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Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica
Credit: NOAA/Ovation
Planetary K-index
Now: Kp=
4.67 unsettled
24-hr max: Kp= 6.33 storm
explanation | more
data
Interplanetary Mag. Field
Btotal: 12.99 nT
Bz: -7.92 nT south
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 0230 UT
Coronal Holes: 13 Jun 25
Solar wind flowing from this large southern coronal hole shold reach Earth on June 14-15. Credit: NASA/SDO | more data
Polar Stratospheric Clouds
Colorful Type II polar stratospheric clouds (PSC) form when the temperature in the stratosphere drops to a staggeringly low -85C. NASA's MERRA-2 climate model predicts when the air up there is cold enough:
On Jun 13, 2025, the Arctic stratosphere is much too hot for polar stratospheric clouds. | more data.
Noctilucent Clouds
The northern season for noctilucent clouds has begin. First reports of the electric-blue clouds came from Russia on May 28, 2025. Since then, the clouds have spread to lower latitudes with one possible sighting in southern Italy on June 3, 2025.
Above: June 4, 2025 in Poland
"This morning, despite poor visibility, I saw my first noctilucent clouds this year," reports photographer Marek Nikodem of Szubin, Poland. "The display was 60 degrees high--surprisingly high for a first observation. I consider the new season for noctilucent clouds to have started, here in Poland."
SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts |
|
Updated at: 2025 Jun 12 2200 UTC
FLARE |
0-24
hr |
24-48
hr |
CLASS M |
40
% |
40
% |
CLASS X |
05
% |
05
% |
Geomagnetic Storms:
Probabilities for significant
disturbances in Earth's magnetic field are given for three activity levels: active, minor
storm, severe
storm
Updated at: 2025 Jun 12 2200 UTC
Mid-latitudes
|
0-24
hr |
24-48
hr |
ACTIVE |
40
% |
30
% |
MINOR |
20
% |
40
% |
SEVERE |
05
% |
25
% |
High latitudes
|
0-24
hr |
24-48
hr |
ACTIVE |
10
% |
05
% |
MINOR |
30
% |
20
% |
SEVERE |
55
% |
75
% |
|
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|
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This is an AI Free Zone: AI isn't all bad. Large language models are good writers with access to vast stores of data. There's still no substitute for a human being with decades of space weather forecasting experience. This website is 100% human.
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FRIDAY THE 13TH GEOMAGNETIC STORM: Arriving earlier than expected, a CIR (co-rotating interaction region) hit Earth's magnetic field on June 13th, sparking a G2-class geomanetic storm. There is a chance that this ongoing storm could intensify to category G3 (Strong). CIRs are like mini-CMEs. They contain shock waves and enhanced magnetic fields that do a good job sparking auroras. Aurora alerts: SMS Text
A HIDDEN WORLD OF SOLAR ACTIVITY: In the 17th century when Anton van Leeuwenhoek looked through a microscope and saw bacteria for the first time, he revealed a new "world of the small" and forever upended the field of biology. Is the same thing about to happen to solar physics?
Maybe. A paper just published in Nature Astronomy reports a new technology for seeing very small things in the atmosphere of the sun. It's a system of adaptive optics that corrects for turbulence in Earth's atmosphere. A test run in July 2023 on the 1.6 m Goode Solar Telescope in California's Big Bear Lake produced an immediate discovery:
"We became astounded witnesses to a strange, short-lived object," recalls the research team, led by Dirk Schmidt of the NSF National Solar Observatory. "We call it a twisted plasmoid."
The plasmoid is unlike anything seen inside the sun's atmosphere before. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory was observing at the same time and saw nothing. The Big Bear adaptive optics system is so good at correcting turbulent blur, it outperforms space telescopes.
A movie of the plasmoid shows a narrow stream of plasma less than 100 km wide moving like a flagellate under van Leeuwenhoek's microscope. The front of the stream "suddenly stopped and collided with its own rear half," before fading away. Other structures observed by the team may be as narrow as 20 km across.
The 1.6-meter Goode Solar Telescope in Big Bear Lake. The steady temperature of the water surface helps keep the air around the telescope calm
It's not clear whether this is a significant discovery or just something idiosyncratic and weird. We'll soon find out. The researchers plan to install the same system on the giant Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii, where adaptive optics on its 4-meter mirror could reveal an even greater menagerie. Let the plasmoid hunt begin!
For more images from the new adaptive optics system, click here.
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter
LIMITED EDITION SATURN V COINS: On July 16, 1969, the world watched as a Saturn V rocket launched Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins to the Moon. Exactly 55 years later, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched the US Mint's limited edition Saturn V dollar coin to the stratosphere:
This is real money. You can have a single coin for $49.95 or an entire unbroken roll for $299.95. No longer available from the US Mint, these rare coins flew 121,665 feet above the Sierra Nevada on July 16, 2024. One side shows the mighty Saturn V rocket blasting off from Cape Canaveral; the other side features the Statue of Liberty in profile.
The students are selling space coins to support to support their cosmic ray research program. (Helium is expensive!) Each order comes with a greeting card showing the coins in flight and telling the story of their journey to the stratosphere and back again.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter
Realtime Noctilucent Cloud Photo Gallery
Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter
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 Jun 10, 2025, the network reported 6 fireballs.
(6 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 June 13, 2025 there were 2349 potentially hazardous asteroids.
 |
Recent
& Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:
| Asteroid |
Date(UT) |
Miss Distance |
Velocity (km/s) |
Diameter (m) |
| 2018 LE4 |
2025-Jun-07 |
12.2 LD |
13.3 |
62 |
| 2025 LN |
2025-Jun-07 |
0.6 LD |
8.9 |
6 |
| 2014 LL26 |
2025-Jun-08 |
8 LD |
5.2 |
31 |
| 2025 LK |
2025-Jun-08 |
0.3 LD |
10.3 |
15 |
| 2025 KP8 |
2025-Jun-08 |
13.6 LD |
13.7 |
53 |
| 2015 XR1 |
2025-Jun-12 |
18.1 LD |
12.6 |
81 |
| 2022 KQ5 |
2025-Jun-12 |
13.6 LD |
5.1 |
5 |
| 2025 KV4 |
2025-Jun-12 |
4.1 LD |
8 |
26 |
| 2025 KF1 |
2025-Jun-12 |
8.1 LD |
9.7 |
38 |
| 2023 XO15 |
2025-Jun-15 |
17.8 LD |
3.4 |
24 |
| 2025 HN6 |
2025-Jun-16 |
6.4 LD |
2.3 |
23 |
| 2000 LF3 |
2025-Jun-17 |
18.9 LD |
14.5 |
169 |
| 2023 XU2 |
2025-Jun-18 |
11.1 LD |
15.6 |
32 |
| 2025 KT6 |
2025-Jun-19 |
7 LD |
9.2 |
72 |
| 2003 AY2 |
2025-Jun-22 |
14.2 LD |
15.9 |
386 |
| 2014 DH |
2025-Jun-28 |
17.1 LD |
12.1 |
17 |
| 2019 JM |
2025-Jul-09 |
16.6 LD |
6.9 |
14 |
| 2019 NW5 |
2025-Jul-09 |
15.2 LD |
16.5 |
65 |
| 2005 VO5 |
2025-Jul-11 |
15.9 LD |
14.4 |
382 |
| 2022 YS5 |
2025-Jul-17 |
17.4 LD |
6.1 |
38 |
| 2018 BY6 |
2025-Jul-19 |
13.7 LD |
7.4 |
69 |
| 2019 CO1 |
2025-Aug-08 |
17.8 LD |
10.5 |
65 |
| 2022 QB1 |
2025-Aug-10 |
8.9 LD |
3.9 |
6 |
Notes: LD means
"Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance
between Earth and the Moon. 1 LD also equals 0.00256
AU.
| |
Cosmic Rays in the Atmosphere |
SPACE WEATHER BALLOON DATA: Almost 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 sensors that detect secondary cosmic rays, a form of radiation from space that can penetrate all the way down to Earth's surface. Our monitoring program has been underway without interruption for 10 years, resulting in a unique dataset of in situ atmospheric measurements.
Latest results (Nov. 2024): Atmospheric radiation is sharply decreasing in 2024. Our latest measurements in November registered a 10-year low:
What's going on? Ironically, the radiation drop is caused by increasing solar activity. Solar Cycle 25 has roared to life faster than forecasters expected. The sun's strengthening and increasingly tangled magnetic field repels cosmic rays from deep space. In addition, solar coronal mass ejections (CMEs) sweep aside cosmic rays, causing sharp reductions called "Forbush Decreases." The two effects blend together to bring daily radiation levels down.
.Who cares? Cosmic rays are a surprisingly "down to Earth" form of space weather. They can alter the chemistry of the atmosphere, trigger lightning, and penetrate commercial airplanes. According to a study from the Harvard T.H. Chan school of public health, crews of aircraft have higher rates of cancer than the general population. The researchers listed cosmic rays, irregular sleep habits, and chemical contaminants as leading risk factors. A number of controversial studies (#1, #2, #3, #4) go even further, linking cosmic rays with cardiac arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death.
Technical notes: 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.
Data points in the graph labeled "Stratospheric Radiation" correspond to the peak of the Regener-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 Regener 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. |
| |
information about sunspots based on the latest NOAA/USAF Active Region Summary |
| |
current counts of failed and deployed Starlink satellites from Jonathan's Space Page. See also, all satellite statistics. |
| |
Authoritative predictions of space junk and satellite re-entries |
| |
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 |
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