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SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids
 
Solar wind
speed: 475.4 km/sec
density: 5.2 protons/cm3
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 2350 UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: A8
1701 UT Aug07
24-hr: A8
1701 UT Aug07
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 2300 UT
Daily Sun: 07 Aug 17
Sunspot AR2670 has a stable magnetic field that poses little threat for solar flares. Credit: SDO/HMI

Sunspot number: 13
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 07 Aug 2017

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 0 days
2017 total: 56 days (25%)
2016 total: 32 days (9%)
2015 total: 0 days (0%)

2014 total: 1 day (<1%)
2013 total: 0 days (0%)
2012 total: 0 days (0%)
2011 total: 2 days (<1%)
2010 total: 51 days (14%)
2009 total: 260 days (71%)

Updated 07 Aug 2017


The Radio Sun
10.7 cm flux: 74 sfu
explanation | more data
Updated 07 Aug 2017

Current Auroral Oval:
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: 3.2 nT
Bz: -0.4 nT south
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 2350 UT
Coronal Holes: 07 Aug 17

Earth is exiting a stream of solar wind flowing from the indicated coronal hole. 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: 08-07-2017 15:55:04
SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts
Updated at: 2017 Aug 07 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: 2017 Aug 07 2200 UTC
Mid-latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
20 %
10 %
MINOR
05 %
05 %
SEVERE
01 %
01 %
High latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
15 %
15 %
MINOR
25 %
20 %
SEVERE
35 %
20 %
 
Monday, Aug. 7, 2017
What's up in space
       
 

Lights Over lapland is excited to announce that Autumn Aurora Adventures are available for immediate booking! Reserve your adventure of a lifetime in Abisko National Park, Sweden today!

 

SOLAR WIND, SUBSIDING: Earth is exiting a stream of fast-moving solar wind that sparked bright auroras over Canada when it first arrived three days ago. NOAA forecasters say there is a 25% chance of minor geomagnetic storms on Aug. 7th as the solar wind speed drops below 500 km/s. Free: Aurora Alerts

LUNAR ECLIPSE: When the full Moon rose over Europe tonight, it wasn't its usual self.  The normally bright lunar disk was dipped in shadow. "It was a partial lunar eclipse," says  Sven Melchert, who photographed the event from Stuttgart, Germany:

"On a lazy summer evening, folks met at a viewpoint to wait for the eclipsed moon rising over the treeline,"says Melchert. "I caught it first with 1000 mm focal length, then switched over to 300 mm to better show the full scene."

The Moon grazed the shadow of our planet for nearly two hours, giving sky watchers in Europe, Asia, and Australia a leisurely view of the eclipse.  At maximum, about 25% of the full Moon's terrain was darkened. Browse the realtime photo gallery for more views from the eclipse zone:

Realtime Eclipse Photo Gallery

SOLAR ECLIPSE PENDANTS: Would you like to support our Solar Eclipse Balloon Network? Here's one way: Buy a space pendant. This solar eclipse-themed necklace flew to the stratosphere on July 2, 2017, attached to the payload of an Earth to Sky Calculus space weather balloon:


The payload contained more just like it. If you buy one now for $89.95, we will fly it back to the stratosphere during the Great American Solar Eclipse on August 21, 2017, where it will be enveloped by the Moon's cool shadow above our launch site in Oregon. No additional charge! Just make a note in the COMMENTS BOX of the shopping cart: "Please fly my pendant into the eclipse!" Each pendant comes with a greeting card showing the jewelry in flight and telling the story of its journey to the stratosphere and back again.

More items from the edge of space may be found in the Earth to Sky Store. All proceeds support atmospheric radiation monitoring and hands-on STEM education.

Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All proceeds support hands-on STEM education

LUNAR FOGBOW: Last night in La Coruna, Spain, Oscar Blanco went outside with a friend to photograph the waxing full Moon. It was a foggy night, and moonbeams were lancing through the fog. He looked up from his camera and saw a ghostly arc above his companion:

"It was a lunar fogbow," he says. "I quickly took its picture using my Sony A7s."

Fogbows are close cousins of rainbows, and they are formed in essentially the same way: light bounces in and out of water droplets to produce a luminous arc. The difference is droplet size. Large raindrops make rainbows. The same type of reflection produces a fogbow, except fog droplets are much smaller. Small droplets don't separate the colors of sunlight as widely as large raindrops do. In a fogbow, therefore, the colors are smeared together, producing a ghostly-white arc.

Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery

Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery


Realtime Noctilucent Cloud Photo Gallery


  All Sky Fireball Network
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. 7, 2017, the network reported 14 fireballs.
(7 sporadics, 6 Perseids, 1 Southern 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]

  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 August 7, 2017 there were 1803 potentially hazardous asteroids.
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:
Asteroid
Date(UT)
Miss Distance
Velocity (km/s)
Diameter (m)
2011 CC22
2017-Aug-04
15.5 LD
18.4
186
2017 NB7
2017-Aug-06
6.9 LD
6
80
2017 OF7
2017-Aug-10
19.2 LD
8.1
88
2014 OA339
2017-Aug-13
12.3 LD
10
47
2017 PE
2017-Aug-24
19.5 LD
7.1
46
3122
2017-Sep-01
18.5 LD
13.5
5376
2014 RC
2017-Sep-11
15.1 LD
8.9
16
1989 VB
2017-Sep-29
7.9 LD
6.3
408
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.

  Essential web 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 Dynamics Observatory
  Researchers call it a "Hubble for the sun." SDO is the most advanced solar observatory ever.
STEREO
  3D views of the sun from NASA's Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory
Solar and Heliospheric Observatory
  Realtime and archival images of the Sun from SOHO.
Daily Sunspot Summaries
  from the NOAA Space Environment Center
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NOAA 27-Day Space Weather Forecasts
  fun to read, but should be taken with a grain of salt! Forecasts looking ahead more than a few days are often wrong.
Aurora 30 min forecast
  from the NOAA Space Environment Center
Heliophysics
  the underlying science of space weather
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