Spotless Days Current Stretch: 0 days 2024 total: 0 days (0%) 2023 total: 0 days (0%) 2022 total: 1 day (<1%) 2021 total: 64 days (18%) 2020 total: 208 days (57%) 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 31 Mar 2024
Thermosphere Climate Index today: 19.84x1010W Warm Max: 49.4x1010 W Hot (10/1957) Min: 2.05x1010 W Cold (02/2009) explanation | more data:gfx, txt Updated 31 Mar 2024
Cosmic RaysSolar Cycle 25 is intensifying, and this is reflected in the number of cosmic rays entering Earth's atmosphere. Neutron counts from the University of Oulu's Sodankyla Geophysical Observatory show that cosmic rays reaching Earth are slowly declining--a result of the yin-yang relationship between the solar cycle and cosmic rays. Oulu Neutron Counts Percentages of the Space Age average: today: -4.8% Low 48-hr change: +1.0% Max: +11.7% Very High (12/2009) Min: -32.1% Very Low (06/1991) explanation |more data Updated 31 Mar 2024 @ 0700 UT
Planetary K-index Now: Kp= 1.33 quiet 24-hr max: Kp= 3.67 quiet explanation | more data
Interplanetary Mag. Field Btotal: 9.51 nT Bz: 5.24 nT north more data: ACE, DSCOVR Updated: Today at 1145 UT
Coronal Holes: 31 Mar 24
There are no significant equatorial coronal holes on the Earthside of the sun. Credit: SDO/AIA
Polar Stratospheric Clouds Colorful Type II polar stratospheric clouds (PSC) form when the temperature in the stratosphere drops to a staggeringly low -85C. NASA's MERRA-2 climate model predicts when the air up there is cold enough:
On Mar. 31, 2024, the Arctic stratosphere is much too warm for Type II polar stratospheric clouds. | more data.
Noctilucent Clouds The southern season for NLCs is over. The first clouds were detected inside the Antarctic Circle on Dec. 4, 2023, by the NOAA 21 satellite. The same satellite detected the last cloud on Feb. 21, 2024. Daily maps are now blank:
Updated: Feb 22, 2024
An instrument onboard NOAA 21 (OMPS LP) is able to detect NLCs (also known as "polar mesospheric clouds" or PMCs). Now that the southern season has ended, attention turns to the northern hemisphere. The first NLCs should appear inside the Arctic Circle in mid to late May.
SPACE WEATHER NOAA Forecasts
Updated at: 2024 Mar 31 2200 UTC
FLARE
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
CLASS M
10 %
10 %
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: 2024 Mar 31 2200 UTC
Mid-latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
20 %
15 %
MINOR
05 %
05 %
SEVERE
01 %
01 %
High latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
15 %
15 %
MINOR
30 %
25 %
SEVERE
30 %
25 %
Sunday, Mar. 31, 2024
What's up in space
This is an AI Free Zone! Text created by ChatGPT and other Large Language Models is spreading rapidly across the Internet. It's well-written, artificial, frequently inaccurate. If you find a mistake on Spaceweather.com, rest assured it was made by a real human being.
SOLAR RADIATION STORM WATCH--CANCELED: Departing sunspot AR3615 erupted on March 30th (2116 UT), producing an M9.4-class solar flare only percentage points below category X. At first it seemed that the explosion would cause a solar radiation storm. AR3615 is magnetically well-connected to Earth via the Parker Spiral. Debris from the blast should have spiraled back to our planet. However, that didn't happen, so the radiation storm watch is canceled. Solar flare alerts:SMS Text
THIS USED TO BE RARE: Seeing rockets soar through the night sky used to be rare. Not anymore. Launch rates are skyrocketing. This year alone SpaceX has launched more than 30 times--and it's only March. Last night in Puerto Rico, Frankie Lucena watched a Falcon 9 rocket ascend over the Carribean:
"I was in Cabo Rojo, facing northwest, when the rocket appeared," he says. "With engines burning, it glided slowly among the twinkling stars--very pretty!"
This was actually SpaceX's second launch of the night. The first occured at 5:52 p.m. EDT when a Falcon 9 rocket carried the Eutelsat 36D telecommunications satellite to space from NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC). Then, at 9:30 p.m. EDT, another Falcon 9 carried 23 of SpaceX's Starlink broadband satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station next door to KSC. Lucena witnessed the Starlink launch.
Later, Jeremy Perez watched the rocket's 2nd stage execute a deorbit burn outside Flagstaff, Arizona:
"The camera exposures do not convey the visual experience," says Perez. "It looked like a delicate, cometary, dandelion poof drifting overhead, and not brilliant blue visually like the camera picked up. The zoomed inset view shows double trailing as the deployed satellites drifted along next to the 2nd stage as it fired its engines."
These images are a sample of what, once rare, is now happening frequently in the night sky. Check the SpaceX launch schedule, and look up.
18K GOLD "LOVE YOU TO THE MOON" LOCKET: This is a very special locket. It's heart-shaped, plated with 18K gold, and we will fly it again during this year's total eclipse of the sun. Keep reading...
On Jan. 26, 2024, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched this locket to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon. At the apex of the flight, it floated 111,535 feet above the Sierra Nevada mountains of central California:
Buy it now for $149.95, and we'll fly it again--FOR FREE--during the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. The students will be launching multiple balloons from the path of totality in Texas. Your pendant will go along for the ride, touching the shadow of the Moon at the edge of space. (Simply type "FLY IT AGAIN" in the comments box at checkout.)
The locket, which opens to hold a personal photo or other small item, comes with a greeting card showing the jewelry in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space.
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 31, 2024, the network reported 2 fireballs. (2 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 March 31, 2024 there were 2349 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.
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.
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