Todays Space Weather

Presented by the Space Environment Center

Last Update Nov 30, 1996 at 04:02 UT

September 4, 1996 Due to concerns about the lifetime of the servo windings on the GOES9 cloud imagers, it has become necessary to manipulate the thermal environment of the spacecraft. This requires three off-points on the spacecraft daily between 0500 and 1300 UT. During these off-points, data from the X-ray sensor is lost for about 5-10 minutes until controllers can re-point the sensor to the Sun. Current plans are for these off-points to continue this autumnal eclipse season.

Full Disk H-alpha image of the sun received 96/11/29 at 07:49 UT from Learmonth, Australia. Image is 512 wide by 480 high, 8 bits per pixel. It is available in GIF format. Solar images in H-alpha light reveal many features and complexity that tell us what is happening on the Sun. Additional images are available as full-page displays or as files.

Space Weather Outlook

SOLAR ACTIVITY IS FORECAST TO
BE PREDOMINANTLY LOW WITH AN ISOLATED M-CLASS FLARE POSSIBLE
FROM REGION 7999. IT IS NOT LIKELY THE M-CLASS FLARE
MENTIONED ABOVE IS THE BEGINNING OF AN INCREASE IN FLARE
ACTIVITY FROM REGION 7999 BECAUSE OF GENERAL DECAY IN THE
REGION. THE M1 FLARE IS MORE LIKELY A RESULT OF SUNSPOT
PROPER MOTION AND REALIGNMENT OF THE OVERLYING FIELDS.
THE PROPER MOTION OCCURRED AT THE SOUTHERNMOST PART OF THE
REGION SO THIS PHENOMENON IS NOT EXPECTED TO CONTINUE.

THE GEOMAGNETIC FIELD IS
FORECAST TO BE QUIET FOR THE NEXT THREE DAYS.

The SEC Gopher Server contains many other reports, listings, and displays of solar-geophysical data including a complete copy of this forecast.

X-Ray Flux (last 3 days)

The X-ray Flux plot shows 3 days of 5-minute solar X-ray flux values measured on the GOES 8 and 9 satellites. The upper plot shows data from 0.1 to 0.8 nanometers, the lower plot 0.05 to 0.4 nanometers.

Created by Viola Raben (vraben@sec.noaa.gov)

Satellite Environment Plot

The Satellite Environment Plot combines satellite and ground-based data to provide an overview of the current geosynchronous satellite environment. Although the data are of interest to the satellite community, they do not include all parameters and energy ranges known to be associated with satellite anomalies.

You can obtain a large-scale plot and additional comments by clicking on the data panel of interest.

Created by Kent A. Doggett (kdoggett@sec.noaa.gov)

Today's Space Weather page is maintained by Viola Raben (e-mail: vraben@sec.noaa.gov)

Return to the SEC index page.