| | Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica Credit: NOAA/Ovation Planetary K-index Now: Kp= 1 quiet 24-hr max: Kp= 7 strong explanation | more data Interplanetary Mag. Field Btotal: 13.4 nT Bz: 12.1 nT north more data: ACE, DSCOVR Updated: Today at 2347 UT Coronal Holes: 28 May 17 There are no large coronal holes on the Earth-facing side of the sun. Credit: NASA/SDO. Noctilucent Clouds The southern season for noctilucent clouds began on Nov. 17, 2016. Come back to this spot every day to see the "daily daisy" from NASA's AIM spacecraft, which is monitoring the dance of electric-blue around the Antarctic Circle. Switch view: Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctic Peninsula, East Antarctica, Polar Updated at: 02-24-2017 17:55:02 SPACE WEATHER NOAA Forecasts | | Updated at: 2017 May 28 2200 UTC FLARE | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | CLASS M | 05 % | 05 % | 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: 2017 May 28 2200 UTC Mid-latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 20 % | 10 % | MINOR | 05 % | 01 % | SEVERE | 01 % | 01 % | High latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 15 % | 15 % | MINOR | 20 % | 15 % | SEVERE | 15 % | 10 % | | | | | | | | | | | | Lights Over lapland is excited to announce that Autumn Aurora Adventures are available for immediate booking! Reserve your adventure of a lifetime in Abisko National Park, Sweden today! | | | CME HITS, SPARKS AURORAS (UPDATED): A CME hit Earth's magnetic field on May 27th. At first, for several hours, the seemingly weak impact barely disturbed our planet's magnetic environment. Then the storms began. As Earth passed through the CME's wake, energetic particles poured through a crack in Earth's magnetosphere, sparking strong G3-class geomagnetic storms and bright auroras. Chris Cook recorded the display from Cape Cod, Massachusetts: "Tonight's surprise aurora was captured around 11:15pm EDT overlooking the calm waters of Cape Cod Bay," says Cook. "Numerous pillars reached to a height of 25°. It was nice to see the Northern Lights again!" During the peak of the storm, Northern Lights were photographed in the USA as far south as California and Arizona. "After midnight the sky turned pink and a green ray extended up from the horizon," reports Chris Schur of Payson AZ. The storms are subsiding now. Earth is exiting the CME's wake, and our planet's magnetic field is quieting. Nevertheless, there is a lingering chance of G1-class storms and high-latitude auroras after nightfall on May 28th. Free: Aurora Alerts Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery TARDIGRADES AT THE EDGE OF SPACE: On May 27th, Spaceweather.com and the students of Earth to Sky Calculus conducted an experiment in astrobiology, launching a sample of tardigrades to the stratosphere during a geomagnetic storm. Here they are at the apex of the flight 34.6 km (113,500 ft) above the Sierra Nevadas of central California: Also known as "water bears," tardigrades are near-microscopic creatures that can survive high doses of ionizing radiation, temperatures almost as low as absolute zero, and pressures six times higher than deep ocean trenches. Can they survive a trip onboard a space weather balloon? That's the question Earth to Sky student Makayla McDevitt is trying to answer for her end-of-term AP Environmental Sciences project. This photomicrograph shows one of the creatures floating in its watery habitat prior to launch: The tardigrades traveled to the stratosphere alongside an array of X-ray/gamma-ray sensors that we use to monitor cosmic rays in the atmosphere. Flying these sensors during geomagnetic storms is important because it helps us understand our radiation environment during the full range of space weather conditions. Stay tuned for updates from this flight. Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery THIS PENDANT HAS TOUCHED SPACE: The radiation monitoring program of Earth to Sky Calculus receives no support from corporate sponsors or government grants. Instead, we are crowd-funded. Or, to be more precise, bling-funded: To raise money for more cosmic ray balloon flights, on May 6th the students launched a payload of these Northern Lights pendants to the top of Earth's atmosphere. You can have one for $79.95. Each piece of space jewelry comes with a greeting card showing the item in flight and telling the story of its journey to the stratosphere and back. They make great birthday and belated Mother's Day gifts. More far-out gifts may be found in the Earth to Sky Store. All proceeds support atmospheric radiation monitoring and hands-on STEM education. 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 May. 28, 2017, the network reported 101 fireballs. (100 sporadics, 1) 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 May 28, 2017 there were 1803 potentially hazardous asteroids. | Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) | 2017 KN27 | 2017-May-23 | 5.2 LD | 17.7 | 30 | 2017 KH3 | 2017-May-24 | 18.7 LD | 20 | 62 | 2017 KW4 | 2017-May-25 | 3.9 LD | 13 | 28 | 2017 KH5 | 2017-May-25 | 1.3 LD | 14.9 | 11 | 2017 CS | 2017-May-29 | 8 LD | 9.1 | 468 | 2017 KJ27 | 2017-May-30 | 6.1 LD | 16.2 | 29 | 418094 | 2017-Jun-01 | 8 LD | 23.2 | 490 | 2017 KX4 | 2017-Jun-01 | 15.2 LD | 9.4 | 46 | 2017 KJ3 | 2017-Jun-03 | 11.1 LD | 11.3 | 49 | 2017 KJ5 | 2017-Jun-04 | 11.6 LD | 3.7 | 17 | 2017 KK27 | 2017-Jun-04 | 15.7 LD | 6.5 | 27 | 2017 KR27 | 2017-Jun-06 | 7 LD | 12.5 | 72 | 2017 KQ27 | 2017-Jun-06 | 1 LD | 10.7 | 26 | 2017 HV4 | 2017-Jun-10 | 19.5 LD | 3.9 | 51 | 2017 KF3 | 2017-Jun-11 | 12.9 LD | 11.2 | 40 | 2010 VB1 | 2017-Jun-16 | 10.3 LD | 8.3 | 81 | 471984 | 2017-Jun-18 | 19.1 LD | 7.7 | 102 | 441987 | 2017-Jun-24 | 7.9 LD | 12.7 | 178 | 2017 BS5 | 2017-Jul-23 | 3.2 LD | 5.8 | 54 | 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 13% 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." 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