Learn to photograph Northern Lights like a pro. Sign up for Peter Rosen's Aurora Photo Courses in Abisko National Park. | | | SPACE WEATHER WORKSHOP: This week, the staff of Spaceweather.com and the students of Earth to Sky Calculus will be attending NOAA's annual Space Weather Workshop in Boulder, Colorado. On behalf of the group, Dr. Tony Phillips will deliver a talk entitled "Space Weather Ballooning" (April 14th), in which recent radiation measurements of interest to aviation and space tourism will be revealed and discussed. [agenda] LARGE SUNSPOT TURNS TOWARD EARTH: A large sunspot group emerged over the weekend and it is turning toward Earth. Karzaman Ahmad of the Langkawi National Observatory in Malaysia photographed "AR2321" during the early hours of Monday, April 13th: Sprawling more than 120,000 km from end to end, the sunspot group has several dark cores as large as Earth. These dimensions make AR2321 an easy target for backyard solar telescopes. If you have one, take a look. Of greater interest is the region's potential for flares. AR2321 has an unstable "beta-gamma-delta" magnetic field that harbors energy for strong eruptions. NOAA forecasters estimate a 55% chance of M-class flares and a 20% chance of X-flares on April 13th. Solar flare alerts: text, voice Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery VENUS AND THE SEVEN SISTERS: Venus is so bright, it is often mistaken for a landing airplane. The Pleiades, on the other hand, are faint and delicate, often overlooked. As dissimilar as they are, the Goddess of Love and the Seven Sisters look great together. Marek Nikodem sends this picture of the duo from Szubin, Poland: "It was an amazing view just after sunset on April 12th," says Nikodem. "Admiring Venus and the Pleiades, I remembered the first launch of Space Shuttle Columbia on this very date 34 years ago." The planet and the star cluster will remain together for just a few more nights. When the sun goes down, step outside and look west. Surrounded by twilight blue, Venus is visible immediately. As the sky fades to black, the Pleiades emerge beside her. It's a nice way to end the day. Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery Realtime Eclipse Photo Gallery Realtime Comet 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. 13, 2015, the network reported 1 fireballs. (1 sporadic) 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 13, 2015 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 | |