Come to Tromsø and share Marianne's passion for rural photography: Chasethelighttours.co.uk invites you to experience "Heaven on Earth" with an aurora, fjord, fishing, whale watching, photography or sightseeing tour. | | | 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] INCREASING CHANCE OF FLARES: More sunspots are emerging over the sun's eastern limb today. Two new active regions, circled below, are following behemoth sunspot group AR2321 as it turns toward Earth. Click on the image to view a 48-hour movie: AR2321 has an unstable "beta-gamma-delta" magnetic field that harbors energy for strong flares. The new sunspots boost the odds of an eruption even more. NOAA forecasters estimate a 55% chance of M-class flares and a 20% chance of X-flares on April 14th. 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. 14, 2015, the network reported 22 fireballs. (22 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 14, 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 | |