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! | | |
FREE BALLOON FLIGHTS TO THE STRATOSPHERE: Hey, did your science class get cancelled? Are you stuck at home with nothing to do? Maybe now is the time to visit the stratosphere. We're giving away high-altitude balloon launches to students and citizen scientists who have good ideas for experiments. The program is called FREELIFT, and you're invited to participate.
INTRODUCING COMET SWAN: Warning: This story may give you a sense of déjà vu. A new comet has been discovered, and in late May it will pass by the sun near the orbit of Mercury. No, it's not Comet ATLAS (C/2019 Y4), which is currently falling apart on a similar trajectory. Instead, this is Comet SWAN (C/2020 F8):
Michael Mattiazzo of Swan Hill, Victoria, Australia, took the picture on April 13th. "This is a 5 minute exposure through my 11-inch Celestron telescope," says Mattiazzo. "A visual observation using 15x70mm binoculars gave a magnitude of 8.1."
Mattiazzo discovered the comet two days earlier when he was looking at data from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). It suddenly appeared in images from SOHO's SWAN instrument. "This is my 8th discovery credit for SWAN comets since 2004 and I do check the data on most days," says Mattiazzo.
Post-discovery images taken by Italian astronomer Ernest Guido and colleagues confirm that the comet is bright (8th magnitude), green, and has a long tail:
"We took this picture on April 11th--the same day Mattiazzo found the comet in SWAN data," says Guido. "We couldn't see it from Italy, so we used a remote-controlled 0.1 meter telescope in Australia."
SOHO's SWAN instrument was not designed to find comets. Its job is to survey the solar system for hydrogen. When the solar wind blows into a cloud of hydrogen-bearing compounds, the impact produces UV photons that SWAN can photograph.
"For SWAN to see a comet, it means the comet must be producing a fairly significant amount of hydrogen," explains Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab in Washington DC. "This is usually in the form of water-ice."
"It's extremely likely that Comet SWAN is in 'outburst' mode," he continues. "That is, some major eruption happened to this otherwise small and faint comet, releasing a massive cloud of hydrogen-rich volatiles. SWAN is picking up on this sudden dump of hydrogen into the inner solar system."
Click to view an interactive preliminary orbit of Comet SWAN. Credit: Gideon van Buitenen
If the outburst continues, Comet SWAN could become visible to the naked eye next month. Preliminary light curves suggest that it could reach 3rd magnitude--dim, but visible without optics. However, Battams, who correctly predicted the demise of Comet ATLAS, is not so sure.
"I doubt that the comet will maintain its current impressive appearance, and will quite possibly fade away soon," he says. "But we've only been viewing it for a couple of days, so no one knows."
Comet SWAN is currently located in southern skies, best seen by telescopes in Australia, New Zealand, southern Africa and South America. Preliminary orbital elements are available here. Stay tuned for updates.
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A MOTHER'S DAY GIFT FROM THE STRATOSPHERE: Tell Mom how much you love her -- to the Moon and Back! On March 5th, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched an array of cosmic ray sensors to the edge of space onboard a helium balloon. This Mother's Day pendant went along for the ride:
The silvery crescent declares "I love you to the Moon and Back" and surrounds a 14K gold plated heart labeled "Mom."
You can have it for $99.95. The students are selling these pendants to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the item in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space. Sales support the Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray ballooning program and hands-on STEM research.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
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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 Apr. 15, 2020, the network reported 5 fireballs.
(5 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 April 15, 2020 there were 2018 potentially hazardous asteroids.
|
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
2020 GE | 2020-Apr-10 | 5.4 LD | 2.2 | 8 |
2019 HM | 2020-Apr-10 | 7.2 LD | 3.2 | 23 |
2020 GM1 | 2020-Apr-11 | 10.2 LD | 25.5 | 65 |
2020 GU1 | 2020-Apr-11 | 5.9 LD | 6.9 | 14 |
2020 GG | 2020-Apr-11 | 9.7 LD | 5.5 | 17 |
2020 GA2 | 2020-Apr-11 | 8.6 LD | 24.7 | 208 |
363599 | 2020-Apr-11 | 19.2 LD | 24.5 | 224 |
2020 GF2 | 2020-Apr-12 | 2.4 LD | 10.3 | 23 |
2020 FX3 | 2020-Apr-15 | 14.1 LD | 10.3 | 54 |
2020 FZ6 | 2020-Apr-15 | 20 LD | 21.7 | 189 |
2020 GH2 | 2020-Apr-15 | 0.9 LD | 8.7 | 17 |
2020 GN2 | 2020-Apr-16 | 3.2 LD | 10 | 27 |
2020 GJ2 | 2020-Apr-17 | 11.5 LD | 8 | 42 |
2020 GR2 | 2020-Apr-17 | 12.4 LD | 4.3 | 18 |
2020 GT2 | 2020-Apr-18 | 5.7 LD | 13 | 33 |
2020 FV6 | 2020-Apr-19 | 10.8 LD | 19.8 | 90 |
2019 HS2 | 2020-Apr-26 | 13.6 LD | 12.6 | 17 |
2019 GF1 | 2020-Apr-27 | 18.7 LD | 3.2 | 12 |
2020 FM6 | 2020-Apr-27 | 14.3 LD | 16.9 | 152 |
52768 | 2020-Apr-29 | 16.4 LD | 8.7 | 2457 |
2020 DM4 | 2020-May-01 | 18.4 LD | 6.4 | 161 |
438908 | 2020-May-07 | 8.9 LD | 12.8 | 282 |
2016 HP6 | 2020-May-07 | 4.3 LD | 5.7 | 31 |
388945 | 2020-May-10 | 7.3 LD | 8.8 | 295 |
2000 KA | 2020-May-12 | 8.9 LD | 13.5 | 162 |
478784 | 2020-May-15 | 8.5 LD | 3.6 | 28 |
136795 | 2020-May-21 | 16.1 LD | 11.7 | 892 |
163348 | 2020-Jun-06 | 13.3 LD | 11.1 | 339 |
2013 XA22 | 2020-Jun-09 | 10.6 LD | 6.5 | 98 |
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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