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SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids
SPACE WEATHER
Current conditions
Solar wind
speed: 436.2 km/sec
density: 3.2 protons/cm3
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 2344 UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: A0
2340 UT Nov08
24-hr: A0
2340 UT Nov08
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 2340 UT
Daily Sun: 08 Nov. 09
The sun is blank--no sunspots. Credit: SOHO/MDI
Sunspot number: 0
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 07 Nov 2009

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 1 days
2009 total: 238 days (77%)
Since 2004: 749 days
Typical Solar Min: 485 days
explanation | more info
Updated 07 Nov 2009

Far side of the Sun:
This holographic image reveals no sunspots on the far side of the sun. Image credit: SOHO/MDI
Planetary K-index
Now: Kp= 3 quiet
24-hr max: Kp= 3
quiet
explanation | more data
Current Auroral Oval:
Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica
Credit: NOAA/POES
Interplanetary Mag. Field
Btotal: 5.2 nT
Bz: 1.5 nT south
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 2345 UT
Coronal Holes:
There are no coronal holes on the Earth-facing side of the sun. Credit: SOHO Extreme UV Telescope
SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts
Updated at: 2009 Nov 08 2201 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: 2009 Nov 08 2201 UTC
Mid-latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
05 %
05 %
MINOR
01 %
01 %
SEVERE
01 %
01 %
High latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
05 %
05 %
MINOR
01 %
01 %
SEVERE
01 %
01 %
What's up in Space
November 8, 2009

AURORA ALERT: Did you miss the Northern Lights? Next time get a wake-up call: Spaceweather PHONE.

 

AURORA WATCH: High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras tonight. A solar wind stream is buffeting Earth's magnetic field and causing geomagnetic disturbances around the poles: more.

ASTEROID NEAR MISS: On Nov. 6th at 2132 UT, asteroid 2009 VA barely missed Earth when it flew just 14,000 km above the planet's surface. That's well inside the "Clarke Belt" of geosynchronous satellites. If it had hit, the ~6-meter wide space rock would have disintegrated in the atmosphere as a spectacular fireball, causing no significant damage to the ground. 2009 VA was discovered just 15 hours before closest approach by astronomers working at the Catalina Sky Survey.

WEEKEND FIREBALLS: On Saturday, Nov. 7th, just as the sun was setting over San Francisco Bay, a brilliant meteor glided across the sky and disappeared into the sunset. Witnesses say it was "slow-moving," "white and green," and that it left behind "a trail of smoke and sparkles of debris." Alerted by a friend, Rick Baldridge of Campbell, California, rushed outside and snapped this picture of the fireball's aftermath:

"This was a rare event," says Baldridge. "I have not seen a high altitude 'smoke' stream like this for more than 20 years."

The fireball may have been a piece of periodic Comet 2P/Encke. Right now, Earth is passing through a stream of debris from the comet, and this is causing the annual Taurid meteor shower, which peaks between Nov. 5th and 12th. The display usually produces no more than about 5 meteors per hour, but what it lacks in number, it makes up for in dazzle. Taurids tend to be fireballs, bright enough to be seen even in twilight skies. At the time of the Bay Area fireball, the constellation Taurus was rising in the east, so the fireball's identification as a Taurid seems probable, albeit not certain.

A few hours later in Ozark, Arkansas, amateur astronomer Brian Emfinger photographed a definite Taurid: movie. "I estimate its brightness at around magnitude -10 (almost 200 times brighter than Venus)."

Sky watchers should be alert for Taurid fireballs in the nights ahead. The best time to look is during the hours around midnight when the constellation Taurus soars high overhead: sky map.

COMPLETE FOGBOW: On Oct. 24th, Mila Zinkova of San Francisco took an early morning stroll along the beach. As her shadow stretched across the damp sand, a ghostly white ring surrounded the dark form. "It was a 360o fogbow--a very special sight," she says.

Fogbows are close cousins of rainbows. The difference is droplet size. Rainbows appear when sunlight bounces in and out of large raindrops. The same type of reflection produces a fogbow, except fog droplets are much smaller. Small droplets don't separate the colors of sunlight as widely as large raindrops do. In a fogbow, therefore, the colors are smeared together, producing a ghostly-white arc.

"Nearby I saw a spiderweb," adds Zinkova. "The whole web was covered with tiny fog droplets, the droplets that made fogbow possible."

Only one question remains: Why is the fogbow a complete circle? Most fogbows, like rainbows, display only their upper half. Atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley has the answer: "All fogbows would like to be a full circle centered on your shadow, but usually there are insufficient tiny fog droplets near the ground to make a bow bright enough to see. Here the dark background helps to reveal it."

BONUS: weekend solar images: from Pete Lawrence of Selsey, West Sussex, UK; from Alan Friedman of Buffalo, New York;


October Northern Lights Gallery
[previous Octobers: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001]


Explore the Sunspot Cycle

       
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 November 8, 2009 there were 1077 potentially hazardous asteroids.
Nov. 2009 Earth-asteroid encounters:
Asteroid
Date(UT)
Miss Distance
Mag.
Size
2009 UW87
Oct. 31
1.6 LD
18
11 m
2009 UK14
Nov. 1
9.1 LD
20
29 m
2006 JY26
Nov. 2
6.7 LD
22
10 m
2000 XK44
Nov. 4
28.8 LD
13
1.1 km
2000 UJ1
Nov. 7
43.3 LD
15
1.2 km
2000 TO64
Nov. 10
44.2 LD
14
1.9 km
2009 UK20
Nov. 12
6.5 LD
20
20 m
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.
Essential Links
NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center
  The official U.S. government space weather bureau
Atmospheric Optics
  The first place to look for information about sundogs, pillars, rainbows and related phenomena.
Solar and Heliospheric Observatory
  Realtime and archival images of the Sun from SOHO.
STEREO
  3D views of the sun from NASA's Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory
Daily Sunspot Summaries
  from the NOAA Space Environment Center
Current Solar Images
  from the National Solar Data Analysis Center
Science Central
   
  more links...
   
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