SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids

Monday, Mar. 31, 2025

ANOTHER BIG SUNSPOT: Solar activity is increasing again. A large and complex sunspot is emerging over the sun's southeastern limb. Numbered 4048, the active region is crackling with M-class solar flares. At the moment it appears to be a greater threat for X-flares than sunspot 4046, which did unleash a dramatic X1.1-flare on March 28th. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text.

SOLAR ECLIPSE MIRAGE: Savvy photographers know the best time and place to catch a mirage: Early morning on the beach when temperature inversions over open water distort the shape of the rising sun. Joerg Schoppmeyer is a very savvy photographer. On March 29th, he positioned himself at Pointe Lebel (Baie-Comeau), Canada, to video record a mirage of a solar eclipse:

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"This was my 65th eclipse--a cold, but very special one," says Schoppmeyer, who traveled to Canada to watch the New Moon pass in front of the sun less than a degree above the St Lawrence River.

During Schoppmeyer's video, about 85% of the sun is covered, turning the solar disk into a narrow crescent. Watch the video again. There are actually two crescents: One above the clouds, and another upside down below the clouds. That upside down crescent is not a reflection from the ocean water. It's an "omega mirage."

This eclipse was widely observed from eastern Canada, Iceland, Greenland, and western Europe. If you have a photo from the eclipse zone, please submit it here.

Realtime Solar Eclipse Photo Gallery
Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter

START YOUR CRYSTAL GARDEN FROM SPACE: This sunflower has touched space. The crystal blossom flew to the stratosphere on Feb. 22nd onboard an Earth to Sky Calculus cosmic ray balloon, floating 112,451 feet above the Sierra Nevada mountains of central California:

You can have it for 139ドル.95. The students are selling stratosphere crystals to support their cosmic ray ballooning program. In fact, you can start a whole crystal garden, as more flowers and butterflies are in the launch queue. They make great Mother's Day, anniversary, and birthday gifts. Each one comes with a greeting card showing the flower in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space.

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

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Realtime Venus Photo Gallery
Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter

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Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery
Free: Spaceweather.com Newsletter

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 30, 2025, 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. Notes: LD means "Lunar Distance." 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance between Earth and the Moon. 1 LD also equals 0.00256 AU.

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 10 years, resulting in a unique dataset of in situ atmospheric measurements.

Latest results (Nov. 2024): Atmospheric radiation is decreasing in 2024. Our latest measurements in November registered a 10-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.

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T CrB NOVA WATCH
today: m=9.8 (Mar 31)
yesterday: m=10.0
more: AAVSO data

Explanation: When the nova explodes, the visual magnitude of the star (m) will jump from +10 (invisible to the naked eye) to +2 (about as bright as the North Star).

Moon Phases

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