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SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids
 
Solar wind
speed: 334.9 km/sec
density: 4.2 protons/cm3
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 2346 UT
X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: A1
2017 UT Apr17
24-hr: A1
1040 UT Apr17
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 2350 UT
Daily Sun: 17 Apr 20
The sun is blank--no sunspots. Credit: SDO/HMI

Sunspot number: 0
What is the sunspot number?
Updated 17 Apr 2020

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 12 days
2020 total: 82 days (76%)
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 17 Apr 2020


Thermosphere Climate Index
today: 3.65
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 17 Apr 2020

The Radio Sun
10.7 cm flux: 69 sfu
explanation | more data
Updated 17 Apr 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: +11.0% Very High
48-hr change: -0.1%
Max: +11.7% Very High
(12/2009)
Min: -32.1% Very Low (06/1991)
explanation | more data
Updated 17 Apr 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: 5.1 nT
Bz: -3.5 nT south
more data: ACE, DSCOVR
Updated: Today at 2345 UT
Coronal Holes: 17 Apr 20

There are no significant coronal holes on the Earthside of the sun.
Credit: SDO/AIA

Noctilucent Clouds The northern hemisphere season for noctilucent clouds is coming soon--probably starting in mid- to late-May. Check here for daily images from NASA's AIM spacecraft.
Switch view: Europe, USA, Asia, Polar
Updated at: 03-02-2020 17:55:02 UT
SPACE WEATHER
NOAA Forecasts
Updated at: 2020 Apr 17 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 Apr 17 2200 UTC
Mid-latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
10 %
10 %
MINOR
01 %
01 %
SEVERE
01 %
01 %
High latitudes
0-24 hr
24-48 hr
ACTIVE
15 %
15 %
MINOR
20 %
20 %
SEVERE
10 %
10 %
 
Friday, Apr. 17, 2020
What's up in space
       
 

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!

 

LYRID METEOR SHOWER: Earth is approaching a stream of debris from Comet Thatcher (C/1861 G1), source of the annual Lyrid meteor shower. If forecasters are correct, the Lyrids will peak on the night of April 21-22 with as many as 15 meteors per hour. These meteors are best seen from the northern hemisphere where the radiant is high in the sky before dawn.

AN UNUSUAL GREEN FLASH: Not all green flashes are alike. Evan Zucker saw a strange one off the coast of San Diego on April 15th. "I was watching the sunset from Point Loma when a ship passed in front of the sun," says Zucker. "Just then, a swirling, wavy green flash appeared over the deck."


"The timing worked out perfectly," says Zucker.

Atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley has seen a lot of green flashes, but "this one is different," he says. The key clue to what happened is the extreme flatness of the sun near the horizon--a so-called "extended brim."

"That's a sign of a very strong temperature inversion layer (warm air above cold)," says Cowley. "Strong inversions produce 'ducting'. The sun's rays bounce up and down and travel long distances as they are trapped within the duct. Sometimes these layers are only a few inches thick."

The strong inversion produced an intense stack of green flashes. Apparently, the inversion layer was not flat. Waves inside it gave the flashes a crazy tilt.

"Did the ship have anything to do with all this?" says Cowley. "Unlikely, because turbulence from the ship would be more fine grained." The conjunction of the ship and the strange green flash was, as Zucker said, a case of perfect timing.

Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
Free:
Spaceweather.com Newsletter

A BLACK PEARL IN THE STRATOSPHERE: It came from Tahiti--and now it's been to the edge of space. On Feb. 27, 2020, this genuine Black Tahitian South Sea Cultured Pearl flew to the stratosphere onboard an Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray balloon, soaring more than 100,000 feet above the Sierra Nevada mountains of central California:

You can have it for $229.95. The students are selling these exotic space pearls to fund their cosmic ray monitoring program. Measuring 10 mm in diameter, the pearl has an 18K white gold clasp and is suspended from a matching 925 Sterling Silver chain. Each pearl comes with a greeting card showing the pendant 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
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 Apr. 17, 2020, the network reported 13 fireballs.
(13 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]

  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 April 17, 2020 there were 2018 potentially hazardous asteroids.
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:
Asteroid
Date(UT)
Miss Distance
Velocity (km/s)
Diameter (m)
2020 GF2
2020-Apr-12
2.4 LD
10.3
23
2020 GX2
2020-Apr-12
10.7 LD
9.6
18
2020 GV2
2020-Apr-13
2.9 LD
16
15
2020 FX3
2020-Apr-15
14.1 LD
10.3
54
2020 FZ6
2020-Apr-15
20 LD
21.7
189
2020 GH2
2020-Apr-15
0.9 LD
8.7
17
2020 GN2
2020-Apr-16
3.2 LD
10
27
2020 GJ2
2020-Apr-17
11.5 LD
8
41
2020 GD3
2020-Apr-17
15.1 LD
5.4
13
2020 GR2
2020-Apr-17
12.5 LD
4.3
19
2020 GT2
2020-Apr-18
5.7 LD
13
33
2020 GZ2
2020-Apr-19
2.1 LD
9.5
9
2020 FV6
2020-Apr-19
10.8 LD
19.8
90
2020 GA3
2020-Apr-20
8.1 LD
17.4
34
2020 GB3
2020-Apr-22
13.4 LD
5.4
18
2019 HS2
2020-Apr-26
13.6 LD
12.6
17
2019 GF1
2020-Apr-27
18.7 LD
3.2
12
2020 FM6
2020-Apr-27
14.4 LD
16.9
149
52768
2020-Apr-29
16.4 LD
8.7
2457
2020 GY2
2020-Apr-30
17.2 LD
16.3
63
2020 DM4
2020-May-01
18.4 LD
6.4
160
2020 GE3
2020-May-04
19 LD
5.2
21
438908
2020-May-07
8.9 LD
12.8
282
2016 HP6
2020-May-07
4.3 LD
5.7
31
388945
2020-May-10
7.3 LD
8.8
295
2000 KA
2020-May-12
8.9 LD
13.5
162
478784
2020-May-15
8.5 LD
3.6
28
136795
2020-May-21
16.1 LD
11.7
892
163348
2020-Jun-06
13.3 LD
11.1
339
2013 XA22
2020-Jun-09
10.6 LD
6.5
98
2017 MF7
2020-Jun-14
3.7 LD
10.9
23
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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