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! | | |
GEOMAGNETIC STORM WATCH: G1-class geomagnetic storms are possible on Oct. 24-25 when a stream of solar wind hits Earth's magnetic field. The gaseous material is flowing ~700 km/s from a large hole in the sun's atmosphere. Auroras could descend into northern-tier US states from Maine to Washington. Aurora alerts: SMS Text.
THE ORIONIDS ARE COMING! Imagine waking up before sunrise on a brisk fall morning. The bright stars of Orion twinkle overhead. Flash! A fireball streaks across the sky, its smokey trail twisting in the wind as you sip your coffee. If this sounds like heaven, set your alarm before dawn on Oct. 22nd to catch the peak of the Orionid meteor shower.
Above: Ian Webster created this interactive visualization of Halley's debris stream cutting across Earth's orbit.
Orionid meteors come from Halley's Comet. Every year around this time, Earth passes through a stream of debris from Halley, and meteors fly out of the constellation Orion. Forecasters expect the 2019 Orionids to peak on Tuesday, Oct. 22nd, with as many as 20 meteors per hour. The best time to look is during the hours before local sunrise when Orion the Hunter is high in the sky.
Some other showers produce more shooting stars, but the Orionids are second to none in beauty. They strike Earth's atmosphere traveling 66 km/s or 148,000 mph. Only the Leonids of November are faster at 72 km/s. Orionids often leave glowing "trains" (incandescent bits of debris in the wake of the meteor) that last for minutes, swirling among the glittering stars of Orion, Gemini, and Taurus.
Wake up early and enjoy the show. More: photo gallery, sky map.
Realtime Spaceweather Photo Gallery
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INTRODUCING THE CORONACAM: All auroras are beautiful. There is one type of aurora, however, that is more beautiful than the rest: the "corona." Coronas are auroras that seem to rain down from directly overhead. They make you feel wrapped up, dipped in, literally surrounded by Northern Lights. Here is an example photographed by Lights over Lapland tour guide Oliver Wright in Abisko, Sweden:
Catching coronas in action can be tricky. Soon, though, you'll be seeing them more often. The guides at Lights over Lapland are building a "coronacam"--a camera that points straight up, 24/7, throughout the long Arctic night. When coronas appear over Abisko, Sweden, the coronacam with catch them.
"We are really enjoy working on the new webcam," says Chad Blakley of Lights over Lapland. "Designing a camera system that points nearly straight up in the Arctic is not easy, though. For example, we must think of creative ways to keep the lens warm and properly irrigated. Any condensed moisture must drain away from the lens rather than pooling directly on top."
"Also, properly exposing a portion of the sky with no light source other than stars for reference has been a real challenge," says Blakley. "We have found that the settings developed for our original horizon-pointing webcam do not necessarily work with the new system – but we are making progress every day and hope to broadcast the first images from the coronacam soon. With a bit of luck we will be up and running for the next solar wind stream."
Once the coronacam is complete, we plan to feature its images with a live feed on Spaceweather.com. Stay tuned!
Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
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HOUSTON ASTROS IN THE STRATOSPHERE: The Astros are in the World Series. Now they're in the stratosphere, too. The students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched this Houston Astros baseball 113,845 feet above Earth's surface using a high-altitude cosmic ray balloon:
You can have it for $99.95. The students are selling space baseballs to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. Not an Astros fan? No problem. You can also purchase space baseballs for the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, Cubs, Cardinals, Angels, Padres, Giants or--coming soon!--the Nationals!
Each baseball comes with a greeting card showing the ball in flight and telling the story of its journey to the stratosphere. Plus, you'll receive a UV-resistant cubical display case with decorating stickers depicting the ball at the edge of space.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
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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 Oct. 20, 2019, the network reported 24 fireballs.
(16 sporadics, 6 Orionids, 1 epsilon Geminid, 1 southern Taurid)
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 October 20, 2019 there were 2018 potentially hazardous asteroids.
|
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
2019 UR | 2019-Oct-15 | 17.9 LD | 5.8 | 18 |
2019 UV | 2019-Oct-15 | 12.3 LD | 11.9 | 22 |
2019 UA1 | 2019-Oct-15 | 14.6 LD | 10 | 22 |
2019 SR8 | 2019-Oct-16 | 13.5 LD | 9.8 | 26 |
2019 UU | 2019-Oct-16 | 10.3 LD | 9.4 | 18 |
2019 UL | 2019-Oct-16 | 1.2 LD | 4 | 6 |
2019 UB1 | 2019-Oct-17 | 9.9 LD | 6.2 | 21 |
2019 TE2 | 2019-Oct-18 | 8.2 LD | 10.1 | 29 |
2019 TW6 | 2019-Oct-18 | 14.8 LD | 5.6 | 19 |
2019 TP5 | 2019-Oct-18 | 8.2 LD | 18.6 | 35 |
2019 UB | 2019-Oct-18 | 12.3 LD | 16.6 | 92 |
2019 TA1 | 2019-Oct-18 | 15.5 LD | 6.4 | 23 |
2019 TM7 | 2019-Oct-18 | 11.1 LD | 24.1 | 60 |
2019 TK5 | 2019-Oct-19 | 2.5 LD | 5.8 | 12 |
2019 TG7 | 2019-Oct-19 | 16.8 LD | 7.6 | 23 |
2019 SJ8 | 2019-Oct-19 | 11.6 LD | 7.4 | 46 |
2019 UJ | 2019-Oct-20 | 7.4 LD | 13.2 | 15 |
2019 UT | 2019-Oct-22 | 2.4 LD | 11.2 | 9 |
2019 UZ | 2019-Oct-23 | 5.7 LD | 9.6 | 9 |
2019 UD | 2019-Oct-24 | 8.6 LD | 3.1 | 15 |
2019 TQ2 | 2019-Oct-25 | 12.8 LD | 12.4 | 35 |
2019 UQ | 2019-Oct-25 | 4.3 LD | 13 | 21 |
162082 | 2019-Oct-25 | 16.2 LD | 11.2 | 589 |
2017 TG5 | 2019-Oct-25 | 14.4 LD | 11.9 | 34 |
2019 UC | 2019-Oct-29 | 2.9 LD | 8.9 | 53 |
2019 TR2 | 2019-Oct-29 | 19.4 LD | 13.8 | 75 |
2015 JD1 | 2019-Nov-03 | 12.9 LD | 11.9 | 269 |
2010 JG | 2019-Nov-12 | 19.6 LD | 14.9 | 235 |
481394 | 2019-Nov-21 | 11.3 LD | 7.9 | 372 |
2008 EA9 | 2019-Nov-23 | 10.5 LD | 2.2 | 10 |
2017 AP4 | 2019-Dec-03 | 8.5 LD | 7.5 | 15 |
2018 XW2 | 2019-Dec-07 | 17.4 LD | 13 | 28 |
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 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.
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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