Marianne's Heaven On Earth Aurora Chaser Tours Chasethelighttours.co.uk invites you to join them in their quest to find and photograph the Aurora Borealis. Experience the winter wonderland in the Tromsø Area. | | | FILAMENT ERUPTION, POSSIBLE EARTH-DIRECTED CME: A magnetic filament snaking across the sun's southern hemisphere erupted during the late hours of Sept. 4th, and it may have hurled a CME toward Earth. Note a clump of dark plasma moving away from the blast site (circled) in this movie recorded by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO): The plasma in the SDO movie formed the core of a CME, which SOHO saw racing away from the sun on Sept. 5th. The CME is not heading directly for Earth, but it could deliver a glancing blow to our planet's magnetosphere on Sept. ~7th. NOAA forecasters are still modeling the event to refine their forecast. Stay tuned for updates. Solar flare alerts: text or voice Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery RED AIRGLOW OVER CHILE: On Sept. 1st, astrophotographer Yuri Beletsky hiked into the Atacama Desert of Chile for a deep exposure of the Milky Way. He got that and much more. "There was a stunning display of red airglow," he says. It surrounded the Milky Way like a celestial bulls-eye: Airglow is aurora-like phenomenon caused by chemical reactions in the upper atmosphere. Human eyes seldom notice the faint glow, but It can be photographed on almost any clear dark night, anywhere in the world. The curious thing about Beletsky's photo is not the presence of airglow, but rather its color--red. Airglow is usually green, the color of light from oxygen atoms some 90 km to 100 km above Earth's surface. Where does the red come from? Instead of oxygen, OH can produce the required color. These neutral molecules (not to be confused with the OH- ion found in aqueous solutions) exist in a thin layer 85 km high where gravity waves impress the red glow with a dramatic rippling structure. "It was a truly special night," says Beletsky. "Pure tranquility." Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery Realtime Sprite Photo Gallery Realtime NLC 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 Sep. 5, 2015, the network reported 17 fireballs. (16 sporadics, 1 September epsilon Perseid) 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 September 5, 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 | | Web-based high school science course with free enrollment | |