About HelioSpace

HelioSpace shows space weather as it happens: the Sun, the solar wind and the Earth's magnetic surroundings in one live 3D scene, built from public scientific data.

What you're looking at

• Measurements, updated every few minutes: the solar wind measured by spacecraft between the Sun and the Earth, solar flares and the image of the Sun from NOAA's GOES satellites, the Kp index, ground magnetometers, electrons in the outer radiation belt, sunspot regions and the aurora forecast. Each reading says how old it is.
• Models, labelled as such: the magnetopause (the outer edge of the Earth's magnetic field), the shape of the radiation belts, and CMEs on their way to the Earth, timed by NOAA's WSA-Enlil model. A CME's shape is an illustration: the model gives its timing, not its shape.
• Gauges compare a reading with years of its own history (mostly since 1995): green is usual, yellow is in the top quarter, red in the top tenth and purple in the top 1 %. Kp uses NOAA's storm scale instead.
• The sky (constellations, planets, the Moon and meteor showers) is placed by calculation for the current time.

Not to scale

• The Sun is drawn 10 times as wide as the Earth; really it's 109 times as wide.
• The distance from the Sun to the Earth is shrunk about 235 times, so both fit on screen.
• L1, where the solar wind spacecraft sit, is really only 1 % of the way from the Earth to the Sun (1.5 million km).
• A CME's trip is drawn on a stretched time scale: on its way to L1, each tenfold drop in the time left covers the same distance, so it spends most of the trip near the Sun. From L1 to the Earth it moves in about real time (45 minutes to an hour for most CMEs).
• Spacecraft are drawn far bigger than they are, at about the same size on screen whatever the distance. STEREO-A is at its real angle round the Earth's orbit (approximately), far ahead of the Earth.
• The far side of the Sun is simulated for looks. Only STEREO-A sees part of it, and its pictures aren't used for that here.

Not an official warning service

HelioSpace is for information and education. For official space weather alerts and warnings, use NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center or your country's space weather service. HelioSpace makes no health claims and doesn't predict earthquakes.

Data and credits

All the data comes from providers whose terms allow this use, and the sources in view are credited on the dashboard. We adapt the data for display (averages, unit conversions, scales, and statistics such as percentiles), so the views are made from the providers' data rather than copies of it. Licence names link to the licence's full text. The full list:

Contact

Questions, corrections or ideas? See the contact page.