Solar minimum is here - but even now strangely beautiful auroras are dancing around the poles. Deep inside the Arctic Circle, the expert guides of Aurora Holidays in Utsjoki, Finland, can help you chase them. Book now! | | |
NOW IS A GOOD TIME TO SEE MERCURY: When the sun goes down tonight, step outside and look west. See Venus? Now look lower. Mercury is there, too, not far above the horizon. Mercury is having its best evening apparition of the year for northern observers, as shown here, here, and here.
THE SOLAR WIND HAS ARRIVED: Earth is inside a stream of solar wind flowing from a southern hole in the sun's atmosphere. Wind speeds are currently topping 500 km/s--not enough to cause a geomagnetic storm, but sufficient for some beautiful Arctic auroras. Sacha Layos sends this picture from Circle City, Alaska:
"This is my second year of volunteering for the 1,000 mile Yukon Quest's Circle City checkpoint which is nestled deep in interior Alaska close to the Canadian border," says Layos. "The second night I was there, a 22 degree Moon halo appeared above the dog yard. I watched it with joy when the aurora suddenly and briefly picked up! My sleep-deprived eyes sure were happy to see two of my favorite celestial events right above the dog yard where dogs are resting and mushers are tending to them." Aurora alerts: SMS Text.
Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
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HIGH-ALTITUDE BALLOON PHOTOS OF STRATOSPHERIC CLOUDS: On Jan. 22, 2020, something lucky happened. Spaceweather.com and the students of Earth to Sky Calculus were inside the Arctic Circle, preparing to launch a cosmic ray balloon. Moments before liftoff, an outbreak of Type 2 polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) started developing over the launch site. PSCs are very rare. They form in the stratosphere only when the air temperature drops to a staggeringly-cold -85C. And they are extremely difficult to catch. Working quickly, we launched two balloons directly into the outbreak.
Operating 4 cameras, the two balloon payloads photographed the clouds from altitudes as high as 75,000 feet. We believe this is the first time polar stratospheric clouds have been photographed by a high-altitude balloon from their own habitat–the stratosphere. The footage reveals beautiful filamentary structures previously unseen from the ground.
How did we get so lucky? We had some help from the polar stratospheric vortex.
The polar stratospheric vortex is a jet stream in the Arctic stratosphere. This winter it has been very strong, bottling up cold air and preventing it from spilling to lower latitudes. Just before we launched on Jan. 22nd, something unexpected happened to the polar vortex. It became elliptical and rotated around, sloshing a mass of super-cold stratospheric air over northern Scandinavia.
This is what the vortex looked like on Jan. 22-23, according to NASA’s Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS):
Note the purple blob over northern Sweden. That’s the cold air. PSCs can form inside the white contours. This animation of MLS data created by Lynn Harvey of the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics shows how the vortex evolved during our time in Sweden.
Type 2 polar stratospheric clouds are widely regarded as the most beautiful clouds on Earth. They are made of tiny ice crystals that diffract high-altitude sunlight, glowing with colors so vivid that some people mistake them for "daytime auroras." Earth to Sky student Jordan Herbst’s photos of the Jan. 22-23 outbreak show how they look from the ground. Now we know they’re beautiful from the stratosphere, too.
Stay tuned for more news from our trip to the Arctic Circle.
A sharable version of this story may be found here.
Realtime Spaceweather Photo Gallery
Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter
24K SPACE ROSE FOR VALENTINE'S DAY: On Feb. 1, 2020, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched a cosmic ray balloon to the stratosphere. This 24k gold foil-gilded rose went along for the ride. At the apex of the flight, the acrylic bloom was 115,823 feet above the Sierra Nevada mountains of central California:
You can have it for $156.75. The students are selling these roses to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. They make great Valentine's Day gifts. Each one comes with a romantic card showing the rose in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space and back again.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
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 Feb. 6, 2020, the network reported 9 fireballs.
(9 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 February 6, 2020 there were 2018 potentially hazardous asteroids.
|
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
2020 CD1 | 2020-Feb-01 | 7.6 LD | 16.3 | 21 |
2017 AE5 | 2020-Feb-01 | 13.6 LD | 9 | 123 |
2020 CW | 2020-Feb-01 | 0 LD | 21.3 | 1 |
2020 BN12 | 2020-Feb-01 | 3.4 LD | 7 | 24 |
2020 CA | 2020-Feb-02 | 0.6 LD | 13.3 | 4 |
2020 BD9 | 2020-Feb-02 | 16.4 LD | 7.6 | 37 |
2020 BT14 | 2020-Feb-03 | 0.5 LD | 8.4 | 10 |
2020 CK | 2020-Feb-03 | 1.4 LD | 22.5 | 8 |
2020 CQ | 2020-Feb-03 | 4 LD | 14.8 | 14 |
2020 BX12 | 2020-Feb-03 | 11.4 LD | 25.3 | 269 |
2013 BA74 | 2020-Feb-04 | 3.7 LD | 7.4 | 28 |
2020 CQ1 | 2020-Feb-04 | 0.2 LD | 6.1 | 6 |
2020 CO | 2020-Feb-04 | 11.5 LD | 17.5 | 23 |
2020 CN | 2020-Feb-04 | 4.8 LD | 14.8 | 12 |
2020 CH1 | 2020-Feb-04 | 15.3 LD | 7.9 | 31 |
2020 CR | 2020-Feb-04 | 2.6 LD | 22.4 | 13 |
2020 CC | 2020-Feb-05 | 1.9 LD | 10.8 | 9 |
2020 BR11 | 2020-Feb-05 | 10.5 LD | 3.2 | 8 |
2020 CT | 2020-Feb-05 | 4.3 LD | 13.2 | 9 |
2020 BY13 | 2020-Feb-05 | 10.8 LD | 9.4 | 30 |
2020 CR1 | 2020-Feb-06 | 2.4 LD | 7.9 | 14 |
2020 BF10 | 2020-Feb-06 | 2.9 LD | 8.6 | 13 |
2020 BF11 | 2020-Feb-07 | 16.8 LD | 13.9 | 35 |
2020 BL8 | 2020-Feb-08 | 6.6 LD | 3.2 | 25 |
2020 BQ11 | 2020-Feb-08 | 14.1 LD | 21.3 | 46 |
2020 BW5 | 2020-Feb-09 | 5.2 LD | 9 | 19 |
2020 BK10 | 2020-Feb-10 | 1.9 LD | 11.5 | 21 |
2020 BC10 | 2020-Feb-10 | 15.2 LD | 7.5 | 33 |
2020 CH | 2020-Feb-12 | 11.6 LD | 9.5 | 31 |
2020 CF | 2020-Feb-12 | 14.8 LD | 5.3 | 12 |
163373 | 2020-Feb-15 | 15.1 LD | 15.2 | 589 |
2020 BL14 | 2020-Feb-16 | 18 LD | 8.8 | 33 |
2020 CK1 | 2020-Feb-17 | 8.6 LD | 8.1 | 16 |
2018 CW2 | 2020-Feb-17 | 6 LD | 10.2 | 28 |
2020 BA10 | 2020-Feb-18 | 12.3 LD | 9 | 28 |
2020 BL7 | 2020-Feb-19 | 13.9 LD | 8.5 | 36 |
2020 BC9 | 2020-Feb-20 | 13.9 LD | 9.3 | 77 |
2019 BE5 | 2020-Feb-20 | 13.7 LD | 14.8 | 34 |
2011 DR | 2020-Feb-23 | 14.7 LD | 5.8 | 25 |
2016 CO246 | 2020-Feb-23 | 18.4 LD | 5.9 | 25 |
2020 BR10 | 2020-Feb-23 | 15.4 LD | 15.1 | 101 |
2020 BW13 | 2020-Feb-24 | 9.1 LD | 2.4 | 12 |
2012 DS30 | 2020-Feb-26 | 12.3 LD | 5.4 | 22 |
2015 BK509 | 2020-Feb-29 | 18.7 LD | 12.5 | 118 |
2017 BM123 | 2020-Mar-01 | 10.5 LD | 8.1 | 65 |
2018 RF6 | 2020-Mar-10 | 11.2 LD | 12.6 | 36 |
2008 UB95 | 2020-Mar-11 | 18.5 LD | 7.6 | 41 |
2018 GY | 2020-Mar-15 | 6.2 LD | 9.5 | 39 |
2012 XA133 | 2020-Mar-27 | 17.4 LD | 23.7 | 235 |
2010 GD35 | 2020-Mar-29 | 15.3 LD | 12 | 43 |
2006 FH36 | 2020-Mar-30 | 11.3 LD | 5.1 | 93 |
2019 GM1 | 2020-Apr-02 | 9 LD | 4.2 | 14 |
2015 FC35 | 2020-Apr-04 | 10.4 LD | 13.8 | 148 |
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 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 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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