![]() Solar Cycle 25 has roared to life faster than forecasters expected. What's going on? Ironically, the radiation drop is caused by increasing solar activity. Our latest measurements in July 2022 registered a 6-year low: Latest results (July 2022): Atmospheric radiation is decreasing in 2022. ![]() Our monitoring program has been underway without interruption for 7 years, resulting in a unique dataset of in situ atmospheric measurements. 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. SPACE WEATHER BALLOON DATA: Almost once a week, and the students of Earth to Sky Calculus fly space weather balloons to the stratosphere over California. "Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distanceīetween Earth and the Moon. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the jewelry in flight and telling the story of its trip to the stratosphere and back again.Īll sales support hands-on STEM education The students are selling space pendants to pay the helium bill for their cosmic ray ballooning program. The wings of the dragonfly include four pieces of natural amber colored Cognac, Olive Green and Honey Yellow. Made of genuine Baltic Amber with a sterling silver exoskeleton, the pendant measures 1 1/4 inch and comes with a matching 18-inch sterling silver chain. 28th, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched it to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon, 109,228 feet above California's Sierra Nevada: "You can hear what it sounded like in this 90 second audio file."ĪMBER DRAGONFLY SPACE PENDANT: This dragonfly has touched space. "The shock wave packed a punch!" says Ashcraft. It was a Type II solar radio burst caused by shock waves in the leading edge of a CME emerging from the blast site. ![]() Minutes after it began, the sun filled the quietude with a roar of static. The blackout was not completely silent, however. "The blackout affected all frequencies below 30 MHz." ![]() "As my dynamic spectrum shows, all terrestrial shortwave radio transmissions coming into New Mexico faded for 10 to 15 minutes after the flare," says Ashcraft. In rural New Mexico, amateur radio astronomer Thomas Ashcraft recorded the blackout: An X2.8-class solar flare (the strongest flare of the current solar cycle, so far) ionized the top of our atmosphere, disrupting shortwave transmissions across the Americas. 14th, the sun silenced radio transmissions on Earth. THIS IS WHAT A RADIO BLACKOUT SOUNDS LIKE: On Dec. The moral to the story: Even little CMEs are worth knowing about! CME impact alerts: SMS Text Intermittent, minor geomagnetic storming from this relatively insignificant CME produced auroras from Canada to Scandinavia. 17th as Earth was passing through the CME's magnetized wake. "I could see them even without my camera," says Kashmir Williams who photographed the display from Neah Bay, Washington. This was a minor CME expected to have little impact on Earth's magnetosphere. It wasn't the "big one" from the previous day's X2.8-class solar flare. NEVERTHELESS, THERE WERE AURORAS: A CME hit Earth's magnetic field on Dec. 16th either the CME missed or hit so weakly that satellite sensors did not detect it. Forecasters thought a CME would hit Earth on Dec. GEOMAGNETIC STORM WATCH - CANCELED: The weekend forecast called for a G2-class geomagnetic storm. 28, 2023, as a show of thanks for years of service and hope for future daisies: Until then, we will maintain AIM's iconic "daily daisy," frozen at Feb. There may be some hope of a recovery as AIM's orbit precesses into full sunlight in 2024. As a result AIM is offline, perhaps permanently. What happened to NASA's AIM spacecraft, which has been monitoring NLCs since 2007? Earlier this year, the spacecraft's battery failed. As the season progresses, these dots will multiply in number and shift in hue from blue to red as the brightness of the clouds intensifies. For the rest of the season, daily maps from NOAA 21 will be presented here:Įach dot is a detected cloud. An instrument onboard NOAA 21 ( OMPS LP) is able to detect NLCs (also known as "polar mesospheric clouds" or PMCs). The first clouds were detected inside the Arctic Circle by the NOAA 21 satellite. The northern season for NLCs began on May 26th. Solar wind flowing from this coronal hole could reach Earth on Dec. Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica Neutron counts from the University of Oulu's Sodankyla Geophysical Observatory show that cosmic rays reaching Earth are slowly declining-a result of the yin-yang relationship between the solar cycle and cosmic rays. Credit: SDO/HMIĬosmic Rays Solar Cycle 25 is intensifying, and this is reflected in the number of cosmic rays entering Earth's atmosphere. All of these sunspots have stable magnetic fields that pose little threat for strong flares.
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