| | Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica Credit: NOAA/Ovation Planetary K-index Now: Kp= 1 quiet 24-hr max: Kp= 4 unsettled explanation | more data Interplanetary Mag. Field Btotal: 9.9 nT Bz: 7.7 nT north more data: ACE, DSCOVR Updated: Today at 2346 UT Coronal Holes: 09 Oct 19 Solar wind flowing from this southern coronal hole could graze Earth on Oct. 12. Credit: SDO/AIA Noctilucent Clouds The northern season for noctilucent clouds has ended. NASA's AIM spacecraft is no longer detecting electric-blue clouds around the Arctic Circle. Switch view: Europe, USA, Asia, Polar Updated at: 09-03-2019 13:55:02 UT SPACE WEATHER NOAA Forecasts | | Updated at: 2019 Oct 09 2200 UTC FLARE | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | CLASS M | 01 % | 01 % | 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: 2019 Oct 09 2200 UTC Mid-latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 05 % | 10 % | MINOR | 01 % | 01 % | SEVERE | 01 % | 01 % | High latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 15 % | 15 % | MINOR | 20 % | 20 % | SEVERE | 10 % | 10 % | | | | | | | | | | | | Solar minimum is here - but even now strangely beautiful auroras are dancing around the poles. Deep inside the Arctic Circle, the expert guides of Aurora Holidays in Utsjoki, Finland, can help you chase them. Book now! | | | SOLAR MINIMUM CONDITIONS ARE IN EFFECT: The sun has been blank (no sunspots) for 29 of the past 31 days. This is a sign that Solar Minimum is underway. During this phase of the solar cycle, sunspots and solar flares are rare, but we get plenty of holes in the sun's atmosphere and lots of extra cosmic rays. Solar Minimum conditions are expected to continue uninterrupted for the remainder of 2019. Aurora alerts: SMS Text. MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL VOLCANIC SUNSET: On Monday night, Oct. 7th, more than 50 thousand football fans in Levi's Stadium watched the San Francisco 49ers thump the Cleveland Browns (31-3). Fortunately, one of them looked up at the sky. "The sunset was full of volcanic colors," says Dave Weixelman, who took this picture from the upper deck: "Fortunately we were facing west and had a great view of the sunset," says Weixelman. "I took the picture using my smartphone, and this is how it looked straight out of the camera--very purple." Weixelman witnessed a "Raikoke sunset." On June 22nd, the Raikoke volcano in Russia's Kuril islands erupted with such power that tons of sulfurous gas reached the stratosphere. That gas has been swirling around the northern hemisphere ever since. Fine volcanic aerosols in the stratosphere scatter blue light which, when mixed with ordinary sunrise red, produces a purple hue. Purple, however, isn't the only thing to look for. Volcanic skies are also marked by a yellow twilight arch with long diffuse rays and shadows. As Weixelman's photo shows, many of these features are visible even through the bright lights of an NFL game. Realtime Volcanic Sunset Photo Gallery Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter A DOUBLE GIGANTIC JET: Since sprites were discovered in the late 1980s, researchers have photographed thousands of the strange upward-reaching lightning bolts. Their oversized cousins, Gigantic Jets, are far more rare. Only dozens have been photographed. It is no wonder, then, that observers are still seeing new behaviors in this type of powerful "super sprite." On Oct. 2nd, photographer Frankie Lucena may have recorded the first example of a "double Gigantic Jet." "In the past, I've captured Gigantic Jet events that split into two, but this is the first time I've seen a Gigantic Jet that fired a second time just as the first jet was beginning to fade out," explains Lucena. "They shared the same channel of ionization, so it is considered to be a single event." Lucena photographed the repeating jet from his private observatory in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico. The instigating thunderstorm was about 100 km offshore. The arrow in this satellite image points from his camera to the source of the lightning: Lucena is a leading photographer of Gigantic Jets. In a field where sightings number in the dozens, Lucena alone has photographed 39 Gigantic Jets from his Caribbean observatory since he began his work in 2010. So when he says a repeating Gigantic Jets is rare, it really is. View more examples of sprites and their cousins in the Realtime Sprite Photo Gallery. Realtime Sprite Photo Gallery Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter A STARSHIP IN THE STRATOSPHERE: Last month, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched the starship Enterprise to the stratosphere. Riding onboard a high-altitude cosmic ray balloon, the laser-etched crystal spaceship traveled 34.7 km (113,845 feet) above Earth's surface: You can have it for $149.95. The students are selling the Enterprise to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. Each starship comes with a greeting card showing the item in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space. Also included is a multi-colored LED illuminated stand (shown in the picture above). This creates a colorful visual effect and allows the Enterprise to be used as a far-out night light. 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 Oct. 9, 2019, the network reported 24 fireballs. (22 sporadics, 1 southern Taurid, 1 chi Taurid) 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 October 9, 2019 there were 2018 potentially hazardous asteroids. | Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) | 2014 VA | 2019-Oct-04 | 17.6 LD | 6.2 | 43 | 2019 TX | 2019-Oct-04 | 1.3 LD | 7.3 | 7 | 2019 TV | 2019-Oct-05 | 4.1 LD | 9.1 | 9 | 2017 TJ4 | 2019-Oct-05 | 13.5 LD | 8.9 | 32 | 2019 TF3 | 2019-Oct-06 | 3.7 LD | 5.1 | 9 | 2019 SZ4 | 2019-Oct-06 | 18.7 LD | 6.5 | 25 | 2019 TH | 2019-Oct-06 | 14.7 LD | 11.5 | 26 | 2019 TU | 2019-Oct-08 | 4.4 LD | 9.8 | 22 | 2019 TW1 | 2019-Oct-08 | 1.5 LD | 11.7 | 10 | 2019 TM3 | 2019-Oct-08 | 1.3 LD | 9.9 | 12 | 2019 RK | 2019-Oct-08 | 16.7 LD | 3 | 30 | 2019 TC1 | 2019-Oct-08 | 3.5 LD | 13.1 | 12 | 2019 SB6 | 2019-Oct-08 | 7.8 LD | 7.8 | 16 | 2019 TM | 2019-Oct-08 | 9.4 LD | 12.9 | 38 | 2019 TS | 2019-Oct-08 | 8.4 LD | 7.8 | 29 | 2019 TV1 | 2019-Oct-09 | 17.1 LD | 9 | 23 | 2019 TZ | 2019-Oct-09 | 8.1 LD | 11.6 | 18 | 2019 SL7 | 2019-Oct-09 | 1.4 LD | 17.1 | 24 | 2019 SX5 | 2019-Oct-10 | 17.7 LD | 21.8 | 83 | 2019 TN1 | 2019-Oct-12 | 12.9 LD | 8.6 | 15 | 2019 SK8 | 2019-Oct-12 | 10.5 LD | 8.4 | 21 | 2019 SV9 | 2019-Oct-12 | 8.6 LD | 13.5 | 30 | 2019 SE2 | 2019-Oct-12 | 19.2 LD | 10.2 | 55 | 2019 TQ3 | 2019-Oct-13 | 10.4 LD | 18.3 | 23 | 2019 TH2 | 2019-Oct-13 | 9.3 LD | 7.8 | 19 | 2019 TT1 | 2019-Oct-13 | 2.9 LD | 13.3 | 23 | 2019 SR8 | 2019-Oct-16 | 13.5 LD | 9.8 | 26 | 2019 TE2 | 2019-Oct-18 | 8.3 LD | 10.1 | 27 | 2019 TA1 | 2019-Oct-18 | 15.5 LD | 6.4 | 22 | 2019 SJ8 | 2019-Oct-19 | 11.6 LD | 7.4 | 47 | 2019 TQ2 | 2019-Oct-25 | 12.8 LD | 12.4 | 35 | 162082 | 2019-Oct-25 | 16.2 LD | 11.2 | 589 | 2017 TG5 | 2019-Oct-25 | 14.4 LD | 11.9 | 34 | 2019 TR2 | 2019-Oct-29 | 19.4 LD | 13.9 | 73 | 2015 JD1 | 2019-Nov-03 | 12.9 LD | 11.9 | 269 | 2010 JG | 2019-Nov-12 | 19.6 LD | 14.9 | 235 | 481394 | 2019-Nov-21 | 11.3 LD | 7.9 | 372 | 2008 EA9 | 2019-Nov-23 | 10.5 LD | 2.2 | 10 | 2017 AP4 | 2019-Dec-03 | 8.5 LD | 7.5 | 15 | 2018 XW2 | 2019-Dec-07 | 17.4 LD | 13 | 28 | 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 | SOMETHING NEW! We have developed a new predictive model of aviation radiation. It's called E-RAD--short for Empirical RADiation model. We are constantly flying radiation sensors onboard airplanes over the US and and around the world, so far collecting more than 22,000 gps-tagged radiation measurements. Using this unique dataset, we can predict the dosage on any flight over the USA with an error no worse than 15%. E-RAD lets us do something new: Every day we monitor approximately 1400 flights criss-crossing the 10 busiest routes in the continental USA. Typically, this includes more than 80,000 passengers per day. E-RAD calculates the radiation exposure for every single flight. The Hot Flights Table is a daily summary of these calculations. It shows the 5 charter flights with the highest dose rates; the 5 commercial flights with the highest dose rates; 5 commercial flights with near-average dose rates; and the 5 commercial flights with the lowest dose rates. Passengers typically experience dose rates that are 20 to 70 times higher than natural radiation at sea level. To measure radiation on airplanes, we use the same sensors we fly to the stratosphere onboard Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray balloons: neutron bubble chambers and X-ray/gamma-ray Geiger tubes sensitive to energies between 10 keV and 20 MeV. These energies span the range of medical X-ray machines and airport security scanners. Column definitions: (1) The flight number; (2) The maximum dose rate during the flight, expressed in units of natural radiation at sea level; (3) The maximum altitude of the plane in feet above sea level; (4) Departure city; (5) Arrival city; (6) Duration of the flight. SPACE WEATHER BALLOON DATA: Approximately 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 radiation sensors that detect cosmic rays, a surprisingly "down to Earth" form of space weather. Cosmic rays can seed clouds, trigger lightning, and penetrate commercial airplanes. Furthermore, there are studies ( #1, #2, #3, #4) linking cosmic rays with cardiac arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death in the general population. Our latest measurements show that cosmic rays are intensifying, with an increase of more than 18% since 2015: The data points in the graph above correspond to the peak of the Reneger-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 Reneger and Georg Pfotzer discovered the maximum using balloons in the 1930s and it is what we are measuring today. En route to the stratosphere, our sensors also pass through aviation altitudes: In this plot, dose rates are expessed 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 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. Why are cosmic rays intensifying? The main reason is the sun. Solar storm clouds such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) sweep aside cosmic rays when they pass by Earth. During Solar Maximum, CMEs are abundant and cosmic rays are held at bay. Now, however, the solar cycle is swinging toward Solar Minimum, allowing cosmic rays to return. Another reason could be the weakening of Earth's magnetic field, which helps protect us from deep-space radiation. | 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. | | 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 | | To find reviews of new online casino sites in the UK try The Casino DB where there are hundreds of online casino reviews complete with bonuses and ratings. Looking for a new online casino? Try Casimpo the new site dedicated to making online casino simple and easy for all. | | These links help Spaceweather.com stay online. Thank you to our supporters! | | | | | | | | | | | | ©2019 Spaceweather.com. All rights reserved. This site is penned daily by Dr. Tony Phillips. | |