| | Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica Credit: NOAA/Ovation Planetary K-index Now: Kp= 1 quiet 24-hr max: Kp= 1 quiet explanation | more data Interplanetary Mag. Field Btotal: 4.0 nT Bz: 0.3 nT north more data: ACE, DSCOVR Updated: Today at 2154 UT Coronal Holes: 06 Jan 22 Solar wind flowing from this southern coronal hole could graze Earth on Jan. 8-9. Credit: SDO/AIA Noctilucent Clouds The southern hemisphere season for noctilucent clouds has begun. NASA's AIM spacecraft detected the first electric-blue puffs over Antarctica on Dec. 14th. Switch view: Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctic Peninsula, East Antarctica, Polar Updated at: SPACE WEATHER NOAA Forecasts | | Updated at: 2022 Jan 06 2200 UTC FLARE | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | CLASS M | 05 % | 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: 2022 Jan 06 2200 UTC Mid-latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 10 % | 10 % | MINOR | 01 % | 01 % | SEVERE | 01 % | 01 % | High latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 15 % | 15 % | MINOR | 20 % | 20 % | SEVERE | 20 % | 20 % | | | | | | | | | | | | Lights Over Lapland has a full catalogue of exciting adventures in Abisko National Park, Sweden! Check out our daytime and evening activities and book your adventure! | | | FAST-GROWING SUNSPOT (UPDATED): Since today began, new sunspot AR2924 has more than tripled in size. This movie from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows its rapid development. Solar flares may be in the offing if the growth continues apace. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text. A RED FLASH FROM THE MOON: You've heard of the green flash--an emerald ray that lances out from the sun or Moon as they sink below the horizon. Now let us introduce you to the RED flash. Peter Lawrence of Thornton, England, saw one beneath the setting Moon on Jan. 5th: As the the crescent Moon approached the horizon, a slice of red seemed to detach itself and float away. "[It] looked amazing," says Lawrence. Atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley explains what happened: "The technical name of this event is a 'Ducted Mock-mirage Red Flash.' As the Moon set, it dipped into a strong temperature inversion layer. A layer of warm air was sitting on top of cooler air. Light rays bend when they cross such layers, in this case strongly enough that 'ducting' occurred." "Usually we see a green flash as the sun or Moon’s top dips down into the inversion," Cowley continues. "Here, Peter Lawrence caught the red flash at the Moon's lower edge. Solar red flashes occur, too, but they are hard to see because they are almost the same color as the sun." Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter INFERIOR CONJUNCTION OF VENUS: Venus is now dangerously close to the sun as it approaches inferior conjunction on Jan. 8th. "Venus can no longer be seen in our evening sky," reports Uğur İkizler of Bursa, Turkey. "Today at noon, I found Venus in my telescope only 6 degrees away from the sun and took a picture." "Actually, this shot is pretty dangerous," says İkizler. "It's hard to keep sunlight out of the telescope tube, where intense rays reflect from the primary and secondary mirrors. There is always a risk when photographing Venus at this time." At closest approach this weekend, Venus and the sun will be less than 5 degrees apart. This is a perilous time to photograph the planet--but also a beautiful time. Venus has transformed into a whisper-thin crescent with its night side facing Earth. Anthony J. Cook, recently retired from the Griffith Observatory, urges observers to take precautions. "Find a tall building to shade your telescope at noon," he advises. "This should make observing Venus relatively safe to do from the northern hemisphere. Just be sure the telescope is entirely inside the building's shadow and observe within 15 minutes of local noon. Adding a mask to the front end of the telescope to fully shadow the optics from direct sunlight can mitigate the danger of internal reflections." Realtime Venus Photo Gallery Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter "I LOVE YOU MORE" MOONSTONE PENDANT: Valentine's Day is coming! Nothing says "I love you" like a moonstone from space. This one hitched a ride on an Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray research balloon, floating 112,201 feet above the Sierra Nevada mountains of central California: You can have it for $142.95. The students are selling these sterling silver infinity-wrapped moonstone pendants to support their ballooning program. Engraved with "I Love You More," it makes a romantic Valentine's gift. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the moonstone 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 Aurora Photo Gallery Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter 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 Jan 06, 2022, the network reported 13 fireballs. (12 sporadics, 1 Dec. Leonis Minorid) 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 January 6, 2022 there were 2246 potentially hazardous asteroids. | Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) | 2022 AQ | 2022-Jan-02 | 7.5 LD | 11.4 | 14 | 2021 YK | 2022-Jan-02 | 0.5 LD | 7 | 12 | 2022 AU | 2022-Jan-03 | 0.8 LD | 7.2 | 6 | 2022 AL | 2022-Jan-03 | 7.3 LD | 4.1 | 13 | 2021 YX | 2022-Jan-05 | 10 LD | 11.9 | 33 | 2021 YQ | 2022-Jan-05 | 5.6 LD | 14.7 | 62 | 2014 YE15 | 2022-Jan-06 | 19.3 LD | 6.4 | 8 | 2022 AM | 2022-Jan-06 | 1.8 LD | 10.6 | 8 | 2020 AP1 | 2022-Jan-07 | 4.6 LD | 5.7 | 4 | 2022 AN | 2022-Jan-09 | 4.8 LD | 6.1 | 17 | 2022 AT | 2022-Jan-11 | 19.8 LD | 9.9 | 31 | 2013 YD48 | 2022-Jan-11 | 14.6 LD | 14.8 | 107 | 2022 AG | 2022-Jan-14 | 8.4 LD | 3.8 | 34 | 2021 BA | 2022-Jan-18 | 9.8 LD | 9.1 | 22 | 2022 AW | 2022-Jan-18 | 9.5 LD | 10.1 | 51 | 7482 | 2022-Jan-18 | 5.2 LD | 19.6 | 1732 | 2022 AB | 2022-Jan-20 | 9.7 LD | 5.6 | 73 | 2018 PN22 | 2022-Jan-21 | 11.4 LD | 2.7 | 11 | 2017 XC62 | 2022-Jan-24 | 18.7 LD | 4.3 | 112 | 2021 BZ | 2022-Jan-27 | 17.6 LD | 14.6 | 39 | 2022 AA | 2022-Feb-04 | 6.6 LD | 4.3 | 43 | 2018 CA1 | 2022-Feb-05 | 9.8 LD | 15.1 | 32 | 2007 UY1 | 2022-Feb-08 | 13.9 LD | 6.6 | 89 | 2020 DF | 2022-Feb-14 | 12 LD | 8.6 | 20 | 2018 CW2 | 2022-Feb-18 | 2.2 LD | 10.8 | 25 | 2020 CX1 | 2022-Feb-18 | 7.2 LD | 8.2 | 54 | 455176 | 2022-Feb-22 | 14 LD | 25.1 | 257 | 2017 CX1 | 2022-Feb-23 | 15.2 LD | 5 | 8 | 2016 QJ44 | 2022-Feb-24 | 19.6 LD | 8.5 | 324 | 2021 QO2 | 2022-Feb-25 | 20 LD | 11 | 65 | 2020 UO4 | 2022-Feb-28 | 18.5 LD | 2.1 | 7 | 138971 | 2022-Mar-04 | 12.8 LD | 12 | 749 | 2021 UL7 | 2022-Mar-04 | 11.5 LD | 2 | 23 | 2020 DC | 2022-Mar-06 | 3.9 LD | 4.9 | 16 | 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 | | Going above and beyond to provide the best homes listings in the Comox real estate market to keep you up to date and informed | | Looking for sports betting companies not registered on GamStop? CasinoGap has presented a list of sites not on GamStop available for UK players. Check and bet online! Would you like to bet at sites not using GamStop? Look at a list of NonStopCasino sites for online betting that aren't on GamStop. 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