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MINOR GEOMAGNETIC STORM: A solar wind stream hit Earth's magnetic field during the early hours of March 31st, sparking a minor G1-class geomagnetic storm. Auroras were sighted across parts of Canada and northern Europe. Aurora alerts: SMS Text.
AN ELVE OVER ITALY: For a few milliseconds last Monday night, March 27th, an enormous red ring of light appeared in the sky over central Italy. Valter Binotto photographed it from the small town of Possagno in the foothills of the Italian Alps:
This is an "ELVE"--short for Emissions of Light and Very Low Frequency Perturbations due to Electromagnetic Pulse Sources. It's a rare species of sprite discovered in 1990 by cameras onboard the space shuttle. Binotto may have just taken the best ever picture of one from the ground.
"The ELVE was generated by intense lightning in a storm near Ancona about 285 km south of me," says Binotto. One bolt was so strong, it generated an intense electromagnetic pulse (EMP). The red ring marks the spot where the EMP hit Earth's ionosphere. Normal lightning bolts carry 10 to 30 kilo-ampères of current; this bolt was about 10 times stronger than normal.
Binotto created a graphic showing the scale of the ELVE:
"It was about 100 km high and nearly 360 km wide," says Binotto. "I have been photographing upper atmospheric lightning and transient luminous events (TLEs) since 2019, hundreds of them, and this is one of the biggest structures I have ever seen."
ELVE season is just getting started in Europe and North America, where spring and summer thunderstorms will multiply in the months ahead. Photographers should be alert for red rings and many other things above the cloudtops. Look here.
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AURORAS OVER OKLAHOMA: Add Oklahoma to the list of US states where auroras appeared during the severe geomagnetic storm of March 23-24. "As it got very dark, the northern horizon erupted in pillars I could see with my naked eyes," reports Paul Smith, who photographed the display from the southern part of the state:
Smith is a world famous photographer of sprites and other transient luminous events. In fact, he was sprite-chasing at the time. "I had set up my camera with a clear view of the horizon, the better to see distant cloudtops where sprites emerge," he explains. This gave him a good view of the auroras as well.
"I definitely had a lump in my throat as emotions welled inside," he says. "Nature is always so giving."
Like other low-latitude displays on March 23-24, the auroras over Oklahoma were mostly red. This map shows the distribution of aurora photos submitted to Spaceweather.com, color coded by their dominant hue:
Most auroras are green, yet when auroras spread to low latitudes, the sightings are almost always red. There's a simple reason. Ordinary green auroras come from oxygen atoms about 150 km above Earth's surface. Red auroras are also caused by oxygen, but much higher up, between 150 km and 500 km. A picture taken by Andrew Morris in the UK nicely illustrates the red-on-green altitude structure. From relatively far-south places like Oklahoma, greens are mostly eclipsed by the northern horizon, leaving the higher reds to dominate the display.
Did *you* see red during the storm? Submit your photos here. Aurora alerts: SMS Text.
new images: from Andy Jones of Hope, New Mexico; from Nancy Tompkins of Prescott, Arizona; from Denys Wachterdorff of Tooele, Utah; from Geoff Markowski of Underhill Vermont; from Mariah Winterowd of Wyoming; from Wesley Luginbyhl of Amarillo, Texas; from Hunter Outten of Lewes, Delaware; from Johnny Coletta of Rockport, Massachusetts
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OCEAN BLUE CRYSTAL DOLPHIN PENDANT: Are you looking for a far-out gift? Consider the Ocean Blue Crystal Dolphin Pendant. It flew to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon:
You can have it for $199.95. The students of Earth to Sky Calculus are selling these crystal cetaceans to support their cosmic ray monitoring program.
The dolphin is wrapped in a sterling silver wave and suspended from a matching 18-inch chain. It contains no nickel, no lead, no cadmium; the pendant is totally hypoallergenic. Each pendant comes with a greeting card showing the dolphin in flight, and telling the story of its trip to the edge of space and back again.
Far Out Gifts: Earth to Sky Store
All sales support hands-on STEM education
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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 Mar 31 2023, the network reported 4 fireballs.
(4 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 31, 2023 there were 2327 potentially hazardous asteroids.
|
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters: Asteroid | Date(UT) | Miss Distance | Velocity (km/s) | Diameter (m) |
2023 FG7 | 2023-Mar-26 | 2.2 LD | 9.7 | 8 |
2023 FP7 | 2023-Mar-26 | 6.4 LD | 8.3 | 12 |
2023 FK4 | 2023-Mar-26 | 10.8 LD | 7.9 | 13 |
2023 FL2 | 2023-Mar-26 | 12.2 LD | 6.1 | 21 |
2023 DX2 | 2023-Mar-27 | 8.5 LD | 9 | 53 |
2023 FW2 | 2023-Mar-27 | 3.2 LD | 8.7 | 9 |
2023 FA11 | 2023-Mar-27 | 2.9 LD | 25.5 | 23 |
2023 FZ2 | 2023-Mar-27 | 3.6 LD | 12.3 | 16 |
2019 FT | 2023-Mar-27 | 17.1 LD | 28.2 | 93 |
2023 FU3 | 2023-Mar-28 | 12.1 LD | 7.5 | 18 |
2014 GC34 | 2023-Mar-29 | 13.7 LD | 25.9 | 85 |
2022 YK4 | 2023-Mar-29 | 11.9 LD | 2.3 | 25 |
2023 FR1 | 2023-Mar-30 | 19 LD | 7.9 | 45 |
2023 EK2 | 2023-Mar-30 | 12.9 LD | 15.4 | 83 |
2017 SE12 | 2023-Mar-30 | 5.2 LD | 8.4 | 15 |
2023 FQ4 | 2023-Mar-30 | 4 LD | 7.5 | 11 |
2023 FH7 | 2023-Mar-30 | 0.4 LD | 8.7 | 6 |
2016 GH1 | 2023-Mar-30 | 7.7 LD | 5.8 | 11 |
2023 FO3 | 2023-Mar-31 | 6.6 LD | 10.2 | 17 |
2023 FF7 | 2023-Apr-01 | 8.7 LD | 10.8 | 15 |
2023 FZ10 | 2023-Apr-01 | 2.7 LD | 2.8 | 7 |
2023 FY6 | 2023-Apr-02 | 10 LD | 22.5 | 32 |
2022 GO3 | 2023-Apr-02 | 17 LD | 11.6 | 15 |
2021 GN1 | 2023-Apr-02 | 17.7 LD | 14.2 | 18 |
2023 FU6 | 2023-Apr-03 | 4.9 LD | 10.2 | 14 |
2023 FS11 | 2023-Apr-03 | 17.3 LD | 11.7 | 26 |
2023 FA7 | 2023-Apr-04 | 5.9 LD | 24 | 29 |
2023 FQ7 | 2023-Apr-05 | 15 LD | 8.4 | 21 |
2023 FZ3 | 2023-Apr-06 | 10.9 LD | 18.8 | 48 |
2018 FD | 2023-Apr-06 | 16.2 LD | 7.8 | 47 |
2023 FE4 | 2023-Apr-06 | 9.6 LD | 2.6 | 32 |
2023 FM | 2023-Apr-06 | 7.8 LD | 15.8 | 163 |
2020 FL4 | 2023-Apr-06 | 14.1 LD | 5 | 14 |
2023 FP5 | 2023-Apr-09 | 10.7 LD | 14.1 | 40 |
2023 FC4 | 2023-Apr-09 | 19.6 LD | 10.1 | 56 |
2023 FG5 | 2023-Apr-10 | 9.5 LD | 9.4 | 24 |
2023 FT1 | 2023-Apr-10 | 19.5 LD | 6.6 | 33 |
2023 FE5 | 2023-Apr-11 | 11.6 LD | 5.8 | 28 |
2023 FS10 | 2023-Apr-12 | 3.2 LD | 7.6 | 21 |
2019 GK21 | 2023-Apr-13 | 15.2 LD | 8.1 | 27 |
2022 YK9 | 2023-Apr-13 | 19.9 LD | 9.9 | 175 |
436774 | 2023-Apr-13 | 12.5 LD | 17.6 | 719 |
2020 BV14 | 2023-Apr-16 | 17.8 LD | 8.2 | 81 |
2006 HV5 | 2023-Apr-26 | 6.3 LD | 17.4 | 400 |
2021 JF2 | 2023-Apr-28 | 16.6 LD | 8 | 19 |
2018 VS6 | 2023-May-01 | 5.2 LD | 11.6 | 14 |
2011 KY15 | 2023-May-18 | 19.9 LD | 14.3 | 54 |
2021 JK7 | 2023-May-22 | 16.7 LD | 22.9 | 48 |
2019 UJ3 | 2023-May-23 | 15.5 LD | 9.8 | 21 |
2023 CL3 | 2023-May-24 | 18.9 LD | 7.3 | 121 |
2021 KO2 | 2023-May-29 | 15.8 LD | 13.9 | 9 |
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 |
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