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SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids
 
Solar wind
speed: 439.2 km/sec
density: 4.5 protons/cm3
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 2346 UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: A1
1816 UT Apr15
24-hr: A1
0625 UT Apr15
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 2350 UT
Daily Sun: 15 Apr 20
The sun is blank--no sunspots. Credit: SDO/HMI

Sunspot number: 0
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 15 Apr 2020

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 10 days
2020 total: 80 days (75%)
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 15 Apr 2020


Thermosphere Climate Index
today: 3.65
x1010 W Cold
Max: 49.4
x1010 W Hot (10/1957)
Min: 2.05
x1010 W Cold (02/2009)
explanation | more data: gfx, txt
Updated 15 Apr 2020

The Radio Sun
10.7 cm flux:69 sfu
explanation | more data
Updated 15 Apr 2020

Cosmic Rays Solar minimum is underway. The sun's magnetic field is weak, allowing extra cosmic rays into the solar system. Neutron counts from the University of Oulu's Sodankyla Geophysical Observatory show that cosmic rays reaching Earth in 2020 are near a Space Age peak.

Oulu Neutron Counts

Percentages of the Space Age average:
today: +11.1% Very High
48-hr change: +0.0%
Max: +11.7% Very High
(12/2009)
Min: -32.1% Very Low (06/1991)
explanation | more data
Updated 15 Apr 2020 @ 1600 UT

Current Auroral Oval:
Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica
Credit: NOAA/Ovation
Planetary K-index
Now: Kp= 1 quiet
24-hr max: Kp= 3
quiet
explanation | more data
Interplanetary Mag. Field
Btotal: 3.6 nT
Bz: -1.7 nT south
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 2345 UT
Coronal Holes: 15 Apr 20

There are no significant coronal holes on the Earthside of the sun.
Credit: SDO/AIA

Noctilucent Clouds The northern hemisphere season for noctilucent clouds is coming soon--probably starting in mid- to late-May. Check here for daily images from NASA's AIM spacecraft.
Switch view: Europe, USA, Asia, Polar
Updated at: 03-02-2020 17:55:02 UT
SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts
Updated at: 2020 Apr 15 2200 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: 2020 Apr 15 2200 UTC
Mid-latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
10 %
10 %
MINOR
01 %
01 %
SEVERE
01 %
01 %
High latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
15 %
15 %
MINOR
25 %
25 %
SEVERE
10 %
10 %
 
Wednesday, Apr. 15, 2020
What's up in space
       
 

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.

Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
Free:
Spaceweather.com Newsletter

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


Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
Free:
Spaceweather.com Newsletter



  All Sky Fireball Network
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]

  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 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.

  Essential web 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 Dynamics Observatory
  Researchers call it a "Hubble for the sun." SDO is the most advanced solar observatory ever.
STEREO
  3D views of the sun from NASA's Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory
Solar and Heliospheric Observatory
  Realtime and archival images of the Sun from SOHO.
Daily Sunspot Summaries
  from the NOAA Space Environment Center
NOAA 27-Day Space Weather Forecasts
  fun to read, but should be taken with a grain of salt! Forecasts looking ahead more than a few days are often wrong.
Aurora 30 min forecast
  from the NOAA Space Environment Center
Heliophysics
  the underlying science of space weather

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