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THE SOLAR WIND HAS ARRIVED: Earth is entering a stream of high speed (> 500 km/s) solar wind flowing from a canyon-shaped hole in the sun's atmosphere. This could cause minor G1-class geomagnetic storms and auroras around the Arctic Circle. Aurora alerts: SMS Text.
LUNAR OCCULTATION OF MARS: Last night, the full Moon passed directly in front of Mars, producing a rare lunar occultation visible across North America and Europe. Matthew Melnyk of Calgary, Alberta, photographed the Red Planet moments before it disappeared:
"I was able to watch Mars as it passed behind the full Moon," says Melnyk. "It was very fun to watch through the zoom lens!"
The occultation was unusual in part because it occurred within a week of Mars's closest approach to Earth. The disk of the Red Planet was unusually wide, and it shone with a brightness greater than any star in the sky. During the occultation, Mars was twice as bright as Sirius, allowing people to see and photograph the planet even when it was very close to the edge of the glaring Moon.
Timothy Printy of Manchester, New Hampshire, caught Mars half-in and half-out of eclipse by a range of lunar mountains:
"Mars was just emerging from behind the Moon when I managed to get this image using my Meade 10-inch telescope and a Nikon D7200 camera," says Printy. The exquisite timing required a fast exposure--"only 1/80th of a second at ISO 800."
Got a picture of the occultation? Submit it here.
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
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AURORAS IN THE AFTERNOON: Yesterday, Dec. 7th, a co-rotating interaction region (CIR) hit Earth's magnetic field. The resulting auroras were so bright, they were visible in afternoon twilight over Utsjoki, Finland:
"It's polar night here at around 70°N in the far north of Finnish Lapland," says photographer Rayann Elzein. "It becomes night at around 3 pm, and that's when the CIR arrived. Despite a bit of remaining twilight and the almost full Moon, the sky was filled with green but mostly purple auroras! What a night ... or should I say afternoon?"
CIRs are transition zones between streams of fast and slow solar wind. They contain shock waves that can spark geomagnetic storms. Yesterday's CIR caused a G1-class storm that lasted several hours starting around 1300 UT.
Realtime Aurora 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 Dec 07, 2022, the network reported 8 fireballs.
(5 sporadics, 2 sigma Hydrids, 1 Geminid)
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 December 8, 2022 there were 2319 potentially hazardous asteroids.
|
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
2022 WG9 | 2022-Dec-03 | 12.5 LD | 10.7 | 33 |
2017 QL33 | 2022-Dec-03 | 16 LD | 6.9 | 193 |
2022 WD2 | 2022-Dec-03 | 7.3 LD | 7.4 | 25 |
2010 VQ | 2022-Dec-03 | 11.3 LD | 3.9 | 10 |
2022 WR9 | 2022-Dec-03 | 7.2 LD | 13 | 13 |
2022 WO5 | 2022-Dec-04 | 19.2 LD | 9.1 | 38 |
2022 WQ5 | 2022-Dec-04 | 5.8 LD | 11.6 | 27 |
2022 XG | 2022-Dec-04 | 10.7 LD | 8.1 | 21 |
2022 XD | 2022-Dec-04 | 3.5 LD | 6.9 | 12 |
2022 WB5 | 2022-Dec-05 | 5.8 LD | 11 | 27 |
2022 VP1 | 2022-Dec-05 | 17.3 LD | 7.1 | 56 |
2022 WA6 | 2022-Dec-06 | 4.4 LD | 13.9 | 22 |
2022 WV8 | 2022-Dec-06 | 15.6 LD | 7.2 | 30 |
2022 WF8 | 2022-Dec-06 | 8.8 LD | 7.6 | 13 |
2022 WK9 | 2022-Dec-07 | 6.1 LD | 14.3 | 33 |
2022 WO10 | 2022-Dec-08 | 4.9 LD | 4.8 | 9 |
2022 WP11 | 2022-Dec-09 | 11.9 LD | 17.3 | 69 |
2022 XJ | 2022-Dec-09 | 6.8 LD | 10.2 | 16 |
2022 WW | 2022-Dec-10 | 19.2 LD | 6.2 | 30 |
2019 XY | 2022-Dec-10 | 3.6 LD | 12.9 | 9 |
2003 YS70 | 2022-Dec-13 | 10.4 LD | 4.1 | 5 |
2019 XQ1 | 2022-Dec-13 | 14.5 LD | 9.8 | 30 |
2018 XU3 | 2022-Dec-13 | 14.8 LD | 10.3 | 28 |
2021 XS4 | 2022-Dec-14 | 14.5 LD | 9.7 | 23 |
2015 RN35 | 2022-Dec-15 | 1.8 LD | 5.9 | 85 |
2022 XO | 2022-Dec-15 | 8.4 LD | 8.6 | 21 |
2022 WU11 | 2022-Dec-17 | 11.6 LD | 10.5 | 31 |
2016 YE | 2022-Dec-18 | 18.6 LD | 4.8 | 23 |
2014 HK129 | 2022-Dec-20 | 6.7 LD | 11.6 | 216 |
2017 XQ60 | 2022-Dec-21 | 18.8 LD | 16 | 45 |
2022 UD9 | 2022-Dec-22 | 4.6 LD | 10.3 | 159 |
2022 RD2 | 2022-Dec-22 | 13.9 LD | 1.1 | 7 |
2022 XN | 2022-Dec-24 | 8.6 LD | 11.1 | 49 |
2013 YA14 | 2022-Dec-25 | 2.7 LD | 10.5 | 68 |
2022 TE14 | 2022-Dec-25 | 11.2 LD | 7 | 127 |
2018 YK2 | 2022-Dec-26 | 15.8 LD | 15.1 | 98 |
2022 WV9 | 2022-Dec-27 | 6.5 LD | 7.2 | 43 |
2010 XC15 | 2022-Dec-27 | 2 LD | 10.1 | 182 |
2021 AE | 2022-Dec-28 | 16.5 LD | 15 | 23 |
2021 NF | 2023-Jan-02 | 17.9 LD | 11.3 | 40 |
2011 WR41 | 2023-Jan-03 | 15.8 LD | 8.9 | 34 |
2019 AY3 | 2023-Jan-04 | 16.8 LD | 19.7 | 62 |
2021 TL | 2023-Jan-09 | 14.2 LD | 8.5 | 75 |
2014 LJ | 2023-Jan-14 | 4.8 LD | 3.5 | 7 |
2012 BV13 | 2023-Jan-16 | 12.2 LD | 6.7 | 134 |
2020 BP | 2023-Jan-20 | 5.2 LD | 16.9 | 26 |
2019 BO2 | 2023-Jan-24 | 12.1 LD | 16.2 | 21 |
2019 BZ4 | 2023-Jan-24 | 16.5 LD | 5.6 | 20 |
2020 BZ14 | 2023-Jan-26 | 8.8 LD | 6.7 | 54 |
2022 SO113 | 2023-Jan-29 | 10.5 LD | 3.5 | 73 |
2017 DU34 | 2023-Feb-02 | 13.3 LD | 11.2 | 16 |
367789 | 2023-Feb-03 | 4.7 LD | 9.9 | 149 |
2020 OO1 | 2023-Feb-04 | 4.8 LD | 7.7 | 19 |
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 |
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