Directly under the Arctic Circle! Marianne's Arctic Xpress in Tromsø offers fjord, whale and wildlife tours by day, aurora tours by night. Book Now for out of this world day and night adventures. | | | REALLY BLANK SUN: The sun has been blank (no sunspots) for 12 consecutive days. If today ends without a sunspot, the number will increase to 13, matching the longest stretch of blank suns since April of 2010. This is yet another sign that the sunspot cycle is crashing toward a deep minimum expected in 2019-2020. Is space weather coming to an end? On the contrary, now is when things get interesting: Solar Minimum brings extra cosmic rays, pink auroras, and more. NEUTRONS ON A PLANE: Among researchers, it is well known that air travelers are exposed to cosmic rays. High-energy particles and photons from deep space penetrate Earth's atmosphere and go right through the hulls of commercial aircraft. This has prompted the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) to classify pilots and flight attendants as occupational radiation workers. Many studies of this problem focus on ionizing radiation such as x-rays and gamma-rays. On March 16th we turned the tables and measured neutrons instead. During a 12-hour flight from Stockholm to Los Angeles, Spaceweather.com and the students of Earth to Sky Calculus used bubble chambers to monitor neutron activity inside a Scandinavian Airlines jetliner. In the photo above, taken 35,000 feet above Greenland, each bubble shows where a neutron passed through the chamber and vaporized a superheated droplet. By the time the long flight was over, we measured almost 20 uSv (microsieverts) of radiation from neutrons--similar to the dose from a panoramic X-ray at your dentist's office. This confirms that neutrons are an important form of aviation radiation relevant to both air travelers and future space tourists. Where do these neutrons come from? Mainly, they are secondary cosmic rays. When primary cosmic rays from deep space hit Earth's atmosphere, they produce a spray of secondary particles including neutrons, protons, alpha particles, and other species. Cosmic ray neutrons can reach the ground; indeed, researchers routinely use neutron counters on Earth's surface to monitor cosmic ray activity above the atmosphere. Now we're doing the same thing onboard airplanes. Earlier in the week, we flew these bubble chambers to the Arctic stratosphere using a space weather balloon. Interestingly, the 12-hour plane flight yielded ~6 times more neutrons than the shorter (2 hour) but far higher (97,000 ft) balloon flight to the stratosphere. What does it mean? We're still analyzing the data and will have more insights to share in the days ahead. Stay tuned! Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery CORONAL HOLE TURNS TOWARD EARTH: A hole has opened in the sun's atmosphere, and it is turning toward Earth. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory is tracking the opening, which researchers call a "coronal hole" (CH): Coronal holes are places--big places--where the sun's magnetic field opens up and allows solar wind to escape. A wide stream of solar wind flowing from this coronal hole is expected to reach our planet on March 23rd. The impact of the solar wind should produce magnetic activity around Earth's poles and could spark the first auroras of northern spring. Free: Aurora Alerts Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery Realtime Comet Photo Gallery 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. 17, 2017, the network reported 18 fireballs. (18 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 March 18, 2017 there were 1780 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 | Readers, thank you for your patience while we continue to develop this new section of Spaceweather.com. We've been working to streamline our data reduction, allowing us to post results from balloon flights much more rapidly, and we have developed a new data product, shown here: This plot displays radiation measurements not only in the stratosphere, but also at aviation altitudes. 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. These measurements are made by our usual cosmic ray payload as it passes through aviation altitudes en route to the stratosphere over California. What is this all about? 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 12% since 2015: 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 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. The data points in the graph above correspond to the peak of the Reneger-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. | 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 | | a proud supporter of science education and Spaceweather.com | | 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 | | Beautyz for top beauty products reviews and their buying guides | | Reviews here can help you to pick up best memory foam mattresses. | | These links help Spaceweather.com stay online. Thank you to our supporters! | |