thousands of times more stars in range of backyard optics. Not a single one of those faraway balls of fire, however, looks any bigger than a pinprick. For a better view of a star, you need some daylight: This star is the sun. Francois Rouviere of Mougins, France, took the picture on March 31st using no more than a 7-inch refracting telescope and an "H-alpha" filter tuned to the red glow of solar hydrogen. "I caught this impressive explosion at the sun's western limb near sunspot AR2014," says Rouviere. "The inset, which is at a wavelength 1 Å shorter than H-alpha, shows fast moving material blue-shifted by the Doppler effect." Got a solar telescope? NOAA forecasters estimate a 40% chance of M-class flares and a 5% chance of X-flares on April 4th. Train those optics on the daylight sky. Solar flare alerts: text, voice Note: Always use safe solar filters when observing the sun. Unfiltered sunlight, focused by optics, can cause serious eye damage. Realtime Mars Photo Gallery Realtime Comet Photo Gallery 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 Apr. 5, 2014, 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] 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 5, 2014 there were potentially hazardous asteroids. 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. | 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 | | the underlying science of space weather | |