Spotless Days Current Stretch: 0 days 2021 total: 59 days (21%) 2020 total: 208 days (57%) 2019 total: 281 days (77%) 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 01 Oct 2021
Thermosphere Climate Index today: 5.63x1010W Cold Max: 49.4x1010 W Hot (10/1957) Min: 2.05x1010 W Cold (02/2009) explanation | more data:gfx, txt Updated 01 Oct 2021
Cosmic RaysSolar Cycle 25 is beginning, and this is reflected in the number of cosmic rays entering Earth's atmosphere. Neutron counts from the University of Oulu's Sodankyla Geophysical Observatory show that cosmic rays reaching Earth are slowly declining--a result of the yin-yang relationship between the solar cycle and cosmic rays. Oulu Neutron Counts Percentages of the Space Age average: today: +8.3% High 48-hr change: +0.7% Max: +11.7% Very High (12/2009) Min: -32.1% Very Low (06/1991) explanation |more data Updated 01 Oct 2021 @ 1700 UT
Planetary K-index Now: Kp= 2 quiet 24-hr max: Kp= 4 unsettled explanation | more data
Interplanetary Mag. Field Btotal: 12.3 nT Bz: 6.2 nT north more data: ACE, DSCOVR Updated: Today at 2344 UT
Coronal Holes: 01 Oct 21
There are no significant equatorial coronal holes on the Earthside of the sun. Credit: SDO/AIA
Noctilucent CloudsThe northern hemisphere season for noctilucent clouds appears to be over. NASA's AIM spacecraft detected no evidence of NLCs around the north pole on Aug. 29th.
Geomagnetic Storms: Probabilities for significant disturbances in Earth's magnetic field are given for three activity levels: active, minor storm, severe storm
Updated at: 2021 Oct 01 2200 UTC
Mid-latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
35 %
20 %
MINOR
10 %
05 %
SEVERE
01 %
01 %
High latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
10 %
20 %
MINOR
25 %
25 %
SEVERE
45 %
25 %
Friday, Oct. 1, 2021
What's up in space
Lights Over Lapland has a full catalogue of exciting adventures in Abisko National Park, Sweden! Check out our daytime and evening activities and book your adventure!
SCHRODINGER'S CME HIT EARTH (NO, IT DIDN'T): Did a CME hit Earth's magnetic field today? An examination of solar wind data reveals evidence for both possibilities: Yes and no. There is no sharp discontinuity in solar wind speed typical of CME strikes. But, yes, there are enhanced magnetic fields like those often found in the wake of CMEs. Whatever happened, it successfully disturbed Earth's magnetic field just enough for some Arctic auroras on Sept. 30th/Oct. 1st. Aurora alerts:SMS Text.
MARTIAN COMMUNICATIONS BLACKOUT: Starting tomorrow, Oct. 2nd, NASA mission controllers will lose contact with spacecraft and rovers at Mars. The two-week blackout is due to the sun. Click on the image, below, to see what's going on:
As this 3-day movie from SOHO shows, Mars is approaching the sun for a close encounter. Astronomers call it "solar conjunction." From Oct. 2nd through Oct. 14th, Mars will be within 2 degrees of the sun. Thus, NASA has placed a moratorium on communications.
No one attempts to send new instructions to Mars during solar conjunction. It's impossible to predict what information might be lost due to interference from solar radio bursts or distorted by refraction in the sun's atmosphere. Garbled commands could potentially endanger the spacecraft. Instead, prior to solar conjunction, engineers send two weeks' worth of instructions and wait. See you on the other side, Mars!
EARTH CAN MAKE ITS OWN AURORAS: No solar storms? No problem. Earth has learned to make its own auroras. New results from NASA's THEMIS-ARTEMIS spacecraft show that a type of Northern Lights called "diffuse auroras" comes from our own planet--no solar storms required.
Diffuse auroras look a bit like pea soup. They spread across the sky in a dim green haze, sometimes rippling as if stirred by a spoon. They're not as flamboyant as auroras caused by solar storms. Nevertheless, they are important because they represent a whopping 75% of the energy input into Earth's upper atmosphere at night. Researchers have been struggling to understand them for decades.
Above: Diffuse auroras and the Big Dipper, photographed by Emmanuel Masongsong in Fairbanks, AK
"We believe we have found the source of these auroras," says UCLA space physicist Xu Zhang, lead author of two papers reporting the results in the Journal of Geophysical Research and Physics of Plasmas.
It is Earth itself. Earth performs the trick using electron beams. High above our planet's poles, beams of negatively-charged particles shoot upward into space, accelerated by electric fields in Earth's magnetosphere. Sounding rockets and satellites discovered the beams decades ago. It turns out, they can power the diffuse auroras.
The video, below, shows how it works. The beams travel in great arcs through the space near Earth. As they go, they excite ripples in the magnetosphere called Electron Cyclotron Harmonic (ECH) waves. Turn up the volume and listen to the waves recorded by THEMIS-ARTEMIS:
Above: The electrical circuit in space, which powers diffuse auroras. ECH waves were sonified by NASA's HARP (Heliophysics Audified: Resonances in Plasmas) software.
ECH waves, in turn, knock other electrons out of their orbits, forcing them to fall back down onto the atmosphere. This rain of secondary electrons powers the diffuse auroras.
"This is exciting," says UCLA professor Vassilis Angelopoulos, a co-author of the papers and lead of the THEMIS-ARTEMIS mission. "We have found a totally new way that particle energy can be transferred from Earth's own atmosphere out to the magnetosphere and back again, creating a giant feedback loop in space."
According to Angelopoulos, Earth's polar electron beams sometimes weaken but they never completely go away, not even during periods of low solar activity. This means Earth can make auroras without solar storms.
The sun is currently experiencing periods of quiet as young Solar Cycle 25 sputters to life. Pea soup, anyone?
An expanded and sharable version of this story may be found here.
STERLING SILVER OPAL PENDANT: It might be the most beautiful space pendant ever: The Sterling Silver Opal. Earth to Sky Calculus just launched one to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon. Here it is floating 103,018 ft above Earth's surface on Sept. 5th:
You can have it for $179.95. The opal is wrapped in a sterling silver Celtic love knot and suspended from a matching chain. Anyone who receives this far-out gift will be impressed by the accompanying greeting card, which shows the opal in flight and tells the story of its trip to the edge of space.
Opals are cousins of blue moonstones; in fact, they look much the same in low light. But when bright sunlight strikes an opal, something special happens. A spray of color emerges from the stone. This happened while the opal was in the stratosphere (see above) and it remains capable of this beautiful trick back on Earth.
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 Sep 30, 2021, the network reported 21 fireballs. (19 sporadics, 2 southern Taurids)
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 October 1, 2021 there were 2214 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.
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 6 years, resulting in a unique dataset of in situ atmospheric measurements.
Latest results: Our most recent flight on June 25, 2021, confirms a trend of decreasing cosmic radiation:
Cosmic ray dose rates peaked in late 2019, and have been slowly declining ever since. This makes perfect sense. Solar Minimum was in late 2019. During Solar Minimum the sun's magnetic field weakens, allowing more cosmic rays into the solar system. We expect dose rate to be highest at that time.
Now that Solar Minimum has passed, the sun is waking up again. Solar magnetic fields are strengthening, providing a stiffer barrier to cosmic rays trying to enter the solar system. The decline of cosmic radiation above California is a sign that new Solar Cycle 25 is gaining strength.
.Who cares? Cosmic rays are a surprisingly "down to Earth" form of space weather. They can seed clouds, 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. Somewhat more controversial studies (#1, #2, #3, #4) llink cosmic rays with cardiac arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death.
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 higher you fly, the more radiation you will absorb.
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 first graph ("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.
There are more and larger selections of independent UK casinos, not on Gamstop. Also better alternatives to Gamstop listed on BestUK.Casino.
In regards to YouTube, it's best to buy real Youtube subscribers from companies like BRSM.IO and not fake subscribers!
One of the most popular casino games is the Book Of Dead Slot based on ancient Egyptian text, you can find all the casinos with spins at bookofdeadslotsites.com.
Strange but true: Online casinos support science education
Looking for sports betting companies not registered on GamStop? CasinoGap has presented a list of sites not on GamStop available for UK players. Check and bet online!
Would you like to bet at sites not using GamStop? Look at a list of NonStopCasino sites for online betting that aren't on GamStop. Top-rated bookmakers ever!
When looking for casinos to play online when the weather is bad, you can try luotettavat nettikasinot for Finnish games. If you are not from Finland you can try the Swedish page Svenska casino online to find suitable games, check out svenskacasinoonline.net. Always check your local laws before playing with real money.
Finns rank fourth among the world’s biggest gamblers. More on Finnish online casinos you can find at Nettikasino site.
To find reviews of new online casino sites in the UK try The Casino DB where there are hundreds of online casino reviews complete with bonuses and ratings. Alternatively, Online-Casinos.xyz is another massive directory of online casinos listing sites for the UK and Worldwide.
Casinos that offer Rupees for bonuses are very generous to Indian players. Find the best online casinos in India at AllCasinos.in
Looking for a new online casino? Try Casimpo the new site dedicated to making online casino simple, or check out the new Avenger Slots Casino and Ace Online Casino with over 500 online slots and casino games.
These links help Spaceweather.com stay online. Thank you to our supporters!
Bist Du auf der Suche nach einem Beste online Casino in Deutschland? SchweinGehabt.de möchte Dir dabei helfen! Mehrjährige Erfahrungen in diesem Bereich als Dealer und professioneller Spieler stehen Dir zur Verfügung
