 | | | Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica Credit: NOAA/Ovation  Planetary K-index
Now: Kp= 3.33 quiet
24-hr max: Kp= 4.00 unsettled
explanation | more data
Interplanetary Mag. Field
Btotal: 5.90 nT
Bz: -3.12 nT south
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 1146 UT Coronal Holes: 07 Jul 23 
Solar wind flowing from this coronal hole could brush Earth on July 8-9. Credit: SDO/AIA  Noctilucent Clouds
The northern season for NLCs began on May 26th. The first clouds were detected inside the Arctic Circle by the NOAA 21 satellite. An instrument onboard NOAA 21 (OMPS LP) is able to detect NLCs (also known as "polar mesospheric clouds" or PMCs). For the rest of the season, daily maps from NOAA 21 will be presented here:
Updated: Jul 07, 2023
Each dot is a detected cloud. As the season progresses, these dots will multiply in number and shift in hue from blue to red as the brightness of the clouds intensifies.
What happened to NASA's AIM spacecraft, which has been monitoring NLCs since 2007? Earlier this year, the spacecraft's battery failed. As a result AIM is offline, perhaps permanently. There may be some hope of a recovery as AIM's orbit precesses into full sunlight in 2024. Until then, we will maintain AIM's iconic "daily daisy," frozen at Feb. 28, 2023, as a show of thanks for years of service and hope for future daisies:  | | | Switch view:Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctic Peninsula, East Antarctica, Polar Updated Jul07 SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts | | Updated at: 2023 Jul 07 2200 UTC FLARE | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | CLASS M | 35 % | 35 % | CLASS X | 05 % | 05 % | Geomagnetic Storms:
Probabilities for significant disturbances in Earth's magnetic field are given for three activity levels: active, minor storm, severe storm Updated at: 2023 Jul 07 2200 UTC Mid-latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 30 % | 30 % | MINOR | 10 % | 10 % | SEVERE | 01 % | 01 % | High latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 20 % | 20 % | MINOR | 25 % | 25 % | SEVERE | 20 % | 20 % | | | |  | | | | | | | | | | | 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. This is an AI Free Zone! | | | GEOMAGNETIC STORM WATCH: NOAA forecasters say that G1-class geomagnetic storms are possible on July 7th when a partial halo CME is expected to hit Earth's magnetic field. It was hurled in our direction July 4th by an explosion in the magnetic canopy of sunspot AR3359. Aurora alerts: SMS Text A SUNSPOT SO BIG YOU CAN SEE IT FROM MARS: A huge sunspot (AR3363) just emerged over the sun's southeastern limb. Mars rover Perseverance saw it before we did. On July 2nd, the rover's mast-mounted stereo camera (MASTCAM-Z) tilted up to the sky above Jezaro crater and photographed a deep-black dot on the solar disk: 
Zoran Knez of Croatia assembled this montage using publically available NASA images
Perseverance does this all the time. Using a solar filter, the rover looks at the sun almost every day to check its brightness. When the sun dims, researchers know a dust storm is brewing--one of the most important forms of weather on the Red Planet. Sunspots are a bonus. A recent study shows that Perseverance sees more than 40% of all sunspots despite the fact that Mars is 78 million km farther from the sun than Earth and the rover's camera doesn't put many pixels across the solar disk. It is able to resolve about 10% of the biggest sunspots into multiple pixels.
Perseverance has one big advantage. It can see parts of the sun we cannot. From where Mars is currently located, Perseverance views more than half the sun's farside, giving it a preview of sunspots still hidden from Earth. That's how the rover spotted AR3363 days in advance.
Astronomers on Earth saw the sunspot for the first time on July 5th: 
"A very big sunspot is coming!" says Philippe Tosi of Nîmes, France, who photographed AR3363 and inserted an image of Earth for scale. Just don't forget, Perseverance saw it first. Daily photos from Perseverance are available here. Select the date and camera (MASTCAM-Z), then start looking for sunspots. more images: from Philip Smith of Manorville, New York; from P-M Hedén of Vallentuna Sweden; from Sylvain Weiller of Jerusalem, Israel
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter SATURN'S CAT PENDANT: It's a far-out gift for the cat-lover in your life: Saturn's Cat. The sterling silver pendant touched space on April 29, 2023, when it hitched a ride onboard an Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray research balloon. 
You can have it for $169.95. The students of Earth to Sky Calculus are selling space 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 stratosphere and back again. Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education Realtime Noctilucent Cloud Photo Gallery
Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter
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 Jul 07, 2023, the network reported 12 fireballs.
(12 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 7, 2023 there were 2335 potentially hazardous asteroids.
| Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: | Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) | | 2023 MF6 | 2023-Jul-02 | 8.7 LD | 9.5 | 85 | | 2020 NC | 2023-Jul-02 | 14 LD | 7.8 | 123 | | 2023 MT1 | 2023-Jul-03 | 2.9 LD | 5.2 | 16 | | 2023 HO6 | 2023-Jul-05 | 5.3 LD | 7.8 | 184 | | 2023 ME4 | 2023-Jul-06 | 3 LD | 10.7 | 31 | | 2023 LH2 | 2023-Jul-06 | 18.8 LD | 7.9 | 37 | | 2019 LH5 | 2023-Jul-07 | 14.9 LD | 21.6 | 281 | | 2018 NW | 2023-Jul-10 | 18 LD | 21.8 | 10 | | 2023 LN1 | 2023-Jul-10 | 17.9 LD | 5.8 | 61 | | 2023 MD2 | 2023-Jul-11 | 5.6 LD | 8.4 | 49 | | 2023 MQ1 | 2023-Jul-11 | 10.8 LD | 6 | 49 | | 2018 UY | 2023-Jul-12 | 7.4 LD | 16.4 | 243 | | 2023 MG6 | 2023-Jul-16 | 9.5 LD | 12.4 | 288 | | 2020 UQ3 | 2023-Jul-18 | 3.2 LD | 9.3 | 59 | | 2022 GX2 | 2023-Jul-20 | 11.9 LD | 9.4 | 5 | | 2020 OM | 2023-Jul-20 | 8.5 LD | 9.5 | 14 | | 2023 MX5 | 2023-Jul-21 | 11.9 LD | 11.8 | 57 | | 2023 MM3 | 2023-Jul-22 | 19.1 LD | 6.4 | 40 | | 2015 MA54 | 2023-Jul-24 | 16.6 LD | 9.2 | 31 | | 2018 BG5 | 2023-Jul-27 | 10.7 LD | 8.4 | 56 | | 2020 PP1 | 2023-Jul-29 | 17 LD | 4.1 | 17 | | 2021 BD3 | 2023-Jul-30 | 14 LD | 8.5 | 25 | | 2016 AW65 | 2023-Jul-31 | 16.6 LD | 5.7 | 54 | | 2020 PN1 | 2023-Aug-03 | 10.8 LD | 4.8 | 29 | | 620082 | 2023-Aug-04 | 14 LD | 20.6 | 375 | | 2004 KG1 | 2023-Aug-06 | 18.7 LD | 9.2 | 54 | | 2022 BS2 | 2023-Aug-11 | 17.3 LD | 8.2 | 30 | | 2022 CP1 | 2023-Aug-17 | 13.8 LD | 9.8 | 12 | | 2011 QJ21 | 2023-Aug-19 | 13 LD | 15.1 | 45 | | 6037 | 2023-Aug-23 | 15.9 LD | 14.3 | 563 | | 2012 PZ17 | 2023-Aug-30 | 16.8 LD | 3.6 | 16 | | 2017 BY32 | 2023-Sep-02 | 16.4 LD | 3.5 | 20 | 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 |  | Getting YouTube comments is essential if you want to beat the algorithm! That’s why you need to buy YouTube comments from RealSocialz.com because they offer real USA comments you can customize. | | When looking for casinos to play online when the weather is bad, you can try casino online trucchi for Italian games. If you are not from Finland you can try the Swedish page Svenska casino online to find suitable games, check out svenskacasinoonline.net. Always check your local laws before playing with real money. | | BestCSGOGambling is the best site for everything related to CSGO gambling on the web | | | These links help Spaceweather.com stay online. Thank you to our supporters! | | | | | | | | |  | | |  | ©2021 Spaceweather.com. All rights reserved. This site is penned daily by Dr. Tony Phillips. | |
