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SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids
 
Solar wind
speed: 333.3 km/sec
density: 1.8 protons/cm3
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 2345 UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: A1
2054 UT Jul10
24-hr: A1
2054 UT Jul10
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 2350 UT
Daily Sun: 10 Jul 20
The sun is blank--no sunspots. Credit: SDO/HMI

Sunspot number: 0
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 10 Jul 2020

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 4 days
2020 total: 143 days (74%)
2019 total: 281 days (77%)
2018 total: 221 days (61%)
2017 total: 104 days (28%)
2016 total: 32 days (9%)
2015 total: 0 days (0%)
2014 total: 1 day (<1%)
2013 total: 0 days (0%)
2012 total: 0 days (0%)
2011 total: 2 days (<1%)
2010 total: 51 days (14%)
2009 total: 260 days (71%)
2008 total: 268 days (73%)
2007 total: 152 days (42%)
2006 total: 70 days (19%)

Updated 10 Jul 2020


Thermosphere Climate Index
today: 2.53
x1010 W Cold
Max: 49.4
x1010 W Hot (10/1957)
Min: 2.05
x1010 W Cold (02/2009)
explanation | more data: gfx, txt
Updated 10 Jul 2020

The Radio Sun
10.7 cm flux: 69 sfu
explanation | more data
Updated 10 Jul 2020

Cosmic Rays Solar minimum is underway. The sun's magnetic field is weak, allowing extra cosmic rays into the solar system. Neutron counts from the University of Oulu's Sodankyla Geophysical Observatory show that cosmic rays reaching Earth in 2020 are near a Space Age peak.

Oulu Neutron Counts

Percentages of the Space Age average:
today: +10.4% Very High
48-hr change: +0.5%
Max: +11.7% Very High
(12/2009)
Min: -32.1% Very Low (06/1991)
explanation | more data
Updated 10 Jul 2020 @ 1600 UT

Current Auroral Oval:
Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica
Credit: NOAA/Ovation
Planetary K-index
Now: Kp= 0 quiet
24-hr max: Kp= 2
quiet
explanation | more data
Interplanetary Mag. Field
Btotal: 4.9 nT
Bz: -1.1 nT south
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 2345 UT
Coronal Holes: 10 Jul 20

Solar wind flowing from this northern coronal hole should reach Earth on July 12.
Credit: SDO/AIA

Noctilucent Clouds NLC season is underway. NASA's AIM spacecraft detected a blue cloud over the north pole on May 17th--one of the earliest starts in the spacecraft's14 year history. Check here for daily images from AIM.
Switch view: Europe, USA, Asia, Polar
Updated at:
SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts
Updated at: 2020 Jul 10 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: 2020 Jul 10 2200 UTC
Mid-latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
05 %
20 %
MINOR
01 %
05 %
SEVERE
01 %
01 %
High latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
15 %
15 %
MINOR
15 %
30 %
SEVERE
10 %
30 %
 
Friday, Jul. 10, 2020
What's up in space
       
 

When the pandemic is over, Marianne Bergli would like to show you something: The Northern Lights. Marianne's team at Heaven on Earth Aurora Tours is eager to see you when flights to Norway resume--perfect for small groups/families.

 

A "CANYON OF FIRE" ON THE SUN: During the late hours of July 8th, a magnetic filament on the sun became unstable and snapped. The eruption cut a "canyon of fire" in the sun's atmosphere and hurled a faint coronal mass ejection (CME) into space. NOAA analysts are modeling the CME now to see if it might hit Earth's magnetic field in the days ahead. Stay tuned for updates. Aurora alerts: SMS Text.

COMET NEOWISE HAS A SUPER-SIZED NUCLEUS: Now we know why Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) is so bright. Its nucleus is huge. Researchers working with NASA's NEOWISE spacecraft have analyzed infrared emissions from the comet's core, shown here in discovery images from March 2020:

The glow is proportional to the size of the nucleus--the nugget of dust and frozen gas at the heart of the comet. "From its infrared signature, we can tell that [the nucleus] is about 5 kilometers across," says Joseph Masiero, NEOWISE deputy principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

"5 km is extremely large for a comet approaching this close to the sun (think Comet McNaught-sized), which explains its high activity," says Qicheng Zhang, a PhD student in planetary sciences at Caltech.

On July 3rd, Comet NEOWISE passed by the sun near the orbit of Mercury. The oversized nucleus helped it survive the encounter, which some comets would have found too hot to handle. Now NEOWISE's sun-heated core is spewing massive amounts of dust and gas, creating a worldwide sensation.

"Here is my daughter Izar ('Star' in the Basque language) pointing out the comet in the sunrise sky over Girona, Catalonia, Spain," says photographer Juan Carlos Casado. "It was easy to see with the naked eye."

"Foreground lighting in the photo is natural, provided by the Moon," he adds.

For Comet NEOWISE, the future looks bright. Its large nucleus is a reservoir of dust and gas that should continue to fill the comet's double tail with visible material for weeks to come. Observing tips: Wake up about 90 minutes before sunrise, find a place with a clear horizon, and look northeast. The comet is visible to the naked eye as a fuzzy patch with a tail. Binoculars are recommended for full effect. Sky maps: July 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.

Realtime Comet NEOWISE Photo Gallery
Free:
Spaceweather.com Newsletter

THE MESOSPHERE IS STILL COLD: Noctilucent clouds (NLCs) have been extra-abundant this summer. Nearly half of all photos of Comet NEOWISE taken from Europe in the past few mornings have caught the comet surfing waves of electric blue. The reason: It's cold in the mesosphere. Very cold. These data from NASA's Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) show how the temperature has cratered 83 km above Earth where NLCs form:

Lynn Harvey of the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics made the plot, which spans 14 years. 2020 is traced in red. "Conditions continue to be extremely cold with temperatures setting cold records on some days," she says.

For noctilucent clouds, cold is good. NLCs form when summertime wisps of water vapor rise up to the mesosphere, allowing water to crystallize around specks of meteor smoke. Low temperatures help the ice crystals form.

In addition to a major outbreak in Europe, the clouds have spread across the USA to southern California. This means everyone should be watching for them. The best time to look for NLCs is during the hours after sunset (or before sunrise) when the sun is more than 6 degrees below the horizon: diagram. If you see electric-blue tendrils spreading across the sky, take a picture and submit it here.

Realtime Noctilucent Cloud Photo Gallery
Free:
Spaceweather.com Newsletter

NEED BABY YODA, YOU DO: Baby Yoda has been to the stratosphere. The future Jedi left Earth on May 21st aboard an Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray balloon. Here he is floating Force-free 107,611 feet above Earth's surface:

You can have Baby Yoda for $119.95. The students are selling these adorable bobbleheads to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. They make great birthday, Christmas, and graduation gifts. Each one comes with a greeting card showing Yoda in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space and back again.

Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education


Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
Free:
Spaceweather.com Newsletter



  All Sky Fireball Network
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 July 10, 2020, the network reported 14 fireballs.
(13 sporadics, 1 July Pegasid)

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]

  Near Earth Asteroids
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 10, 2020 there were 2037 potentially hazardous asteroids.
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:
Asteroid
Date(UT)
Miss Distance
Velocity (km/s)
Diameter (m)
2020 NB
2020-Jul-05
0.5 LD
8.3
20
2020 MU1
2020-Jul-11
18.8 LD
2.7
38
2020 ML
2020-Jul-12
11.4 LD
4.4
25
2020 KJ7
2020-Jul-13
11.8 LD
3.4
31
2009 OS5
2020-Jul-13
17.6 LD
2.6
45
2020 MQ2
2020-Jul-14
17.1 LD
8.3
44
2020 MX
2020-Jul-17
15 LD
5.3
52
2016 DY30
2020-Jul-19
9 LD
15.1
3
2020 ME3
2020-Jul-19
14.8 LD
4.6
24
2002 BF25
2020-Jul-21
9.4 LD
6.8
129
2020 ND
2020-Jul-24
14.5 LD
13.6
168
2020 MX3
2020-Jul-29
9.5 LD
8.6
70
2018 PY7
2020-Jul-31
8.9 LD
9.5
16
2007 RF1
2020-Jul-31
10.7 LD
5
21
2018 BD
2020-Aug-03
7.6 LD
9.4
3
2009 PQ1
2020-Aug-05
10.8 LD
13.5
112
2020 FA1
2020-Aug-23
18.4 LD
1.9
20
2016 AH164
2020-Aug-26
15.7 LD
5.6
4
2011 ES4
2020-Sep-01
0.3 LD
8.2
30
465824
2020-Sep-06
19.4 LD
14
162
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 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 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.

  Essential web links
NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center
  The official U.S. government space weather bureau
Atmospheric Optics
  The first place to look for information about sundogs, pillars, rainbows and related phenomena.
Solar Dynamics Observatory
  Researchers call it a "Hubble for the sun." SDO is the most advanced solar observatory ever.
STEREO
  3D views of the sun from NASA's Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory
Solar and Heliospheric Observatory
  Realtime and archival images of the Sun from SOHO.
Daily Sunspot Summaries
  from the NOAA Space Environment Center
NOAA 27-Day Space Weather Forecasts
  fun to read, but should be taken with a grain of salt! Forecasts looking ahead more than a few days are often wrong.
Aurora 30 min forecast
  from the NOAA Space Environment Center
Heliophysics
  the underlying science of space weather

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