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THE STARFISH PRIME GEOMAGNETIC STORM: Sixty years ago, the US military accidentally created a strong geomagnetic storm, the result of a nuclear test called "Starfish Prime." The blast sparked auroras over Hawaii and led to the early demise of all satellites in Earth orbit at the time. Full story.

ACTIVE SUN: Spoiler alert: Something on the sun is about to explode. "There is an incredible-looking sunspot crossing the center of the solar disk and a new large dark core has just appeared on the limb," reports Illinois astronomer Apollo Lasky, who photographed the seething starscape:

The active regions in Lasky's video are mostly new. They either appeared for the first time or ballooned in size from an existiing spot over the weekend. One of them, sunspot AR3055, is truly awesome, stretching more than 100,000 km from end to end with more than a dozen dark cores. It is almost directly facing Earth, and poses a threat for strong flares.

To make the video, Lasky capped his telescope with a solar filter tuned to the glow of ionized calcium (CaK). CaK filters are excellent detectors of "sunspot froth"--the bubbly, turbulent sea of magnetism that surrounds active sunspot groups. Every sunspot in the video is surrounded. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text.

Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
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"I LOVE YOU MORE" OPAL: Nothing says "I love you" like jewelry from space. On June 3, 2022, this sterling silver opal pendant hitched a ride on an Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray research balloon. At the apex of the flight it floated 101,326 feet above the Sierra Nevada mountains of central California:

You can have it for $142.95. The opal's infinity wrap is engraved with "I Love You More." It's the perfect birthday, anniversary or (never too early!) Christmas gift for that special someone who loves space. Each pendant comes with a greeting card showing the pendant in flight and telling the story of its trip to the stratosphere and back.

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

Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
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Realtime Noctilucent Cloud Photo Gallery
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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 July 10, 2022, the network reported 5 fireballs.
(5 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. 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

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 (Nov. 2021): Our balloons have just measured a sudden drop in atmospheric radiation. It happened during the strong geomagnetic storms of Nov. 3-4, 2021. Here are the data:

This is called a "Forbush decrease," named after American physicist Scott Forbush who studied cosmic rays in the early 20th century.  It happens when a CME from the sun sweeps past Earth and literally pushes cosmic rays away from our planet. Radiation from deep space that would normally pepper Earth's upper atmosphere is briefly wiped out.

We have measured Forbush decreases before. For example, here's one from Sept. 2014. The Forbush Decrease of Nov. 3-4, 2021, was the deepest in the history of our 7-year atmospheric monitoring program. Radiation levels in the stratosphere over California dropped nearly 20%, more than doubling the previous record from our dataset. 

En route to the stratosphere, our sensors also pass through aviation altitudes, so we can sample radiation where planes fly. This plot shows how the Forbush decrease was restricted to the stratosphere; it did not affect lower levels of the atmosphere:

The dose rates shown above are expressed 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 higher you fly, the more radiation you will absorb.

.Who cares? Cosmic rays are a surprisingly "down to Earth" form of space weather. They can seed clouds, 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. Somewhat more controversial studies (#1, #2, #3, #4) link 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 first graph ("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.

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.

SolarMonitor.org

information about sunspots based on the latest NOAA/USAF Active Region Summary

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

Live Aurora Webcam

Heliophysics

the underlying science of space weather

NASA Near Earth Asteroid Home Page

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