This is an AI Free Zone! Text created by ChatGPT and other Large Language Models is spreading rapidly across the Internet. It's well-written, artificial, frequently inaccurate. If you find a mistake on Spaceweather.com, rest assured it was made by a real human being. | | |
A CME JUST HIT EARTH: As predicted, a CME hit Earth's magnetic field on July 14th (1633 UT). The impact (data) could spark minor G1-class geomagnetic storms in the hours ahead. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras especially around local midnight. Aurora alerts: SMS Text
THE BASTILLE DAY EVENT: You know a solar flare is strong when even the Voyager spacecraft feel it. Twenty-three years ago today (July 14, 2000) the sun exploded with so much force, it sent shockwaves to the edge of the solar system.
| |
Above: SOHO images of the X5.7-class Bastille Day solar flare (left) and CME (right). Blinding "snow" in the images is a result of energetic protons hitting the spacecraft |
At about 11 a.m. in western Europe, where Bastille Day celebrations were underway in France, Earth-orbiting satellites reported an X5.7-class solar flare. Within the hour, energetic particles accelerated by the flare reached our planet. Protons and electrons hit the atmosphere and created a cascade of radiation that reached all the way to the ground--a rare "GLE."
"People flying in commercial jets at high latitudes would have received double their usual radiation dose," says Clive Dyer of the University of Surrey Space Centre in Guildford UK, who studies extreme space weather. "It was quite an energetic event--one of the strongest of the past 20 years."
A day later the CME arrived. Its impact on July 15, 2000, sparked an extreme (Kp=9) geomagnetic storm. The sun had just set on the east coast of North America when the auroras appeared.
Red auroras over Troutman, North Carolina, on July 15, 2000. Credit: Ronnie Sherrill
"I was out in the yard doing chores and saw bright red auroras overhead," recalls Uwe Heine of Caswell County, North Carolina. "I called over to our neighbor, Carrie, who was also outside. I told her those were not sunset colors. It was an aurora, and super rare to see this far south!"
In New York, the sky exploded with light, recalls Lou Michael Moure. "I was living on Long Island at the time. A family member came running into my room, begging me to come outside to see 'the sky on fire.' Hues of white and green eventually gave way to reds that blanketed the heavens from horizon to horizon."
By the time the storm subsided on July 16, 2000, auroras had been reported as far south as Texas, Florida and Mexico.
The Bastille Day Event is special to researchers. It was the first major solar storm after the 1995 launch of SOHO, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. Data from the young satellite taught researchers a lot, very quickly, about the physics of extreme flares.
Above: A modern MHD computer simulation of the Bastille Day explosion. Credit: Tibor Török et al., The Astrophysical Journal, 856:75 (22pp), 2018 March 2
Tibor Török of Predictive Science, Inc., is one of many researchers still studying the Bastille Day Event. He recently applied a modern magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) computer model to some of the data, and found that 1033 ergs of magnetic energy were released in the explosion--about the same as a thousand billion WWII atomic bombs.
No wonder the Voyagers felt it.
It took the Bastille Day CME months to reach the distant spacecraft--180 days to Voyager 2, and 245 days to Voyager 1. Being near the edge of the solar system, both spacecraft were normally bathed in high levels of cosmic rays. The CME swept aside that ambient radiation, creating a temporary reduction called a "Forbush Decrease." Conditions did not return to normal until 3 to 4 months later. Finally, the storm was over.
Readers, did you experience the Bastille Day Event? Please post your photos to the gallery and/or share your stories with Dr. Tony Phillips.
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter
NORTHERN LIGHTS PENDANT: Are you looking for a far-out gift? Consider the Northern Lights Pendant. Here it is, hitching a ride to the stratosphere onboard an Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray balloon:
You can have it for $129.95. The students are selling these pendants to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the pendant in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space. It makes an out-of-this-world birthday or anniversary gift!
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter
Realtime Noctilucent Cloud Photo Gallery
Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter
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 Jul 13, 2023, the network reported 7 fireballs.
(7 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 July 14, 2023 there were 2335 potentially hazardous asteroids.
|
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
2018 NW | 2023-Jul-10 | 18 LD | 21.8 | 10 |
2023 LN1 | 2023-Jul-10 | 17.9 LD | 5.8 | 62 |
2023 MD2 | 2023-Jul-11 | 5.6 LD | 8.4 | 48 |
2023 NE | 2023-Jul-11 | 11.3 LD | 12 | 42 |
2023 MQ1 | 2023-Jul-11 | 10.8 LD | 6 | 39 |
2018 UY | 2023-Jul-12 | 7.4 LD | 16.4 | 243 |
2023 NU | 2023-Jul-12 | 8.4 LD | 15.7 | 63 |
2023 NP | 2023-Jul-14 | 13.1 LD | 8.2 | 21 |
2023 NY | 2023-Jul-15 | 11.6 LD | 2.1 | 14 |
2023 NW | 2023-Jul-16 | 15.7 LD | 17.1 | 33 |
2023 MG6 | 2023-Jul-16 | 9.5 LD | 12.4 | 290 |
2020 UQ3 | 2023-Jul-18 | 3.2 LD | 9.3 | 59 |
2023 NE1 | 2023-Jul-19 | 12.7 LD | 5.6 | 60 |
2022 GX2 | 2023-Jul-20 | 11.9 LD | 9.4 | 5 |
2023 NL | 2023-Jul-20 | 19.1 LD | 5.5 | 44 |
2020 OM | 2023-Jul-20 | 8.5 LD | 9.5 | 14 |
2023 MX5 | 2023-Jul-21 | 11.9 LD | 11.8 | 63 |
2023 MM3 | 2023-Jul-22 | 19.1 LD | 6.4 | 44 |
2015 MA54 | 2023-Jul-24 | 16.6 LD | 9.2 | 31 |
2018 BG5 | 2023-Jul-27 | 10.7 LD | 8.4 | 56 |
2020 PP1 | 2023-Jul-29 | 17 LD | 4.1 | 17 |
2021 BD3 | 2023-Jul-30 | 14 LD | 8.5 | 25 |
2016 AW65 | 2023-Jul-31 | 16.6 LD | 5.7 | 54 |
2020 PN1 | 2023-Aug-03 | 10.8 LD | 4.8 | 29 |
620082 | 2023-Aug-04 | 14 LD | 20.6 | 375 |
2004 KG1 | 2023-Aug-06 | 18.7 LD | 9.2 | 54 |
2022 BS2 | 2023-Aug-11 | 17.3 LD | 8.2 | 30 |
2022 CP1 | 2023-Aug-17 | 13.8 LD | 9.8 | 12 |
2011 QJ21 | 2023-Aug-19 | 13 LD | 15.1 | 45 |
6037 | 2023-Aug-23 | 15.9 LD | 14.3 | 563 |
2012 PZ17 | 2023-Aug-30 | 16.8 LD | 3.6 | 16 |
2017 BY32 | 2023-Sep-02 | 16.4 LD | 3.5 | 20 |
2021 JA5 | 2023-Sep-06 | 13.3 LD | 10.9 | 19 |
2020 GE | 2023-Sep-08 | 14.9 LD | 1.4 | 8 |
Notes: LD means "Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance between Earth and the Moon. 1 LD also equals 0.00256 AU. | 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 (July 2022): Atmospheric radiation is decreasing in 2022. Our latest measurements in July 2022 registered a 6-year low:
What's going on? Ironically, the radiation drop is caused by increasing solar activity. Solar Cycle 25 has roared to life faster than forecasters expected. The sun's strengthening and increasingly tangled magnetic field repels cosmic rays from deep space. In addition, solar coronal mass ejections (CMEs) sweep aside cosmic rays, causing sharp reductions called "Forbush Decreases." The two effects blend together to bring daily radiation levels down.
.Who cares? Cosmic rays are a surprisingly "down to Earth" form of space weather. They can alter the chemistry of the atmosphere, 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. A number of controversial studies (#1, #2, #3, #4) go even further, linking 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 graph labeled "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.
| 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. |
| information about sunspots based on the latest NOAA/USAF Active Region Summary |
| current counts of failed and deployed Starlink satellites from Jonathan's Space Page |
| Authoritative predictions of space junk and satellite re-entries |
| 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 |
| Getting YouTube comments is essential if you want to beat the algorithm! That’s why you need to buy YouTube comments from RealSocialz.com because they offer real USA comments you can customize. |
| When looking for casinos to play online when the weather is bad, you can try casino online trucchi for Italian 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. |
| BestCSGOGambling is the best site for everything related to CSGO gambling on the web |
| These links help Spaceweather.com stay online. Thank you to our supporters! |
| | | | | |