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Solar wind
speed: 433.2
km/sec
density: 4.3
protons/cm3
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 1005
UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: A8
0820
UT
Dec10
24-hr:
A8
1610
UT
Dec09
explanation
| more
data
Updated: Today at: 1000
UT
Daily Sun: 10 Dec 19
The sun is blank--no sunspots. Credit: SDO/HMI
Sunspot number:
0
What
is the sunspot number?
Updated 10 Dec 2019
Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 26 days
2019 total: 263 days (76%)
2018 total: 221 days (61%)
2017 total: 104 days (28%)
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%)
2008 total: 268 days (73%)
2007 total: 152 days (42%)
2006 total: 70 days (19%)
Updated 10 Dec 2019
Thermosphere Climate Index
today: 3.22x1010 W Cold
Max: 49.4x1010 W Hot (10/1957)
Min: 2.05x1010 W Cold (02/2009)
explanation | more data: gfx, txt
Updated 09 Dec 2019
The Radio
Sun
10.7 cm flux: 71 sfu
explanation | more
data
Updated 10 Dec 2019
Cosmic Rays Solar minimum is underway. The sun's magnetic field is weak, allowing extra cosmic rays into the solar system. Neutron counts from the University of Oulu's Sodankyla Geophysical Observatory show that cosmic rays reaching Earth in 2019 are near a Space Age peak.
Oulu Neutron Counts
Percentages of the Space Age average:
today: +10.0% Very High
7-day change: +1.5%
Max: +11.7% Very High (12/2009)
Min: -32.1% Very Low (06/1991)
explanation | more data
Updated 10 Dec 2019 @ 0500 UT
Since 2015, Earth to Sky cosmic ray balloons launched weekly from California have also detected significant increases in atmospheric radiation. Dose rates reported below are in the stratosphere at approx. 100,000 ft.
California Cosmic Ray Balloons
Monitoring started in March 2015
now: 4.77 uGy/hr High
change since 2015: +23%
Max: 4.79 uGy/hr High (10/2019)
Min: 3.80 uGy/hr Low (05/2015)
explanation | more data
Updated 06 Dec 2019
Current Auroral Oval:
Switch to: Europe, USA, New
Zealand, Antarctica
Credit: NOAA/Ovation
Planetary K-index
Now: Kp=
1 quiet
24-hr max: Kp= 2 quiet
explanation | more
data
Interplanetary Mag. Field
Btotal: 6.9
nT
Bz: 2.4
nT north
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 1006
UT
Coronal Holes: 10 Dec 19
Solar wind flowing from this minor coronal hole could hit Earth's magnetic field on Dec. 14. No geomagnetic storms are expected, but an increase in Arctic auroras is possible. Credit: SDO/AIA
Noctilucent Clouds The southern hemisphere season for noctilucent clouds began on Nov. 15th--the earliest start in recorded history. Check here for daily images from NASA's AIM spacecraft.
Switch view: Europe, USA, Asia, Polar
Updated at: 12-09-2019 15:55:02
UT
SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts |
|
Updated at: 2019 Dec 09 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: 2019 Dec 09 2200 UTC
Mid-latitudes
|
0-24
hr |
24-48
hr |
ACTIVE |
10
% |
10
% |
MINOR |
01
% |
01
% |
SEVERE |
01
% |
01
% |
High latitudes
|
0-24
hr |
24-48
hr |
ACTIVE |
15
% |
15
% |
MINOR |
15
% |
15
% |
SEVERE |
10
% |
10
% |
|
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|
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Marianne’s Arctic tours: Operating in small groups of 7 to 14 persons--all needs supplied for safety, comfort and pleasure. Night & day photography or non-photographic landscape - wildlife tours. Click for details!
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VENUS-SATURN CONJUNCTION: When the sun goes down tonight, step outside and look southwest. Venus and Saturn are converging for a sunset conjunction. At closest approach on Dec. 11th, the two planets will be just under 2 degrees apart. Brilliant Venus pops out of the twilight first, followed ~15 minutes later by 1st-magnitude Saturn. Full story.
AN OUTBURST OF SOLSTICE AURORAS: Auroras love equinoxes. Solstices? Not so much. A 75 year study shows that December is the worst month for geomagnetic activity. At this time of year auroras tend to subside. But they never vanish, as shown in this photo taken by Markus Varik of Tromsø, Norway, on Dec. 6th:
"Northern Lights are less for sure around solstices, but this display was bonkers," says Varik, a longtime aurora tour guide who has experienced many Decembers inside the Arctic Circle. "What a wonderful night!"
Auroras prefer equinoxes because of the Russell-McPherron Effect. In September and March (equinoxes), cracks open in Earth's magnetic field. Solar wind pours in to fuel geomagnetic activity. In December and June (solstices), those cracks tend to close. It's ironic, but Northern Lights do retreat during the longest darkest nights of the year.
"Despite the 'solstice problem', we still get some good displays during December," assures Varik. The next opportunity is just days away. On Dec. 14th a stream of solar wind flowing from a southern hole in the sun's atmosphere is expected to graze Earth. Arctic sky watchers should be alert for auroras mixed with moonlight.
Realtime Spaceweather Photo Gallery
Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter
THE NORTHERN LIGHTS PENDANT: On Dec. 6, 2019, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched a cosmic ray balloon to the stratosphere. This Northern Lights pendant went along for the ride, flying more than 107,612 feet above the rugged Sierra Nevada mountains of central California:
You can have it for $119.95. The students are selling these pendants to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the pendant in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space. It makes an out-of-this-world Christmas gift!
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
IF YOU WANT TO SEE A CRAZY SUN HALO, GO SKIING... Many of us have seen a sun halo--a ring around the sun caused by ice crystals in clouds. The luminous rings are usually simple circles. On Dec. 1st, however, things got complicated. "I witnessed a very complex halo display," reports Cindy Bidois, who sends this picture from Val Thorens in the French Alps:
In Bidois's photo, we see a parhelic circle, a supralateral arc, a 22-degree halo, a circumzenithal arc, an upper tangent arc, a Parry arc, a sun pillar and a pair of sundogs. "It was crazy," she says.
Complex halos like this require not just one type of ice crystal, but many, with gem-like perfection and unusually precise crystal-to-crystal alignment. Clouds that contain such a rare ensemble of ice crystals are rare. In this case, the clouds had help--from snow-making machines.
Val Thorens, located at an altitude of 2300m, is the highest ski town in Europe. Snow-making machines at ski resorts produce a special type of ice. Crystals called "diamond dust" grow slowly downwind of ski-slope snow blowers. These man-made crystals tend to be more optically perfect than natural crystals in clouds, producing extra-bright, extra-sharp sun halos just like Bidois saw.
Realtime Aurora 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 Dec. 09, 2019, 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 December 10, 2019 there were 2018 potentially hazardous asteroids.
 |
Recent
& Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:
| Asteroid |
Date(UT) |
Miss Distance |
Velocity (km/s) |
Diameter (m) |
| 2019 XO2 |
2019-Dec-04 |
19.2 LD |
17.3 |
207 |
| 2019 XF2 |
2019-Dec-04 |
1.3 LD |
10.4 |
14 |
| 2019 XR1 |
2019-Dec-04 |
1.4 LD |
11.7 |
22 |
| 2019 XE2 |
2019-Dec-04 |
4.1 LD |
7.3 |
15 |
| 2019 WW |
2019-Dec-05 |
8.6 LD |
9.8 |
44 |
| 2019 XM2 |
2019-Dec-05 |
2.3 LD |
18.1 |
19 |
| 2019 WB5 |
2019-Dec-06 |
18.7 LD |
22 |
48 |
| 2019 XN |
2019-Dec-06 |
2.4 LD |
9.7 |
10 |
| 2019 WR3 |
2019-Dec-06 |
14.2 LD |
7.5 |
96 |
| 2019 WJ6 |
2019-Dec-07 |
7.5 LD |
21.1 |
48 |
| 2019 XT2 |
2019-Dec-07 |
1.4 LD |
8.4 |
18 |
| 2019 XP |
2019-Dec-07 |
5.5 LD |
12.2 |
17 |
| 2018 XW2 |
2019-Dec-07 |
17.4 LD |
13 |
28 |
| 2019 VH5 |
2019-Dec-08 |
18 LD |
9.8 |
76 |
| 2019 XY |
2019-Dec-09 |
3.2 LD |
13.1 |
9 |
| 2019 XB |
2019-Dec-09 |
17.3 LD |
7.9 |
69 |
| 2019 WT3 |
2019-Dec-09 |
9.8 LD |
11 |
40 |
| 2019 WO2 |
2019-Dec-09 |
4.8 LD |
7.6 |
32 |
| 2019 XW |
2019-Dec-10 |
10.8 LD |
15.6 |
59 |
| 2019 XO1 |
2019-Dec-13 |
7.9 LD |
7.9 |
44 |
| 2019 WP6 |
2019-Dec-14 |
6.4 LD |
4.4 |
22 |
| 2019 XF |
2019-Dec-18 |
9.4 LD |
24.1 |
77 |
| 216258 |
2019-Dec-20 |
15.3 LD |
11.8 |
324 |
| 2013 XY20 |
2019-Dec-21 |
18.3 LD |
1.9 |
28 |
| 2017 XQ60 |
2019-Dec-22 |
11 LD |
15.6 |
47 |
| 310442 |
2019-Dec-26 |
19 LD |
12.3 |
372 |
| 2019 WR4 |
2019-Dec-31 |
11.7 LD |
4.2 |
21 |
| 2019 AE3 |
2020-Jan-02 |
4.9 LD |
8.2 |
13 |
| 2019 UO |
2020-Jan-10 |
11.8 LD |
9.4 |
356 |
| 2019 WC5 |
2020-Jan-11 |
6.3 LD |
13 |
108 |
| 2011 EP51 |
2020-Jan-15 |
19.6 LD |
7.1 |
32 |
| 2017 RZ15 |
2020-Jan-15 |
12.1 LD |
7.4 |
14 |
| 2009 BH2 |
2020-Jan-18 |
14.6 LD |
17.9 |
118 |
| 2013 DU |
2020-Jan-20 |
15.3 LD |
6.4 |
59 |
| 2019 TF2 |
2020-Jan-23 |
16.2 LD |
1.6 |
18 |
| 2018 BM5 |
2020-Jan-23 |
13.1 LD |
8.6 |
12 |
| 2018 AL12 |
2020-Jan-30 |
18.2 LD |
17.7 |
39 |
| 2018 BU1 |
2020-Feb-02 |
19.4 LD |
10 |
41 |
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 |
SOMETHING NEW! We have developed a new predictive model of aviation radiation. It's called E-RAD--short for Empirical RADiation model. We are constantly flying radiation sensors onboard airplanes over the US and and around the world, so far collecting more than 22,000 gps-tagged radiation measurements. Using this unique dataset, we can predict the dosage on any flight over the USA with an error no worse than 15%.
E-RAD lets us do something new: Every day we monitor approximately 1400 flights criss-crossing the 10 busiest routes in the continental USA. Typically, this includes more than 80,000 passengers per day. E-RAD calculates the radiation exposure for every single flight. The Hot Flights Table is a daily summary of these calculations. It shows the 5 charter flights with the highest dose rates; the 5 commercial flights with the highest dose rates; 5 commercial flights with near-average dose rates; and the 5 commercial flights with the lowest dose rates. Passengers typically experience dose rates that are 20 to 70 times higher than natural radiation at sea level. To measure radiation on airplanes, we use the same sensors we fly to the stratosphere onboard Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray balloons: neutron bubble chambers and X-ray/gamma-ray Geiger tubes sensitive to energies between 10 keV and 20 MeV. These energies span the range of medical X-ray machines and airport security scanners. Column definitions: (1) The flight number; (2) The maximum dose rate during the flight, expressed in units of natural radiation at sea level; (3) The maximum altitude of the plane in feet above sea level; (4) Departure city; (5) Arrival city; (6) Duration of the flight.
SPACE WEATHER BALLOON DATA: 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 18% since 2015:
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.
En route to the stratosphere, our sensors also pass through aviation altitudes:
In this plot, 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.
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.
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
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 |
| |
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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