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INCREASING CHANCE OF FLARES: First, watch this movie. That's sunspot AR3691, which doubled in size yesterday and has developed a 'beta-gamma-delta' magnetic field, which harbors energy for X-class solar flares. With the return of AR3664 (see below), this makes two sunspots capable of powerful soon-to-be-Earth-directed explosions. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text
RETURN OF AN HISTORIC SUNSPOT: It's back. Almost. Sunspot AR3664, the source of the historic May 10th superstorm, has spent the past two week's transiting the farside of the sun. Today it announced its impending return with an X2.8-class solar flare:
Above: The extreme UV flash from today's X2.8-class solar flare. Credit: NASA/SDO
The flare was probably even stronger than X2.8. The base of the explosion was eclipsed by the edge of the sun, so not all of the X-rays it produced were counted by sensors used to classify the flare.
The explosion caused a deep shortwave radio blackout over east Asia and hurled a bright CME into space. A NASA model of the CME confirms that it will miss Mercury, Venus and Earth. None of the inner planets will be affected by this powerful event.
How do we know the flare came from AR3664? Helioseismology. The giant sunspot is affecting the way the sun vibrates, and its seismic echoes are visible in maps of the sun's farside:
This helioseismic map shows that AR3664 is just behind the southeastern limb of the sun--a good match for the location of today's X-flare. Clearly, AR3664 is still active as it turns to face Earth again later this week. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text
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18K GOLD TOTAL ECLIPSE PENDANT: This pendant has touched the shadow of the Moon. On April 8, 2024, during a total eclipse of the sun in Texas, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched it to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon. Floating more than 118,110 feet high, the locket spent 3 minutes and 45 seconds wrapped in lunar shadow:
You can have it for $199.95. The 18K gold-plated locket is inscribed with the words "I love you to the Moon and back," and opens to hold a personal photo or other small item. It comes with a greeting card showing the locket in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space during the total eclipse.
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LUNAR POLLEN CORONA: It's springtime in Finland, and you can see the signs in the heavens. Airborne pine pollen is creating beautiful rings of light around the sun and Moon. Pentti Arpalahti photographed this example on May 24th from Helsinki:
"The 99.7% full Moon rose at midnight surrounded by a beautiful pollen corona," says Arpalahti.
Pollen coronas appear when light is scattered from the outside of pollen grains. The resulting rings of light can be intensely colorful. "Rings" isn't quite the right word, though. The coronas are usually lumpy and elliptical, mimicking the shape of the pollen grains.
This photo of pine pollen seen through a microscope shows what's going on:
They look like Mickey Mouse hats. The "ears" are air sacs that help the pollen catch the wind. When the air is moving, these sacs align the grains, allowing them to scatter light coherently. The sacs also distort the shape of the diffraction pattern, transforming it from a circle into a lumpy ellipse.
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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 May 27, 2024, the network reported 3 fireballs.
(3 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 May 27, 2024 there were 2349 potentially hazardous asteroids.
|
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
2024 JG15 | 2024-May-22 | 6.6 LD | 10.8 | 63 |
2024 JZ6 | 2024-May-23 | 14.6 LD | 13.8 | 243 |
2024 HP | 2024-May-23 | 15.5 LD | 7.7 | 184 |
2024 JX14 | 2024-May-23 | 16.4 LD | 6.2 | 27 |
2024 HP2 | 2024-May-25 | 5.8 LD | 2.3 | 19 |
2024 JY1 | 2024-May-26 | 17.5 LD | 10.3 | 51 |
2024 JO16 | 2024-May-27 | 8 LD | 8.8 | 20 |
2008 LD | 2024-May-28 | 7.7 LD | 4.5 | 6 |
2024 JV17 | 2024-May-28 | 17.3 LD | 8.4 | 43 |
2021 LV | 2024-May-29 | 12 LD | 15.5 | 9 |
2024 JG | 2024-May-29 | 8.7 LD | 7.4 | 30 |
2024 JA3 | 2024-May-30 | 6.2 LD | 8.5 | 36 |
2008 XH | 2024-May-31 | 13.8 LD | 14.7 | 102 |
2024 JP1 | 2024-Jun-01 | 18.5 LD | 4.7 | 25 |
2024 JC1 | 2024-Jun-01 | 15.1 LD | 4.8 | 34 |
1998 KY26 | 2024-Jun-01 | 12 LD | 5.3 | 25 |
2016 JC6 | 2024-Jun-01 | 19.9 LD | 7.1 | 188 |
2024 JR17 | 2024-Jun-05 | 19.4 LD | 14.6 | 87 |
2008 YN2 | 2024-Jun-05 | 10.5 LD | 7.7 | 20 |
2021 LW3 | 2024-Jun-06 | 9.7 LD | 9.8 | 86 |
2024 CR9 | 2024-Jun-11 | 19.2 LD | 7.4 | 447 |
2022 XC1 | 2024-Jun-12 | 16.5 LD | 6.5 | 21 |
2022 WW11 | 2024-Jun-17 | 19.7 LD | 14.4 | 15 |
2019 NJ | 2024-Jun-27 | 17.2 LD | 10.1 | 66 |
415029 | 2024-Jun-27 | 17.3 LD | 25.9 | 2304 |
2022 MM1 | 2024-Jun-28 | 7.8 LD | 10.9 | 39 |
2010 XN | 2024-Jun-28 | 14.1 LD | 11.3 | 52 |
2022 HD1 | 2024-Jun-29 | 17.3 LD | 7.2 | 63 |
2017 MB3 | 2024-Jun-30 | 5 LD | 6.5 | 30 |
2022 BY39 | 2024-Jul-02 | 13.2 LD | 3 | 4 |
2022 YS5 | 2024-Jul-11 | 11 LD | 5.8 | 38 |
2024 BY15 | 2024-Jul-16 | 16.2 LD | 0.7 | 16 |
2011 MW1 | 2024-Jul-25 | 10.1 LD | 8 | 120 |
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. See also, all satellite statistics. |
| 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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