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CHANCE OF MINOR STORMS: NOAA forecasters say that a minor G1-class geomagnetic storm is possible on Sept. 23rd when a high-speed stream of solar wind is expected to hit Earth's magnetic field. The gaseous material is flowing from an equatorial hole in the sun's atmosphere. High-latitude auroras are possible when the windy stream arrives. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text.
WEBB PHOTOGRAPHS NEPTUNE'S RINGS: The James Webb Space Telescope has just captured the clearest view of Neptune’s rings in more than 30 years. NASA relased the new image on Sept. 21st:
"It has been three decades since we last saw these faint, dusty rings, and this is the first time we’ve seen them in infrared light," notes Heidi Hammel, an interdisciplinary scientist for Webb. Some of the rings have not been detected since NASA’s Voyager 2 became the first spacecraft to observe Neptune during its flyby in 1989.
The rings of Neptune, like those of Uranus, are thought to be relatively young; their age is significantly less than that of the Solar System. They were likely created by the collisional fragmentation of onetime inner moons and are made of extremely dark organic compounds processed by radiation.
Webb also captured seven of Neptune’s 14 known moons. Dominating this Webb portrait of Neptune is a very bright point of light radiating diffraction spikes seen in many of Webb's images, but this is not a star. Rather, this is Neptune’s large and unusual moon, Triton.
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SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE ANALEMMA: If you took a picture of the sun at the same time each day, would it remain in the same position? The answer is no, and the figure-8 shape traced out by the sun over the course of a year is called an analemma. Ian Griffin photographed this one from Portobello, New Zealand:
"I've been taking a picture of the sun every day for the past year using a pinhole camera attached to my deck," explains Griffin. "Each little solar disk is a 20-second exposure at 4pm (5pm in summer). At the equinoxes and winter solstice I left the shutter open longer to record the motion of the sun. I developed the image in my darkroom and this is a scan of the resulting glass plate."
The upper and lower tips of the "8" represent the solstices--the longest and shortest days of the year. Today the New Zealand sun is near the middle--a sign that Southern spring is approaching on Sept. 23rd.
"Compared to northern hemisphere analemmas, our loops are inverted!" notes Griffin.
Other planets have analemmas, too. Not all are figure-8s, however. The shape depends on the tilt of the planet's spin axis and the eccentricity of its orbit around the sun. Martian analemmas resemble a teardrop, while Jupiter's looks like a jelly-bean:
Learn more about alien analemmas from Analemma.com
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COSMIC RAY YIN-YANG PENDANT: To celebrate the yin-yang relationship between solar activity and galactic cosmic rays, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus just launched a yin-yang pendant to the stratosphere. Here it is, flying 104,265 ft high onboard a cosmic ray research balloon:
You can have it for $142.95. The pendant's sterling silver frame surrounds balancing swirls of black onyx and mother of pearl--all suspended from a matching 18-inch sterling silver chain. It makes a great anniversary, birthday or (never too early!) Christmas gift.
The students are selling yin-yang 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 and back again.
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 Sep 21, 2022, the network reported 20 fireballs.
(20 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 September 21, 2022 there were 2293 potentially hazardous asteroids.
|
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
2022 SW | 2022-Sep-16 | 1.3 LD | 17.2 | 33 |
2022 SN1 | 2022-Sep-16 | 1.9 LD | 10.9 | 7 |
2022 ST2 | 2022-Sep-16 | 7 LD | 11.2 | 22 |
2022 SD2 | 2022-Sep-16 | 6.7 LD | 8.4 | 11 |
2022 QD1 | 2022-Sep-16 | 19.5 LD | 9.5 | 80 |
2022 SD | 2022-Sep-16 | 15.1 LD | 8.5 | 25 |
2022 SY1 | 2022-Sep-16 | 15.1 LD | 15.3 | 114 |
2022 SJ3 | 2022-Sep-17 | 0.4 LD | 15.8 | 3 |
2005 RX3 | 2022-Sep-18 | 12.4 LD | 17.5 | 123 |
2022 SB | 2022-Sep-18 | 3 LD | 17.9 | 12 |
2022 QB37 | 2022-Sep-18 | 17.2 LD | 9.2 | 59 |
2022 SS2 | 2022-Sep-18 | 2 LD | 7.3 | 13 |
2022 SF | 2022-Sep-19 | 14.6 LD | 16.8 | 25 |
2022 QJ50 | 2022-Sep-19 | 11 LD | 10.2 | 34 |
2022 SC1 | 2022-Sep-20 | 14.4 LD | 10.3 | 26 |
2022 SW1 | 2022-Sep-20 | 1.8 LD | 10.1 | 11 |
2022 SH | 2022-Sep-20 | 7.9 LD | 7.6 | 11 |
2022 SA1 | 2022-Sep-21 | 18.8 LD | 14.1 | 33 |
2022 SR2 | 2022-Sep-21 | 1.2 LD | 21.7 | 9 |
2022 SK1 | 2022-Sep-22 | 7.1 LD | 8.4 | 33 |
2022 SG3 | 2022-Sep-22 | 1.7 LD | 10.8 | 13 |
2022 ST1 | 2022-Sep-22 | 4 LD | 13.5 | 13 |
2022 SG | 2022-Sep-22 | 7.3 LD | 19.6 | 45 |
2022 QH8 | 2022-Sep-22 | 10.6 LD | 15.3 | 53 |
2022 SW3 | 2022-Sep-23 | 7.2 LD | 8.7 | 40 |
2022 QK36 | 2022-Sep-23 | 18.7 LD | 3.7 | 21 |
2022 SP | 2022-Sep-24 | 9.2 LD | 9.8 | 13 |
2022 SK | 2022-Sep-24 | 18.1 LD | 16.6 | 45 |
2022 RM | 2022-Sep-25 | 14.2 LD | 10 | 31 |
2022 SL1 | 2022-Sep-25 | 9.3 LD | 8 | 23 |
2022 SU1 | 2022-Sep-25 | 4 LD | 13.9 | 17 |
2022 SY2 | 2022-Sep-27 | 18.8 LD | 12.8 | 47 |
2022 SZ2 | 2022-Sep-27 | 1.5 LD | 3.6 | 10 |
2022 ST3 | 2022-Sep-27 | 18 LD | 17.5 | 32 |
2022 SP1 | 2022-Sep-28 | 19 LD | 4.6 | 19 |
2022 SZ | 2022-Sep-28 | 13.7 LD | 7.4 | 18 |
2022 SR1 | 2022-Sep-29 | 12.1 LD | 6 | 25 |
2016 HF2 | 2022-Sep-29 | 19.2 LD | 5.6 | 21 |
2018 ER1 | 2022-Oct-02 | 14.7 LD | 4 | 27 |
2018 VG | 2022-Oct-05 | 18.5 LD | 6.7 | 12 |
2021 TJ10 | 2022-Oct-06 | 19.6 LD | 8.1 | 6 |
2006 SG7 | 2022-Oct-07 | 16.7 LD | 18.4 | 93 |
2013 TJ6 | 2022-Oct-07 | 11.7 LD | 14.4 | 32 |
2022 RA5 | 2022-Oct-12 | 13.2 LD | 5.1 | 34 |
2013 SL20 | 2022-Oct-14 | 6.2 LD | 12.1 | 45 |
2020 TO2 | 2022-Oct-15 | 1.4 LD | 12.6 | 18 |
2020 BD | 2022-Oct-16 | 12.1 LD | 11.4 | 20 |
2022 QM6 | 2022-Oct-17 | 19.8 LD | 4.2 | 69 |
2022 RB5 | 2022-Oct-23 | 13.2 LD | 5.2 | 116 |
2005 AZ28 | 2022-Oct-24 | 11.5 LD | 5.4 | 56 |
2016 TH94 | 2022-Oct-25 | 19.1 LD | 13.5 | 43 |
2019 AN5 | 2022-Oct-27 | 20 LD | 6.8 | 213 |
2004 UT1 | 2022-Oct-29 | 4 LD | 6.3 | 17 |
2021 VH | 2022-Nov-01 | 5.9 LD | 5.3 | 4 |
2022 RM4 | 2022-Nov-01 | 6 LD | 23.5 | 433 |
2020 WD | 2022-Nov-08 | 3 LD | 6 | 8 |
2019 XS | 2022-Nov-10 | 16.7 LD | 11.9 | 60 |
2019 VL5 | 2022-Nov-15 | 8.5 LD | 8.1 | 24 |
2018 WH | 2022-Nov-16 | 2.5 LD | 7.7 | 4 |
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 |
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