Spotless Days Current Stretch: 0 days 2022 total: 0 days (0%) 2021 total: 64 days (18%) 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 08 Mar 2022
Thermosphere Climate Index today: 11.96 x1010W Neutral Max: 49.4x1010 W Hot (10/1957) Min: 2.05x1010 W Cold (02/2009) explanation | more data:gfx, txt Updated 08 Mar 2022
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: +7.0% High 48-hr change: +0.1% Max: +11.7% Very High (12/2009) Min: -32.1% Very Low (06/1991) explanation |more data Updated 08 Mar 2022 @ 1700 UT
Planetary K-index Now: Kp= 1 quiet 24-hr max: Kp= 3 quiet explanation | more data
Interplanetary Mag. Field Btotal: 3.9 nT Bz: -1.8 nT south more data: ACE, DSCOVR Updated: Today at 2345 UT
Coronal Holes: 08 Mar 22
There are no significant coronal holes on the Earthside of the sun. Credit: SDO/AIA
Noctilucent Clouds The southern season for noctilucent clouds is over. It ended on Feb. 20, 2022, concluding the weakest NLC season in 14 years. The northern season will begin in late May..
Geomagnetic Storms: Probabilities for significant disturbances in Earth's magnetic field are given for three activity levels: active, minor storm, severe storm
Updated at: 2022 Mar 08 2200 UTC
Mid-latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
10 %
30 %
MINOR
01 %
10 %
SEVERE
01 %
01 %
High latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
15 %
15 %
MINOR
20 %
30 %
SEVERE
15 %
40 %
Tuesday, Mar. 8, 2022
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!
POSSIBLE CME IMPACT THIS WEEK: A faint CME (movie) might sideswipe Earth's magnetic field on March 10th. It left the sun on March 7th following the eruption of a magnetic filament; no sunspots were involved. The glancing blow could spark minor G1-class geomagnetic storms later this week. Aurora alerts:SMS Text.
ROCKET LAUNCH INTO PULSATING AURORAS: Sometimes, Arctic auroras do something strange and puzzling. They blink. Imagine a chess board where the squares strobe--green, black, green, black--in a mesmerizing rhythm every ~10 seconds. Researchers call them "pulsating auroras" and, over the weekend, NASA launched a rocket from Alaska to investigate.
"It was amazing," says aurora tour guide Marketa S. Murray, who witnessed the launch from the Poker Flat Research Range near Fairbanks. "The sky was strobing overhead when the two-stage Black Brant IX took off--straight into the mysterious pulsating auroras."
"The launch was highly successful," reports Alexa Halford of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the experiment's lead investigator, who had been waiting since February for the pulsations to begin. "We couldn’t have asked for better conditions!"
Pulsating auroras are nothing new. Arctic people have been watching them for thousands of years. However, researchers have only recently figured out what powers them. In 2018, a team led by S. Kasahara of the University of Tokyo conclusively linked pulsating auroras to "chorus waves" in Earth's magnetosphere. Chorus waves are electromagnetic oscillations that sound heavenly when played through the loudspeaker of a low frequency radio. They scatter electrons from space down to Earth, an oscillating rain which produces exotic blinking Northern Lights.
But this only scratches the surface of the mystery. "We still have a lot to learn," says Halford. For instance, patches of light within pulsating auroras can maintain almost exactly the same shape from pulse to pulse. Why? No one knows. Also, the pulses flicker as often as 10 times a second, a rapidfire modulation that has no easy explanation.
Above: LAMP rolling out to the launch pad for a pre-flight test.
Halford's rocket carried an experiment named "LAMP" directly into the pulsating auroras, sampling in situ magnetic fields and energetic particles that may offer clues to the mystery. The experiment is specifically designed to look for "microbursts" of energetic electrons--the space equivalent of raindrops in a thunderstorm--that might explain the puzzling flickers.
"After launching the rocket we need a break," says Halford, "but we are looking forward to analyzing all of the data we just got back." Stay tuned for updates.
Want to see some pulsating auroras?Watch this video from Ronn Murray, Marketa Murray's husband and fellow aurora chaser. It shows some pulsating auroras recorded on Feb. 25, 2022.
STERLING SILVER CRYSTAL DOLPHIN: Dolphins from space? Believe it. On Feb. 28, 2022, this crystal dolphin pendant flew 111,101 feet above the Sierra Nevada mountains of Central California, hitching a ride onboard an Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray balloon:
You can have it for $175.95. Swimming around a colorful crystal whirl, the playful dolphins are 100% 925 sterling silver with a matching 18-inch sterling silver chain. The entire pendant is lead-free, nickel-free, cadmium-free, and totally hypoallergenic.
Each pendant comes with a greeting card showing the dolphins in flight, and telling the story of their trip to the edge of space and back again. All sales support the student's cosmic ray research program.
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 Mar 08, 2022, the network reported 15 fireballs. (15 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]
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 March 8, 2022 there were 2271 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 7 years, resulting in a unique dataset of in situ atmospheric measurements.
Latest results (Nov. 2021): Our balloons have just measured a sudden drop in atmospheric radiation. It happened during the strong geomagnetic storms of Nov. 3-4, 2021. Here are the data:
This is called a "Forbush decrease," named after American physicist Scott Forbush who studied cosmic rays in the early 20th century. It happens when a CME from the sun sweeps past Earth and literally pushes cosmic rays away from our planet. Radiation from deep space that would normally pepper Earth's upper atmosphere is briefly wiped out.
We have measured Forbush decreases before. For example, here's one from Sept. 2014. The Forbush Decrease of Nov. 3-4, 2021, was the deepest in the history of our 7-year atmospheric monitoring program. Radiation levels in the stratosphere over California dropped nearly 20%, more than doubling the previous record from our dataset.
En route to the stratosphere, our sensors also pass through aviation altitudes, so we can sample radiation where planes fly. This plot shows how the Forbush decrease was restricted to the stratosphere; it did not affect lower levels of the atmosphere:
The dose rates shown above are expressed 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.
.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) link 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 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.
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