Friday, August 26, 2016

BARREL Status Report #16 August 26, 2016

BARREL Status Report #16
August 26, 2016

Flight 4E was terminated yesterday (August 25) at 0938 UT because it was moving west towards lakes and mountains. A preliminary look at the data suggests that we observed microbursts during two different intervals, one close in time to the conjunction with RBSP. We need to look at it more closely to see how close we were. The payload was recovered later in the day. I am also excited to report that the ABOVE2 payload was also launched in time to catch the conjunction with RBSP on the orbit following the BARREL conjunction. They also observed precipitation but I don’t yet have many details. In any case, it is exciting that we were able to achieve our goal of coordinating with the ABOVE2 team to have two balloons up on separate continents and catch conjunctions on consecutive RBSP orbits!   

The next BARREL launch opportunity will be Saturday at 1730 UT. 

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

BARREL Status Report #15 August 24, 2016

BARREL Status Report #15
August 24, 2016

Flight 4E was launched from Esrange on Aug. 24 at 17:24 UT and reached float altitude at around 19:30 UT.  We lost GPS when the payload was at an altitude of 7.9 km. The symptoms are consistent with a disconnected GPS antenna. However, we do have GPS location and altitude from the SSC tracking system so this is a failure we can live with. It looks like geomagnetic activity has picked up with the arrival of a high speed stream from the sun. So, we’re hoping for a long flight to catch some of the activity! 


Robyn

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

BARREL Status Report #14 August 23, 2016

BARREL Status Report #14
August 23, 2016

We had two great flights with BARREL Flights 4C and 4D. Both payloads survived the night and caught the Van Allen Probe conjunction early in the morning. Payload 4C also caught a conjunction with MMS yesterday though it doesn’t look like any precipitation was observed during the conjunction. We did see relativistic precipitation on both payloads when they were about 100 km apart so this will provide us with some information about the spatial distribution at smaller scales than we obtained during our Antarctic campaigns. Both flights were terminated on August 22 due to their location.  Flight 4D was terminated at 1321 UT and Flight 4C was terminated at 1533 UT. The payloads landed about 12 km apart and both were recovered earlier today. We were very pleased to get some longer flights and are now well into turnaround. The next launch opportunity is tomorrow (Wednesday) at 1700 local time in Sweden. 

Robyn

Friday, August 19, 2016

Solar Flares and Why We Care

What’s a Solar Flare?
By Anna Voelker

Solar flares are massive bursts of energy that are characterized by brightening observed on the Sun. They are the largest explosions in our solar system and can emit energy across the entire electromagnetic spectrum!

This is an image of a flare occurring on the Sun, as viewed by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). SDO is a spacecraft that looks at the sun in a variety of wavelengths and temperatures to help scientists see and study different solar events. For example, this wavelength,131 angstroms, allows the brightening associated with flares to be extremely visible. Follow the link below to view a NASA video of this flare seen in multiple wavelengths:

http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a012200/a012224/APPLE_TV_12224_4.17.16.flare_appletv_subtitles.m4v   




Solar flares are classified in units of X-ray flux, which describes the amount of energy each flare emits over a given area. A C-class flare has a flux value with a magnitude of 10e-6 W/m^2, M-class 10e-5 W/m^2, and X-class 10e-4 W/m^2. For comparison, the energy released by a flare can be 10 million times greater than the energy released in a volcanic explosion!
(See http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/sftheory/flare.htm for more details.)


Above is a graph that allows us to measure flare intensity using data from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) spacecraft. The vertical axis is X-ray flux and the horizontal axis is time (Universal Time or greenwich mean time, the time zone used as the official scientific time). Displayed in the top right-hand corner is the date, time, and X-ray flux value corresponding to wherever one moves their cursor along the graph. Shown here is the peak time and flux value of a flare that occurred on August 7. The maximum X-ray flux value of this flare was 1.37e-5 W/m^2, which we classify as an M1.3 flare.
This data can be accessed by going to iswa.gsfc.nasa.gov and selecting “GOES Primary X-ray flux Timeline” under the eleventh tab in the magnetosphere section. 

Flares are very important to monitor and understand because they can cause radio blackouts and are associated with solar energetic particles (SEPs), which can damage spacecraft electronics and pose a threat to astronaut safety. Flares emit radiation that travels at the speed of light and SEPs travel at relativistic speeds of up to 80% the speed of light. This means that by the time we see a flare the radiation is already here and particles may be well on their way. This is why flare forecasting (trying to predict flares before they occur to provide advanced notice) is an important and ongoing scientific pursuit. 

Why BARREL Cares
By Alexa Halford

One of the very cool things about BARREL is that with only one primary science experiment we can see and study events not just in the Earth’s magnetosphere, but also on the Sun. When you have an explosive event such as a flare on the Sun, X-rays are produced. Some of these X-rays are scattered in all directions. As long as BARREL is in the line of sight, or in other words, in sunlight, we can capture the X-rays and study various aspects of the flare. Very few instruments have previously looked in the energy range that we look at, and thus we can add to the science knowledge of this part of the flare process.
We also care about documenting when BARREL is seeing X-rays associated with a solar flare so that we don’t mistakenly try to associate them with geomagnetic activity. One could say that the X-rays from the flare are a contamination of our data since we’re most interested in X-rays produced by radiation belt electrons in our atmosphere. I like to think of it not as contamination but a wonderful surprise. With this we get to study yet another field and do so much more research than we ever hoped for. Who would have thought (and probably lots of people did) that this small little set of balloons would be able to study not just the Earth’s radiation belt, not just solar energetic particles, but also help us understand the flare process often associated with the start of some of the larger space weather events! It’s just so cool! One instrument, relatively cheap balloons, and so much science! Who couldn’t love them!
Do you have any questions about flares? Want to learn more about what other space phenomenon flares can cause or what causes a flare in the first place? Feel free to ask your questions by commenting below! 













Special thanks to Dustin Mayfield-Jones!


Thursday, August 18, 2016

BARREL Status Report #12 August 17, 2016

BARREL Status Report #12
August 17, 2016

BARREL Flight 4B was terminated this morning at 0350 UT. The balloon started with a nice southerly trajectory, so we thought we might get a long flight out of it. But, it took a sharp turn to the west right after sunrise and had to be cut down as it approached the mountains. Despite the relatively short flight, we caught all of the RBSP conjunction we were targeting, and even had some substorm activity. We saw a very bright relativistic precipitation event which may have been associated with that substorm. The payload was recovered in very good shape earlier today. Note that this payload was also carrying the Univ. of Houston TEC experiment. We’re excited to see if they saw any change in total electron content due to the energetic precipitation! 

The Van Allen Probes EFW team is now requesting playback of burst data from our first flight and they are planning data collections for the next conjunctions. We will not be launching on Thursday due to the predicted flight trajectory (climb out is mostly west which shortens the flight substantially). So, the next launch attempt is likely to be on Friday. I’ll send another update then. 


Robyn



NASA's BARREL Mission in Sweden

A BARREL team member recovers the second payload after it landed. 
 
The BARREL team is at Esrange Space Center near Kiruna, Sweden, launching a series of six scientific payloads on miniature scientific balloons. The NASA-funded BARREL – which stands for Balloon Array for Radiation-belt Relativistic Electron Losses – primarily measures X-rays in Earth’s atmosphere near the North and South Poles. These X-rays are produced by electrons raining down into the atmosphere from two giant swaths of radiation that surround Earth, called the Van Allen belts. Learning about the radiation near Earth helps us to better protect our satellites. 
 
Several of the BARREL balloons also carry instruments built by undergraduate students to measure the total electron content of Earth’s ionosphere, as well as the low-frequency electromagnetic waves that help to scatter electrons into Earth’s atmosphere. Though about 90 feet in diameter, the BARREL balloons are much smaller than standard football stadium-sized scientific balloons.
 
This is the fourth campaign for the BARREL mission. BARREL is led by Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The undergraduate student instrument team is led by the University of Houston and funded by the Undergraduate Student Instrument Project out of NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. For more information on NASA’s scientific balloon program, visit: www.nasa.gov/scientificballoons
 
Image credit: NASA/Montana State University/Arlo Johnson

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

The NASA Goddard BARREL Flicker page is up and running!

A huge thanks to Sarah Frazier for creating this amazing flicker page for BARREL. You can see all of the photos as we gather them here.


Thanks so much Sarah and all the photographers in our Kiruna Crew!



NASA's BARREL Mission in Sweden

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

BARREL Status Report #11 August 16, 2016

BARREL Status Report #11
August 16, 2016

BARREL flight 4B (payload 2J) was launched about 30 minutes ago at 2002 UT, right on schedule. The balloon is now at float altitude, ~36 km. The upper level winds are still holding out at a higher than desired speed, so this may be another short flight. But we still have a good chance to catch most of the conjunction with Van Allen Probes. A picture of inflation, courtesy of Gar Bering from the University of Houston, is attached.

The ABOVE2 experiment led by Chris Cully from University of Calgary is also planning to attempt a launch from Saskatoon today. If they do launch, they will be in conjunction with Van Allen for the orbit following the BARREL conjunction so this could be very interesting. Fingers crossed!  

Best, 

Robyn 


Monday, August 15, 2016

BARREL Daily update Aug. 15th 2016

Update Summary
We had a successful launch and will hopefully have a second this coming Tuesday. NOAA expects that there may be a small High Speed Stream (HSS) with velocities toping out at about 400 Km/s hitting Earth around the 16th. There may be another HSS coming around Aug. 20th. These HSS may lead to either geomagnetic storms or substorms. Both storms and substorms can cause the electrons from the radiation belts to be lost to the atmosphere. 

News from Kiruna
Next possible launch date - Tuesday Aug 16th

Payloads up:
none

Payloads coming/which came down:
4A Launched: 22:24 UT Aug. 13th - 05:40 UT Aug. 14th 

News from Van Allen Probes:
Summary
EMFISIS Instrument
EMFISIS has extra burst requests in for the periods near Van Allen conjunctions out through the 20th. Chorus waves were observed by both spacecraft (better conjunction with RSBPA) during the precipitation event observed by BARREL. 
News from MMS: 
MMS team needs to know within 24 hours if you would like them to download data. E-mail Drew Turner or Allison Jaynes if you would like them to collect data in a specific region/time for conjunction studies.

News from THEMIS: 
As an update, the THEMIS team have enabled fast survey captures at
the L-shell of BARREL and the neighboring inner magnetosphere (L> ~3)
for the context of possible conjunctions with this BARREL campaign.
Within these fast survey intervals, thye also trigger particle and wave
bursts to capture high-frequency waves (whistler-mode).

This special data collection scheme is implemented on the three inner
probes for Aug. 10-25 (starting from Aug. 11 for TH-D), based on your
estimated interval of this BARREL campaign.

News from Cluster:
No new news

News from Firebird:
We did reset the firebird spacecraft and are now taking data at a 50ms cadence continuously to cover BARREL so you can probably add that to your next update.

News from AeroCube 6:
AC6 was operating and had a pass over Kiruna after our balloon was terminated. However, they also observed some structure in the observed electrons. 

News from EISCAT:
No new News 

News from ABOVE2:
We will try for a Tuesday evening launch (Aug 16) in order to have the balloon in the air on Aug 17th UTC . Surface weather looks good, there is a good conjunction with RBSP, and a recurrent coronal hole is likely to be geoeffective. NOAA is calling for a G1 (minor) storm on the 16th, although the exact timing is very uncertain. Teams in Calgary/Seattle/Edmonton are asked to travel to Saskatoon on Monday.

Space Weather  from Spaceweather.comSWPC.noaa.gov , http://relativisticballoons.blogspot.com/2016/08/space-weather-update.html,  and Kyoto (possibly others as well)

Swedish Institute of Space Physics: Kiruna Magnetometer:  http://www.irf.se/Observatory/?link=Magnetometers
quiet during the flight, but then saw two EMIC waves, one from 12 - 14 UT and another from 16 - 18 UT on Aug. 14th after the event had occurred. 

Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory: Finnish Magnetometer Array: http://www.sgo.fi/Data/Pulsation/latestPulsation.php
It looks like there was an EMIC wave between 12 - 15 UT at all stations on Aug. 14th. Kilpisjarvi showed an increase in broad band ULF frequency ranges and then a EMIC wave which started at about 5:00UT. 

Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory: Scandinavian Riometer data http://sgo.fi/Data/Riometer/latestRiometer.php
The data from the 14th looks like there was little precipitation until after 02:00 UT and then it died down after about 03:00UT at the higher latitude riometers. There was structure throughout the rest of the day at all sites as well.  

Again, riometers are not really my thing, but it looks like there were some bursty precipitation just after midnight. 

Kiara Riometer
 the KAIRA array has been running in full-sky imaging
riometry mode (38 MHz) throughout this time period and will continue to do
so for the remainder of the campaign.

As of tomorrow (Sat 13-Aug-2016), it will additionally be running a
high-speed multi-beam, multi-frequency riometry and various other
monitoring diagnostics. This will continue for a week at least.

NOAA GOES Electron Flux:
nominal levels, but looks to be on the rise. 

NOAA GOES Proton Flux:
nominal levels.

ACE Solar wind speed: 
Vsw =  306.4km/s

ACE Solar proton density:
density =  4.2 protons/cm^3

Sunspot number:
61  Sunspot regions 2574, 2575, and 2576 are Earthward facing but do not currently look complex enough to likely produce a CME. 

GOES Flare activity:
no flares during the Aug. 13-14 launch
6-hr max B2 
24 hr max C3 

Kp:
kp =  1 with a 24 hour max of kp = 2

ACE SW magnetic field:
Bz = 3.8 nT North
Btotal =  5.7 nT

Coronal hole news
The next coronal hole is expected to come after Aug. 18th maybe around the 20th. We should be able to get a 10 heads up from Stereo A. Stereo A will also give us an idea about the magnetic field orientation. 

Kyoto AE:
very quiet 

Kyoto Dst:
Very quiet. But right at the time of the precipitation event it looks like there may have been a small pressure pulse that hit the magnetosphere at that time. ACE realtime data was missing during most of the flight.

Jag frågade illustratören att rita en bild åt mig. 
I asked the illustrator to draw me a picture. 

Hej då och god kväll från Kiruna (Good bye and good evening from Kiruna), 

Alexa and the BARREL team.

Sunday, August 14, 2016

BARREL Status Report #10 August 14, 2016

BARREL Status Report #10
August 14, 2016

I’m happy to report that BARREL Flight 4A was a success! The balloon and payload both performed well. The flight was terminated at 0540 UT because it was moving west towards lakes and mountains. It was a short flight, but longer than we expected. Most importantly, we caught the conjunction with RBSP-A that we were targeting, and we saw a precipitation event that lasted almost two hours.  A preliminary look suggests that this was bursty, most likely microburst precipitation. We’ll need to look at the data more carefully, but this looks very promising. The payload is now on the ground at 67.72N, 18.88E, and recovery prospects look good. 

I think the team will be resting for most of the day today. We expect the next launch attempt to be on Tuesday. I will send another update when we get a better look at the surface weather.

Robyn

From Arlo 

We have recovered the payload from flight 4A! There was some light damage to the box and handles, but the payload seems intact upon initial inspection. The flight was about 5 hours at float, and recovery was smooth in an easy to reach, relatively dry area.


Saturday, August 13, 2016

BARREL Status Report #9 August 13, 2016 - First launch

BARREL Status Report #9
August 13, 2016

BARREL Flight 4A was launched from Esrange at 2224 UT on August 13. The payload is currently at about 5 km altitude and will take another ~1.5 hours to reach a float altitude of ~36 km. The flight is predicted to be somewhat short due to the upper level winds so the team held off in order to target the conjunction with Van Allen Probes. The next launch is likely to be Tuesday in order to target another conjunction. 

Robyn

See our twitter feed for some photos from the team on the ground of the launch. 

Here's one from Greg Bowers, a BARREL Grad student from University of California Santa Crux. 


BARREL Status Report #8 August 12, 2016

BARREL Status Report #8
August 12, 2016

The surface weather for Saturday looks promising so we are planning to show for launch at 1800 local. The upper level winds are still a bit westward but the speeds have come down substantially. The flight is likely to be on the shorter side but we think it will be long enough to catch the conjunction with Van Allen Probes early Sunday morning. I’ll send another update tomorrow.




Friday, August 12, 2016

SPEDAS Webinar!

This announcement just came out in the GEM Messenger. I'm re-posting it here as it's incredibly important if you are in the space physics community and use IDL (a programing language that many space physicist use to process, analyze and visualize data).

SPEDAS is a set of programs, functions, and procedures packaged together that are often used by the community. This project got it's start from the THEMIS project, and although I don't know the whole story, someone once told me that they figured we shouldn't keep re-invinting the wheel so why not share the programs often needed to process and display the data. Anyway, this program sharing project from THEMIS has grown and now includes many current missions, including BARREL.

Over the past umpteen years, THEMIS has held workshops at conferences to share how to use their software. This has been great, but always sort of geared for the beginner. I believe these new webinars will be for both beginners as well as starting to dive into the more advanced bits.

Anyway, if you are interested in learning more about SPEDAS, see the advert below.

Dear Space Physics community:

The Space Physics Environment Data Analysis Software (SPEDAS) development team would like to invite you to participate in two Webex presentations we'll be holding later this month.

On Wednesday August 24, at 10am Pacific time, we'll be hosting a tutorial, live demo, and Q & A session on the SPEDAS software package and its capabilities. For more information on SPEDAS please look at: http://spedas.org  and http://spedas.org/wiki

On Wednesday August 31 at 10am Pacific, we'll be hosting another session focusing on using SPEDAS to analyze MMS data. This MMS session will assume some familiarity with SPEDAS, so those who haven't used SPEDAS before might want to consider participating in both sessions. For more information on that software please see: http://spedas.org/wiki/index.php?title=MMS

If there are any particular questions or topics of general interest that you'd like to see covered in either session, please send your suggestions to Jim Lewis, jwl@ssl.berkeley.edu, and we'll try to work them in.

See below for agendas and Webex connection info.

Jim Lewis, Eric Grimes, Vassilis Angelopoulos and the SPEDAS team

==========
SPEDAS Session:  SPEDAS general tutorial and live demo

Webex details:
URL: https://uclaigpp.webex.com/uclaigpp

Time: August 24 @10AM Pacific Daylight Time (scheduled for 2hrs) Meeting name = SPEDAS webinar Password = goSP3D@S Phone to use: 1-888-921-8686 Conference ID/pass = 3107947090 and press # International callers dial: 001-678-259-1049

Tentative agenda:
* SPEDAS overview and general concepts:  Missions supported, local and remote data repositories, load routines, data analysis and manipulation routines, tplot variables, plotting data, GUI capabilities
* Simple examples of using the command line to load data.
* Examples of how to access or modify the underlying data and metadata for tplot variables
* Plotting data with tplot (both line plots and spectrograms); changing tplot options
* Command line data manipulation routines: coordinate transformations, support data, data manipulation, use of the 'calc' routine to operate directly on tplot variables, crib sheets
* How to start the SPEDAS GUI;  how to import and plot existing tplot variables
* Loading data via the SPEDAS GUI: missions with SPEDAS plugins can be loaded via "Load Data" panel, other missions available via generic "Load Data from CDAWeb" panel.
* Plotting in the SPEDAS GUI;  how to change GUI plot options
* Data processing and analysis in the GUI: Data Analysis panel, summary plots, ISEE 3D tool, 'Calculate' panel
* Exporting GUI plots to postscript files for further editing or inclusion in papers.

==========
MMS Plug-ins Session:  Processing MMS data with SPEDAS

Time: August 31, 10am-12pm Pacific Daylight Time
URL: https://uclaigpp.webex.com/uclaigpp
Meeting name = MMS Plug-ins webinar
Password = R3c0nnect!
Phone to use: 1-888-921-8686
Conference ID/pass = 3107947090 and press # International callers dial: 001-678-259-1049

Tentative agenda:
1) Introduction to FPI, HPCA load routines, standard keywords
2) Loading and Plotting the Particle Data
3) Spectra from the Particle Distributions
4) Particle Slices (2D/3D slices)
5) Questions

Thursday, August 11, 2016

BARREL Daily update Aug. 11th 2016

Update Summary

KML files for MMS1 are up on the google earth dropbox folder. Hopefully later today we'll have THEMIS and LOMONSOV up as well. 

Currently it is looking less likely to have a large CME from the current active regions, but things can always change. 

News from Kiruna

Next possible launch date - Saturday evening of Aug. 13th for the early Sunday morning conjunction on Aug. 14th

Payloads up:
none
Payloads coming/which came down:
none
News from MMS: 
MMS team needs to know within 24 hours if you would like them to download data. E-mail Drew Turner or Allison Jaynes if you would like them to collect data in a specific region/time for conjunction studies.

News from THEMIS: 
As an update, the THEMIS team have enabled fast survey captures at
the L-shell of BARREL and the neighboring inner magnetosphere (L> ~3)
for the context of possible conjunctions with this BARREL campaign.
Within these fast survey intervals, thye also trigger particle and wave
bursts to capture high-frequency waves (whistler-mode).

This special data collection scheme is implemented on the three inner
probes for Aug. 10-25 (starting from Aug. 11 for TH-D), based on the
estimated interval of this BARREL campaign.


Space Weather  from Spaceweather.comSWPC.noaa.gov , http://relativisticballoons.blogspot.com/2016/08/space-weather-update.html,  and Kyoto (possibly others as well)

Swedish Institute of Space Physics: Kiruna Magnetometer:  http://www.irf.se/Observatory/?link=Magnetometers
quiet but it looks like this past evening there was a substorm. 

Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory: Finnish Magnetometer Array: http://www.sgo.fi/Data/Pulsation/latestPulsation.php
Some broad band activity on  Aug. 10th. 

Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory: Scandinavian Riometer data http://sgo.fi/Data/Riometer/latestRiometer.php
Just a reminder Riometers are not my area of expertise, but it does look like there may have been precipitation from around Aug. 10th around noon and during the period of the potential substorm. 

NOAA GOES Electron Flux:
We can see the end of the activity from yesterday's event and currently the levels look nominal. 

NOAA GOES Proton Flux:
nominal levels.

ACE Solar wind speed: 
Vsw =  566.4 km/s

ACE Solar proton density:
density =  0.7 protons/cm^3

Sunspot number:
69  and Sunspot AR2571 is rotating off the disk. Sunspot regions 2574, 2575, and 2576 are still rotating around but do not currently look complex enough to likely produce a CME. 

GOES Flare activity:
6-hr max B5 
24 hr max B5

Kp:
kp =   2 with a 24 hour max of kp = 3

ACE SW magnetic field:
Bz = 1.9 nT South
Btotal =  5.0 nT

Coronal hole news
The high speed stream has reached the Earth and the solar wind velocity is expected to stay high until about August 12th according to the WSA-ENLIL models. However we can already see that the velocity is dropping. 

Kyoto AE:
Although the Kiruna magnetometer looked like there was a large period of activity, the realtime AE from Kyoto is very quiet.  

Kyoto Dst:
Very quiet. 


De vanligaste paprikorna är gröna, röda och gula. 
The most common bell peppers are green, red, or yellow. 

Hej då och god kväll från Kiruna (Good bye and good evening from Kiruna), 

Alexa and the BARREL team.

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

BARREL Status Report #7 August 10, 2016

BARREL Status Report #7
August 10, 2016

Today we completed a launch dry run with Esrange personnel. We went through every step as if it was a real launch, except for actually connecting the squibs and taking a balloon out. Overall, it went smoothly. It was really good to work through each step and have a chance to check our procedures and coordination. 

We are still looking at a possible launch on Saturday evening. The upper level winds are starting to look better for the weekend. The surface weather doesn’t look great at this point but there is plenty of time for that to change. We’ll have our next weather briefing on Friday when we will make a final decision on showing Saturday. My next status report will be Friday since I don’t anticipate much news for tomorrow.

Robyn

BARREL Daily Update: Aug. 10th 2016

Update Summary
Not much news. The high speed stream (HSS) has had an oscillating Bz magnetic field component which means that there hasn't been a geomagnetic storm as defined by Dst associated with it. (The more southward Bz the more solar wind energy can enter the magnetosphere and ultimately produce a geomagnetic storm) There have been some strong(ish) substorm activity throughout the last 24 hours. Substorm processes produce aurora at higher latitudinal regions. The HSS appears to be starting it's decline and should completely pass us by the morning of Aug. 12. 

There are three large numbered sunspots which have now rotated onto the Earthward side of the solar disk. They are all beta or alpha class (not very complex) and so currently are unlikely to produce a coronal mass ejection (CME), but they are growing in complexity and not yet Earth-Directed. 


News from Kiruna

Next possible launch date - Evening of Aug. 13th for the early morning conjunction on Aug. 14th


News from Van Allen Probes:
Summary
The lapping event, where the spacecraft are very close together is happening I think today. 

News from MMS: 
MMS team needs to know within 24 hours if you would like them to download data. E-mail Drew Turner or Allison Jaynes if you would like them to collect data in a specific region/time for conjunction studies.

News from THEMIS: 
As an update, the THEMIS team have enabled fast survey captures at
the L-shell of BARREL and the neighboring inner magnetosphere (L> ~3)
for the context of possible conjunctions with this BARREL campaign.
Within these fast survey intervals, thye also trigger particle and wave
bursts to capture high-frequency waves (whistler-mode).

This special data collection scheme is implemented on the three inner
probes for Aug. 10-25 (starting from Aug. 11 for TH-D), based on your
estimated interval of this BARREL campaign.

Space Weather  from Spaceweather.comSWPC.noaa.gov , http://relativisticballoons.blogspot.com/2016/08/space-weather-update.html,  and Kyoto (possibly others as well)

Swedish Institute of Space Physics: Kiruna Magnetometer:  http://www.irf.se/Observatory/?link=Magnetometers
quiet but it looks like this past evening there was a substorm. 

Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory: Finnish Magnetometer Array: http://www.sgo.fi/Data/Pulsation/latestPulsation.php
EMIC waves observed around noon at Kilpisjarvi and IVALO on Aug. 9th. 

Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory: Scandinavian Riometer data http://sgo.fi/Data/Riometer/latestRiometer.php
Just a reminder Riometers are not my area of expertise, but it does look like there may have been precipitation from around Aug. 9th on and off starting at 0300UT and continuing  throughout the afternoon into the midnight hours. 

NOAA GOES Electron Flux:
Some significant activity with today's substorms and a bit before hand as well. 

NOAA GOES Proton Flux:
nominal levels.

ACE Solar wind speed: 
Vsw =  620.5 km/s

ACE Solar proton density:
density =  1.5 protons/cm^3

Sunspot number:
72 and Sunspot AR2571 has a beta-gamma complexity which means that there is at a slightly higher chance for an M-class solar flare. Currently it looks like if we were so lucky for it to produce a CME, it may be Earth directed. There are a few more larger sunspot regions (2574, 2575, and 2576) which are now starting to appear on the disk and may produce Earth directed CMEs in a few days giving a potential arrival time of about 1 week from now. This is all speculative at the moment but stay tuned! 

Flare activity:
6-hr max B4 
24 hr max B5

Kp:
kp =   4 with a 24 hour max of kp = 4

SW magnetic field:
Bz = 0.4 nT South
Btotal =  4.1 nT

Coronal hole news
The high speed stream has reached the Earth and the solar wind velocity is expected to stay high until about August 12th according to the WSA-ENLIL models. Bz has been fluctuating and so no geomagnetic storm has been produced, but there has been some nice substorm activity.

AE:
Possible substorms around 8:45 and 10:00 UT today. It does seems to have been slightly elevated throughout the morning hours though. 

Dst:
Very quiet. 

Grönsaker är en mineral-och vitaminrik källa
Vegetables are a rich source of vitamins and minerals. 

Hej då och god kväll från Kiruna (Good bye and good evening from Kiruna), 

Alexa and the BARREL team.