 | | | Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica Credit: NOAA/Ovation  Planetary K-index
Now: Kp= 2.00 quiet
24-hr max: Kp= 3.00 quiet
explanation | more data
Interplanetary Mag. Field
Btotal: 4.17 nT
Bz: 0.73 nT north
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 1147 UT Coronal Holes: 10 Mar 24 
There are no large coronal holes on the Earthside of the sun. Credit: SDO/AIA  Polar Stratospheric Clouds
Colorful Type II polar stratospheric clouds (PSC) form when the temperature in the stratosphere drops to a staggeringly low -85C. NASA's MERRA-2 climate model predicts when the air up there is cold enough: 
On Mar. 10, 2024, the Arctic stratosphere is too warm for Type II polar stratospheric clouds. | more data. Noctilucent Clouds
The southern season for NLCs is over. The first clouds were detected inside the Antarctic Circle on Dec. 4, 2023, by the NOAA 21 satellite. The same satellite detected the last cloud on Feb. 21, 2024. Daily maps are now blank:
Updated: Feb 22, 2024
An instrument onboard NOAA 21 (OMPS LP) is able to detect NLCs (also known as "polar mesospheric clouds" or PMCs). Now that the southern season has ended, attention turns to the northern hemisphere. The first NLCs should appear inside the Arctic Circle in mid to late May.
SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts | | Updated at: 2024 Mar 10 2200 UTC FLARE | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | CLASS M | 25 % | 25 % | 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: 2024 Mar 10 2200 UTC Mid-latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 25 % | 20 % | MINOR | 10 % | 05 % | SEVERE | 01 % | 01 % | High latitudes | 0-24 hr | 24-48 hr | ACTIVE | 15 % | 15 % | MINOR | 30 % | 25 % | SEVERE | 35 % | 30 % | | | |  | | | | | | | | | | | This is an AI Free Zone! 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. | | | GEOMAGNETIC STORM WATCH--CANCELED: A CME expected to graze Earth on March 9th either missed or is approaching more slowly than expected. Either way, the geomagnetic storm watch (G1) is cancelled. Global geomagnetic activity should remain low for the rest of the weekend. Aurora alerts: SMS Text A SNEAKY-DANGEROUS SUNSPOT: Sunspot AR3599 doesn't look dangerous. It is relatively small and has a simple, bipolar morphology--two factors which usually add up to "harmless." Yet today (March 10 @ 1213 UT), it produced a strong M7-class solar flare: 
Extreme ultraviolet radiation radiation from the flare ionized the top of Earth's atmosphere, causing a strong shortwave radio blackout over Africa and the South Atlantic: map. Mariners and ham radio operators may have noticed loss of signal for as much as 30 minutes after the flare. So far it does not appear that the flare hurled a significant CME toward Earth. Stay tuned for updates as more data from SOHO coronagraphs become available. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter SOLAR EXPLOSION TARGETS MERCURY: A huge magnetic filament erupted from the farside of the sun on March 9-10. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured only a fragment of the 500,000 km-wide blast: 
Debris from the explosion is emerging from the sun in the form of a CME: movie. The CME will not hit Earth. Instead, later today, it will slam into Mercury. New research shows that this will probably ignite X-ray auroras at ground level on Mercury's rocky surface. Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
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18K GOLD "LOVE YOU TO THE MOON" LOCKET: This is a very special locket. It's heart-shaped, plated with 18K gold, and we will fly it again during this year's total eclipse of the sun. Keep reading... On Jan. 26, 2024, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched this locket to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon. At the apex of the flight, it floated 111,535 feet above the Sierra Nevada mountains of central California: 
Buy it now for $149.95, and we'll fly it again--FOR FREE--during the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. The students will be launching multiple balloons from the path of totality in Texas. Your pendant will go along for the ride, touching the shadow of the Moon at the edge of space. (Simply type "FLY IT AGAIN" in the comments box at checkout.) The locket, which opens to hold a personal photo or other small item, comes with a greeting card showing the jewelry in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
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Realtime Comet 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 Mar 9, 2024, the network reported 2 fireballs.
(2 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 March 10, 2024 there were 2349 potentially hazardous asteroids.
 | Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: | Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) | | 2024 EH | 2024-Mar-07 | 1.3 LD | 9.5 | 13 | | 2024 EJ2 | 2024-Mar-08 | 1.5 LD | 14.8 | 18 | | 2024 ET1 | 2024-Mar-08 | 2.5 LD | 12 | 7 | | 2024 DW1 | 2024-Mar-08 | 10.5 LD | 19.9 | 61 | | 2024 EY1 | 2024-Mar-08 | 6 LD | 7.7 | 8 | | 2024 EZ1 | 2024-Mar-08 | 6.8 LD | 6.3 | 15 | | 2024 EO | 2024-Mar-09 | 3.6 LD | 19.2 | 19 | | 2024 EG | 2024-Mar-09 | 8.4 LD | 19.2 | 45 | | 2024 EQ1 | 2024-Mar-09 | 6.6 LD | 17.1 | 34 | | 2024 EA2 | 2024-Mar-10 | 5.5 LD | 11 | 12 | | 2024 EE2 | 2024-Mar-10 | 13.9 LD | 18.7 | 38 | | 2024 DA1 | 2024-Mar-11 | 9.4 LD | 9.9 | 49 | | 2024 EG2 | 2024-Mar-12 | 1.7 LD | 19.6 | 23 | | 2015 FM34 | 2024-Mar-12 | 19.4 LD | 11.1 | 113 | | 2024 EL1 | 2024-Mar-13 | 8.5 LD | 7.9 | 19 | | 2020 FU | 2024-Mar-15 | 14.9 LD | 15.5 | 19 | | 2024 CJ8 | 2024-Mar-16 | 17.3 LD | 12.1 | 81 | | 2024 EQ | 2024-Mar-16 | 6.9 LD | 10.7 | 22 | | 2024 EK | 2024-Mar-16 | 7 LD | 7.6 | 16 | | 2024 EX2 | 2024-Mar-16 | 5.8 LD | 6.2 | 20 | | 2024 EN | 2024-Mar-18 | 3.9 LD | 12 | 43 | | 2020 FD | 2024-Mar-18 | 4.5 LD | 15.1 | 10 | | 2024 BD7 | 2024-Mar-19 | 18.8 LD | 10.1 | 140 | | 2019 CJ | 2024-Mar-24 | 12.4 LD | 4.4 | 28 | | 2021 CF6 | 2024-Mar-25 | 14.6 LD | 8.3 | 62 | | 2023 RO49 | 2024-Mar-29 | 14.1 LD | 4.3 | 45 | | 2015 MB54 | 2024-Mar-30 | 11.7 LD | 3.8 | 54 | | 2024 DQ | 2024-Mar-30 | 6.4 LD | 2.9 | 41 | | 2018 CC14 | 2024-Apr-03 | 19.6 LD | 8.9 | 115 | | 2023 GC2 | 2024-Apr-04 | 8.7 LD | 5.7 | 12 | | 2005 FG | 2024-Apr-08 | 18.4 LD | 5.5 | 57 | | 2020 BP13 | 2024-Apr-09 | 15.2 LD | 6.8 | 209 | | 2021 RJ19 | 2024-Apr-12 | 19.6 LD | 11.4 | 25 | | 2021 GQ5 | 2024-Apr-13 | 8.8 LD | 7.5 | 7 | | 2023 FN13 | 2024-Apr-14 | 3.3 LD | 4.9 | 13 | | 2022 UO1 | 2024-Apr-14 | 16.7 LD | 14 | 33 | | 517681 | 2024-Apr-15 | 18.4 LD | 14.2 | 589 | | 439437 | 2024-Apr-15 | 8.5 LD | 16.5 | 609 | | 2023 HU3 | 2024-Apr-18 | 15.9 LD | 19.1 | 35 | | 2021 JW2 | 2024-Apr-19 | 1.6 LD | 5.1 | 11 | | 2017 SA20 | 2024-Apr-19 | 3.8 LD | 6.2 | 8 | | 2021 VH2 | 2024-Apr-25 | 9.3 LD | 2.7 | 6 | | 2021 GD3 | 2024-Apr-30 | 11.4 LD | 3.5 | 14 | | 2022 TN1 | 2024-Apr-30 | 18.6 LD | 17.7 | 295 | | 2022 AA5 | 2024-May-02 | 12 LD | 8.9 | 67 | 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 |  | When looking for casinos to play online when the weather is bad, you can try the SkyCity Online Casino if you are located in New Zealand. If you are not from NZ 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. | |
