Diary News Feed

Let's try to record the state of space weather at the beginning of the coming week, and then at the end we'll see how the week ends.

The second stage of a Falcon 9 rocket will crash into the Moon in less than an hour. This event is the result of an anomaly that occurred back on January 15, 2025.

На Земле завершилась магнитная буря. Собственно, фаза бури закончилась ещё 2 дня назад, примерно в то время, примерно в воскресенье, когда и началась, но более суток после этого продолжались остаточные возмущения, которые никак не изменили подвести черту. На данный момент все риски возобновления активности сняты, и можно написать о завершении событий с чистой совестью.

As forecast this morning, the final month of summer wasted no time getting started; less than an hour ago, August’s first geomagnetic storm—and the sixth of the summer—finally began. The plasma ejection reached Earth several hours ago (around 14:30 Moscow time), but the indices have only now risen to the level of a geomagnetic storm.

Today, Sunday, August 2, a medium-sized plasma cloud is expected to reach Earth, likely triggering the first magnetic storm of August. It is a borderline event: the ejection is clearly directed away from the planet (visible as a green dot on the right), yet calculations suggest its edge will graze Earth. While such cases are typically a toss-up, the odds of a hit are significantly higher than those of a miss in this particular instance.

Just as the two-day encounter with the turbulent plasma from a coronal hole was drawing to a close, Earth's magnetosphere decided not to let the forecasters down, turning the geomagnetic index charts red—as well as the auroral activity charts. A magnetic storm began on Earth about two hours ago.

The most powerful solar flare since July 7 (more than two weeks) was recorded about an hour ago, at 9:35 AM Moscow time. The event occurred amid a general increase in solar activity over the past 24 hours. Over the past 24 hours, approximately 20 solar flares have been recorded, compared to an average of 1–2 events per day just three days ago.

Spacecraft operating at the L1 point on the Sun-Earth line have begun detecting a scheduled increase in solar wind speed. Wind density is also rising, and even more sharply. Magnetic storms could begin within the next few hours.

Amidst the unusually low geomagnetic activity this summer, some "entertainment" is expected in two days: another solar coronal hole is approaching Earth, a stream of fast winds from which will reach the planet on July 22.

The video shows a rather spectacular solar event that occurred overnight between Tuesday and Wednesday. The flare took place on the far side of the Sun and was classified as an M5 event (approximately 50% of the intensity of the strongest X-class flares).