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GEOMAGNETIC STORM WATCH: NOAA forecasters say there is a chance of minor G1-class geomagnetic storm on July 6th when a stream of solar wind is expected to hit Earth's magnetic field. The gaseous material is flowing from a cyclops-like hole in the sun's atmosphere. Aurora alerts: SMS Text.
SOMETIMES A NEAR-MISS IS CLOSE ENOUGH: ON July 1st, a CME passed close to Earth. It did not hit. Instead, it snowplowed some dense solar wind plasma in our direction. That was enough to spark a G1-class geomagnetic storm with auroras across many northern-tier US states. Rocky Raybell sends this picture from Keller, Washington:

"The auroras were active from 10:30pm on July 1st until 2:30am on July 2nd," says Raybell. "Most of the time it was a stable band of green with red on top. Just after midnight the purple pillars started sliding across the horizon--a beautiful show!"
more images: from Marybeth Kiczenski of Ludington, MI; from Dwight Brady of Marquette, MI; from Sarah Goodwin of Mears, MI; from Thomas Spence of Tofte, MN; from Greg Ash of Minnesota
Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
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A SUDDEN INCREASE IN NOCTILUCENT CLOUDS: Something unexpected just happened in the mesosphere. As June came to an end, NASA's AIM spacecraft detected a sharp increase in the frequency of noctilucent clouds (NLCs), the most in 15 years:

"In the last couple of days we saw a huge spike in the clouds," says Cora Randall, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. Randall works with AIM data and she prepared the plot, above.
NLCs are Earth's highest clouds. Seeded by meteoroids, they float at the edge of space more than 80 km above the ground. NLCs form when summertime wisps of water vapor rise up to the mesosphere, allowing water to crystallize around specks of meteor smoke.
Oliver Schwenn witnessed the outbreak on June 30th from Aarhus, Denmark:

"I photographed the display shortly before midnight," says Schwenn. "The clouds were shining brightly in the night sky."
What's causing this? It could be SpaceX.
"We're speculating that the spike might be due to extra water vapor transported to higher latitudes from rocket launches," says Randall. "But much more quantitative analysis would be required to confirm that or not."
The timing makes sense. It takes about 10 days for water vapor from rocket engines to waft up to the mesosphere. This takes us back to SpaceX's launch of the Globalstar satellite on June 19th, which caused a number of remarkable phenomena in the sky due to the extra burn time of its second-stage engine. Noctilucent clouds may be yet another by-product of that unusual launch.
Noctilucent clouds are normally a polar phenomenon. However, since the outburst began we have received reports of NLCs from as far south as Washington State and Oregon. Look for the clouds, ripply and electric-blue, just after sunset.
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
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STERLING SILVER RAINBOW DRAGONFLY (GOLDEN HEART): Are you looking for a far-out gift? Consider a rainbow dragonfly from the edge of space. On June 3, 2022, this sterling silver pendant hitched a ride onboard an Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray research balloon:

You can have it for $172.95. The dragonfly's heart is a golden Celtic love knot, and its wings are decorated with a spray of rainbow-colored crystals. The students are selling dragonfly 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 trip to the stratosphere and back again.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
Realtime Noctilucent Cloud 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 July 03, 2022, the network reported 11 fireballs.
(11 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 July 3, 2022 there were 2279 potentially hazardous asteroids.
 |
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
2022 MN1 | 2022-Jun-28 | 0.9 LD | 9.9 | 12 |
2022 MJ3 | 2022-Jul-01 | 0.4 LD | 8.8 | 4 |
2022 MB3 | 2022-Jul-01 | 2 LD | 13 | 16 |
2022 MS | 2022-Jul-01 | 8.3 LD | 6 | 27 |
2022 MF | 2022-Jul-02 | 14.8 LD | 12.1 | 43 |
2022 MB1 | 2022-Jul-02 | 19.1 LD | 6.3 | 17 |
2022 JE1 | 2022-Jul-03 | 8.6 LD | 5.6 | 74 |
2022 MY | 2022-Jul-05 | 13 LD | 7.2 | 26 |
2021 EL4 | 2022-Jul-05 | 19.9 LD | 9.5 | 25 |
2019 NW5 | 2022-Jul-10 | 14.9 LD | 16 | 62 |
2015 OQ21 | 2022-Jul-12 | 18.3 LD | 6.6 | 9 |
2022 LR1 | 2022-Jul-16 | 9.3 LD | 4.7 | 42 |
2022 KY4 | 2022-Jul-17 | 15.9 LD | 7.6 | 91 |
2021 OT | 2022-Jul-17 | 16.5 LD | 11.2 | 20 |
349068 | 2022-Jul-19 | 17.6 LD | 22.9 | 756 |
2017 RX2 | 2022-Jul-24 | 17.2 LD | 14.2 | 17 |
2022 ML3 | 2022-Jul-26 | 7.6 LD | 1.5 | 14 |
2016 CZ31 | 2022-Jul-29 | 7 LD | 15.6 | 129 |
531944 | 2022-Jul-30 | 18.2 LD | 5.9 | 192 |
2020 PP1 | 2022-Aug-01 | 13.1 LD | 3.7 | 17 |
2020 PN1 | 2022-Aug-03 | 9.7 LD | 4.6 | 29 |
2015 FF | 2022-Aug-12 | 11.2 LD | 9.2 | 17 |
2019 AV13 | 2022-Aug-22 | 19.1 LD | 8.8 | 135 |
2020 QW3 | 2022-Aug-22 | 14.1 LD | 18.1 | 30 |
2015 QH3 | 2022-Aug-22 | 5.6 LD | 7 | 14 |
2017 BU | 2022-Aug-29 | 15.8 LD | 7 | 32 |
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 |
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 (Nov. 2021): Our balloons have just measured a sudden drop in atmospheric radiation. It happened during the strong geomagnetic storms of Nov. 3-4, 2021. Here are the data:

This is called a "Forbush decrease," named after American physicist Scott Forbush who studied cosmic rays in the early 20th century. It happens when a CME from the sun sweeps past Earth and literally pushes cosmic rays away from our planet. Radiation from deep space that would normally pepper Earth's upper atmosphere is briefly wiped out.
We have measured Forbush decreases before. For example, here's one from Sept. 2014. The Forbush Decrease of Nov. 3-4, 2021, was the deepest in the history of our 7-year atmospheric monitoring program. Radiation levels in the stratosphere over California dropped nearly 20%, more than doubling the previous record from our dataset.
En route to the stratosphere, our sensors also pass through aviation altitudes, so we can sample radiation where planes fly. This plot shows how the Forbush decrease was restricted to the stratosphere; it did not affect lower levels of the atmosphere:
The dose rates shown above are expressed 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 higher you fly, the more radiation you will absorb.
.Who cares? Cosmic rays are a surprisingly "down to Earth" form of space weather. They can seed clouds, 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. Somewhat more controversial studies (#1, #2, #3, #4) link 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 first graph ("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 |
| 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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