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WEEKEND AURORA WATCH: NOAA forecasters estimate a 40% chance of polar geomagnetic storms on
Jan. 28th when a stream of fast-moving solar wind is expected to hit Earth's magnetic field. Arctic sky watchers should be alert for auroras this weekend.
Free: Aurora Alerts
SUNSPOT GENESIS: Barely visible only 24 hours ago, a new sunspot group big enough to swallow Earth is bubbling up through the solar surface. Watch the rapid genesis of this new active region in a movie from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory:
In recent months sunspot numbers have plummeted as
the solar cycle crashestoward a new and deep Solar Minimum expected in 2019-2020. So what is this sunspot doing here? It's a reminder that the sun can produce spots at all phases of the solar cycle. Individual sunspots are completely unpredictable and may appear without notice at any time. Even during the great
Maunder Minimum of the 17th century, a handful of sunspots were typically observed each year. This is important because sunspots produce solar flares. As a result, occasionally
Solar Minimum explodes with solar flare activity.
So far, baby sunspot AR2629 poses no threat for strong solar flares; its magnetic field is too stable for such explosions. However, this could change if its development proceeds apace. Stay tuned for updates.
CORONAL HOLE FACES EARTH: A hole in the sun's atmosphere is directly facing Earth, and it is spewing a stream of solar wind in our direction. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory photographed the structure during the early hours of Jan. 24th:
This is a "coronal hole" (CH)--a region in the sun's atmosphere where the magnetic field opens up and allows solar wind to escape to escape. The emerging stream of gas should reach Earth on
Jan. 27th or
28th and influence our planet for 2 to 3 days. Arctic sky watchers, mark your calendars. Auroras are in the offing later this week.
Free: Aurora alerts.
FAR-OUT VALENTINE'S GIFT: To raise money for their
cosmic ray ballooning program, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus have flown a payload-full of Valentine's pendants to the edge of space--and you can
have one for $89.95. Buy one this week and we will include a
space rose free of charge.
Each glittering pendant comes with a greeting card showing the jewelry in flight and certifying that it has been to the stratosphere and back again.
More far-out Valentine's gifts may be found in the
Earth to Sky store. All proceeds support cosmic ray balloon flights and STEM education.
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 Jan. 26, 2017, 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]
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 January 26, 2017 there were 1764 potentially hazardous asteroids.
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 |
Readers, thank you for your patience while we continue to develop this new section of Spaceweather.com. We've been working to streamline our data reduction, allowing us to post results from balloon flights much more rapidly, and we have developed a new data product, shown here:
This plot displays radiation measurements not only in the stratosphere, but also at aviation altitudes. 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. These measurements are made by our usual cosmic ray payload as it passes through aviation altitudes en route to the stratosphere over California.
What is this all about? 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 12% since 2015:
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.
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.
The data points in the graph above correspond to the peak of the
Reneger-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.
| | 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. |
| | from the NOAA Space Environment Center |
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| | the underlying science of space weather |
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