Rosetta SkyFields
Translating the living Earth–Moon–Sun system.
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Snapshot assembled 04:35:08 UTC
Today
the whole system at a glance, and the day's story
The Field Envelope
▸What am I looking at?
The centerpiece schematic: Sun, wind streamlines, bow shock, magnetopause, Earth's field and the Moon's position — every shape driven by live data, not decoration.
- · The magnetopause bubble compresses as ram pressure rises; streamline pace follows the driving index.
- · Field-line tint follows Bz: teal shielded, red coupling.
- · The tail glows when it is loaded — the battery visible.
Fed by: Live wind conditions + the derived boundary physics. Feeds: A visual index into every detailed panel below it.
Rosetta Note
The Sun is eruptive: 7 numbered regions carrying 33 spots (Wolf number ~93, this catalogue), with delta-class complexity at the most complex. 3 regions are rotating away toward the western limb. Releasing in X-rays: 3 M-class, 26 C-class in the last 24 hours (strongest this week: M3.5). Current wind is most consistent with coronal-hole high-speed stream (high confidence); continued fast wind with intermittent Bz-driven coupling as the stream persists. Bz is oscillating (6.9/h zero crossings) in a 711 km/s wind — the valve is swinging open and shut, pumping the magnetosphere intermittently. Kp stepped up sharply during elevated driving — consistent with tail energy release and particle injection (inferred from Kp; no electrojet index available). Earth's field is geomagnetically quiet (Kp 3). The auroral oval is high, its equatorward edge near 51°N — the coupling made visible. The stored population is draining back down. The water engine is loading: sustained rainfall is filling receiving basins faster than they drain. The Moon is a Waning Crescent (1% illuminated). Moon upstream in the direct solar wind, near the Sun–Earth line; its wake trails generally Earthward. Lunar Tail Transit #004 is complete in the model. The dossier is preserved and awaiting delayed ARTEMIS spacecraft validation — the original predictions cannot be rewritten by later data. The next modeled sheath entry is T−13d 21h away (11/22); the next event opens its baseline capture 72 hours before it. Today reads as an active comparison state — a useful elevated reference.
These systems are currently talking.
Rule-based reading generated deterministically from the current metrics. Describes observable field relationships only — no biological or predictive claims.
▸What am I looking at?
The Rosetta Note: the whole system's state as one narrative paragraph, assembled from the exact objects the panels render — it cannot contradict them.
- · Reads top-down like the chain: Sun → wind → valve → response → memory → Moon.
- · The closing line is the same unified status as the Hero pill.
Fed by: Every canonical state on the dashboard. Feeds: The plain-language record of the moment.
The Source
what the Sun is sending — surface activity and eruptions in flight
The Sun Today
The Sun is eruptive: 7 numbered regions carrying 33 spots (Wolf number ~93, this catalogue), with delta-class complexity at the most complex. 3 regions are rotating away toward the western limb. Releasing in X-rays: 3 M-class, 26 C-class in the last 24 hours (strongest this week: M3.5).
▸Solar character journal · 30 days Observed
Derived on request from the SWPC region catalogue (30 days) and GOES flare list (7 days) — nothing stored, everything recomputable.
▸Teach me the Sun
Bundles of magnetic field generated deep inside the Sun buoyantly rise and punch through the surface, making a pair of opposite-polarity footpoints — an active region. Simple bipolar regions (β) are tame; when opposite polarities crowd inside one spot group (βγ, and especially δ), the field is stressed and flares become far more likely.
Lessons are ordered by what the sky is doing right now.
▸What am I looking at?
The daily portrait of the Sun: how many spot regions it carries, how magnetically tangled they are, what it has released in X-rays, and a month-long journal of its behavior.
- · The summary sentence is the headline — 'quiet', 'restless' or 'eruptive' sets the day's tone.
- · Complexity beats size: a small βγ or δ region outranks a big simple one for flare risk.
- · FACING EARTH regions matter most; 'rotating in' regions are next week's story.
- · An interesting day: M/X flares in the strip, complexity BG or higher, spots doubling in the journal.
Fed by: SWPC region catalogue + GOES X-ray flare list. Feeds: Flares light the ionosphere in 8 minutes; eruptions from these regions become the Journey panel's CMEs.
Solar Disk
▸What am I looking at?
The Sun itself, imaged by NASA's SDO within the last ~15 minutes, with the catalogue's active regions marked at their true positions.
- · Switch layers: Visible shows the spots, Magnetogram their polarity, EUV 193 the corona — dark patches there are coronal holes, the sources of fast wind.
- · East (left) rotates toward Earth-facing; west rotates away.
- · An interesting day: a big dark coronal hole crossing centre, or a bright active region cluster at the meridian.
Fed by: SDO imagery + the same region catalogue as Sun Today. Feeds: What crosses the central meridian faces Earth for the next few days.
The Journey
- · fast (711 km/s), tenuous (1.6 p/cm³), hot wind
- · choppy, Alfvénic-style Bz fluctuations typical of high-speed streams
high-speed streams typically persist 1–3 days and can recur each ~27-day rotation. Likely next phase: continued fast wind with intermittent Bz-driven coupling as the stream persists.
arrival ~11-12T03:51Z ±12h · pending Calculated
arrival ~11-09T16:52Z ±12h · pending Calculated
arrival ~11-07T13:17Z ±12h · pending Calculated
NASA DONKI catalogue. Arrival ≠ storm: geoeffectiveness depends on the magnetic orientation measured only on arrival at L1. Misses are scored only when the whole window sat inside our observed wind history.
Fast solar wind and repeated Bz oscillations are producing intermittent driving. Calculated
Solar eruptions were observed in recent days, but no convincing causal link to current near-Earth conditions has been established. Research Question
▸What am I looking at?
What kind of solar structure is passing Earth right now (with evidence and confidence), which CMEs are en route, and what the data streams say about each other.
- · Attribution is diagnosis: coronal-hole stream, CME cloud, or ordinary wind — with the fingerprints listed.
- · The arrival watch lists each Earth-directed CME with its forecast window; the scoreboard grades those forecasts after the fact.
- · An interesting day: a halo CME pending with an ENLIL window inside 24h.
Fed by: NASA's DONKI catalogue + the L1 wind character. Feeds: A matched arrival becomes a shock in the receiver's propagation trace.
The Gate
the wind at L1 and whether its field lets energy couple in
Solar Wind
▸What is the valve clock telling me?
The valve. Earth's dayside field points north. When the solar wind arrives carrying a southward Bz, the two fields cancel and reconnect — the valve opens and solar-wind energy pours into the magnetosphere. A northward Bz can't reconnect there, so the valve shuts.
Why duration beats magnitude. +4.5 nT is not “4.5 units of shielding”: once Bz turns positive, the southward component that drives coupling collapses toward zero regardless of how positive it gets. A ten-second excursion is a flutter; 10+ minutes is a genuine regime. The clock — not the instantaneous number — is the measurement.
The reservoir. Energy loaded while the valve was open doesn't vanish when it closes. It persists as the ring current and radiation-belt electrons — the intake shuts while the reservoir stays energized — which is why storm effects and elevated 2 MeV electron flux outlive the southward interval that caused them.
Where this is measured. Upstream at L1, ~1.5 million km sunward of Earth (spacecraft: SOLAR1). At the current wind speed of 711 km/s, what the spacecraft sees now reaches Earth's magnetosphere in ~35 minutes — this clock is a short-range forecast, not the field at Earth this second.
The Moon in the same stream. The Moon is out in this same stream right now — the identical Bz washes over it, unshielded. One stream, three bodies: the Sun sets the valve, Earth stores the charge, the Moon samples whichever side of the boundary its orbit has carried it to.
Method: single NOAA RTSW spacecraft (SOLAR1), ±0.5 nT deadband, flutter <3 min absorbed, telemetry gaps >10 min break the clock, 24 h of history observed.
▸Upstream driver detail
Ranges and rates cover the ~24h single-spacecraft window. The E-field is the geoeffective −V×Bs component: zero whenever Bz points north.
▸What am I looking at?
The wind measured upstream at L1 — speed, density, temperature and the interplanetary field — plus the valve clock tracking how long Bz has held its orientation.
- · Bz is the number to watch: southward and holding = the valve is open.
- · The valve clock's duration beats the instantaneous value — a 10-second swing is noise, 15+ minutes is a regime.
- · The colored window bars show how much of each recent hour was spent south (red) vs north (teal).
- · An interesting day: speed 550+, Bz pinned south for an hour, the E-field above 2 mV/m in driver detail.
Fed by: L1 monitors, ~30–60 minutes ahead of Earth. Feeds: Feeds the coupling state, the driving index and everything below them.
Coupling Ledger
The chain of energy transfer through the envelope — each link driven by a measured quantity and a stated rule. Not a causal claim; a transparent reading.
▸What am I looking at?
The Coupling Ledger: the whole energy chain as four links, each with the measured quantity driving it and the rule that scored it.
- · Read it left to right as energy flow: wind → magnetosphere → ionosphere, tail → belt, Moon → tail region.
- · Every strength here is derived from the same canonical states as the detailed panels — by construction, they cannot disagree.
- · An interesting day: three or more links non-weak at once.
Fed by: A summary of every layer's canonical state. Feeds: The Hero status pill is the one-word version of this table.
Earth's Response
what the receiver measures, what the system stores and remembers
Earth Field Receiver
The shield, current skin, and body of Earth responding to the solar driver — traced from L1 to the ground at Newport, Washington.
Energy transfer is occurring — the valve is working and lower layers show first responses — but a strong ring-current storm has not developed.
- · Dst -34 nT — ring current near quiet levels Observed
- · Bz coupling state: Intermittently Coupled Calculated
- · Accumulated driving: intermittent pumping Calculated
- · Newport dB/dt 1.79 nT/min — ground field quiet Observed
Rate of field change drives induced currents — during disturbances this number matters more than field strength. Quiet baseline = this window's own median.
The storm bathtub level: how much energized plasma circles Earth. Storms begin near −50 nT; the deeper it falls, the stronger the ring current.
▸What am I looking at?
Earth as the responding body: the unified Earth state with its evidence, the ring current (Dst), the geosynchronous field (GOES), the global Kp/aurora response, and the ground itself at Newport, Washington.
- · The Earth state card is the verdict — read its evidence lines, and take contradictions (⚡) seriously: they lower confidence on purpose.
- · Ground Pulse's dB/dt is the induction number — the one a grid operator would watch.
- · The synchronized stack is the panel's point: follow a bump left-to-right from Bz down to the ground.
- · An interesting day: Dst diving past −50, Hp impulses, dB/dt going yellow — in that order, minutes apart.
Fed by: The valve, the driving index, and pressure from the wind panels. Feeds: The last physical stop — after this, effects belong to grids, pipelines and aurora watchers.
Loading & Memory
Time-integrated ÷ its long-term average — a dashboard-derived index of an established coupling model, not a universal constant.
Kp stepped up sharply during elevated driving — consistent with tail energy release and particle injection (inferred from Kp; no electrojet index available).
Southward Bz and strong coupling may load the tail; reconnection and substorm activity may later inject particles inward, even after upstream conditions change.
The stored population is draining back down.
Charging risk: low — a satellite deep-charging consideration in orbit, not a ground-level hazard. Current flux is the stored particle state; Bz and coupling describe today's input.
- · sustained fast wind (711 km/s) — classic chorus-activity driver
- · seed electrons rising (6.24× in 6h) — material available for acceleration
- · intermittent Bz-driven pumping — repeated injections favor wave growth
Acceleration conditions inferred from proxies — no direct chorus/ULF wave measurement is publicly available in real time.
▸What am I looking at?
The system's energy ledger: how hard the wind has been driving (accumulated, not instantaneous), what the magnetotail is doing with the energy, what the radiation belt still holds, and whether wave acceleration is favored.
- · Driving bars are cumulative — the 24h bar can stay hot long after the 1h bar cools: that lag IS the memory.
- · 'Recovery with residual stored energy' means: input stopped, consequences continuing.
- · Belt memory answers for past days, not this hour — high flux on a quiet day is normal.
- · An interesting day: sustained loading + tail release signature + seeds rising = a rebuild in progress.
Fed by: The Bz/coupling history and Kp. Feeds: Tail releases inject the seeds the belt accelerates; belt flux sets satellite charging risk.
Terra
- ManamMelanesiaVEI 4 · since 2018
- SemeruSunda arcVEI 4 · since 2019
- SheveluchKamchatka–KurilVEI 4 · since 1999
- DukonoSunda arcVEI 3 · since 1933
- FuegoN/Central AmericaVEI 3 · since 2002
- KanlaonPhilippinesVEI 3 · since 2024
Global eruptions: Smithsonian GVP · U.S. alert levels: USGS.
≈44 lightning flashes per second worldwide ring the Earth–ionosphere cavity, sustaining its resonance near 7.83 Hz.
No reliable open real-time feed exists for global flash rate or live Schumann amplitude. Shown here as physical constants + climatology — not a live measurement.
- M6.1 · 144 km SE of Hasaki, Japan11-06 10:39Z · 29 km · shallowsky at that moment: Moon post-transit (LTT-2026-10-004)
- M6.1 · Fiji region11-05 17:21Z · 535 kmsky at that moment: Moon post-transit (LTT-2026-10-004)
- M5.9 · central Mid-Atlantic Ridge11-07 23:17Z · 10 km · shallowsky at that moment: Moon post-transit (LTT-2026-10-004) · driving 0.8×
- M5.5 · 10 km NW of Hamakita, Japan11-07 16:04Z · 38.1 km · shallowsky at that moment: Moon post-transit (LTT-2026-10-004) · driving 0.2×
- M5.5 · 74 km NE of Hasaki, Japan11-07 11:07Z · 31.7 km · shallowsky at that moment: Moon post-transit (LTT-2026-10-004) · driving 0.5×
Provider event classifications are preserved; magnitude detections are not assumed to be tectonic earthquakes. Sky alignments are temporal observations only — USGS finds no strong overall correlation between broad seismicity and lunar or solar timing (small tidal modulation exists for specific shallow fault classes). Relationship undetermined; recorded, not collapsed into causation.
Terra is this dashboard's ground layer. Its planned link into the chain is the grid-stress induction reading (dB/dt → induced currents) — see notes/grid-stress.md.
▸What am I looking at?
Earth's own independent energy channels — live volcanic activity and the lightning-driven Schumann resonance background. No solar connection implied; this is the planet's baseline hum.
- · Volcanic alerts are real-time; Schumann figures are physical constants and climatology, not a live feed (yet).
- · This panel is deliberately separate: solid-Earth activity is tracked as parallel, not caused.
Fed by: Smithsonian GVP + USGS volcanic alerts. Feeds: The planned grid-stress and Schumann-station layers will join here.
The Moon Probe
the Moon riding through the system — and the spacecraft that check the model
Lunar Transit Observatory
Awaiting spacecraft validation — predictions frozen · next transit T−13d 21h.
Modeled boundary crossings under the live standoff — not spacecraft measurements. The envelope is an ensemble over compressed/expanded boundaries (±12% standoff, ±2 nT Bz). The tail moves and flaps; the Moon can cross a boundary more than once.
The Moon is approaching a magnetotail that has been under sustained moderate coupling. 6-hour driving 1.27× · 24-hour driving 1.14× · 24-hour Kp maximum 2.3 · radiation-belt memory: acceleration underway · tail state: release signature.
Rolling 30-minute captures of the driver, the geomagnetic response, Loading & Memory and lunar geometry — parallel observations, not coupled responses. The record freezes at modeled sheath entry.
The Moon is entering a quiet, weakly driven tail — conditions frozen at crossing.
Entry conditions are write-once — later recovery values never overwrite them.
Bow-shock exit shifted 106 min later: IMF Bz moved from 0.3 to -3.0 nT — boundary flaring changed.
▸What am I looking at?
The observation workflow around each lunar magnetotail passage. Before the Moon reaches Earth's plasma boundaries, SkyFields opens a numbered event (Lunar Tail Transit #001, #002…), captures a 72-hour baseline, predicts every crossing with an uncertainty envelope, preserves each prediction revision, and later attaches delayed ARTEMIS measurements without rewriting the original prediction.
- · The countdown shows the full sequence — sheath entry, tail entry, central passage, tail exit, bow-shock exit — each with its ± envelope; an exact-looking time without uncertainty would be a lie.
- · 'Modeled crossing' means the persistence rules were met (10+ minutes across the boundary), never that a spacecraft confirmed it — that label is reserved.
- · The reservoir card freezes conditions at tail entry; later recovery can't rewrite what the Moon actually flew into.
- · An interesting day: a boundary watch banner up, the boundary contracting under rising pressure, and the entry estimate shifting with its reason logged.
Fed by: Lunar ephemeris + the live Shue-98 boundary system + every canonical state on the dashboard for baseline capture. Feeds: The dossier is the permanent record ARTEMIS validation grades in Phase 3; checkpoints and revisions feed the System Timeline.
Moon State
Geometric estimate from lunar phase — not a direct spacecraft measurement.
Crosses into magnetosheath in ~14.0 days.
Regime from the Moon's geometry vs. a live solar-wind magnetopause (Shue-98) — the plasma environment ARTEMIS/THEMIS measure in situ.
▸What am I looking at?
The Moon's classical state — phase, distance, tides — joined to its modern one: which plasma regime it currently occupies.
- · Phase and regime are the same geometry seen two ways: full moon = deep in the tail's direction.
- · Tidal force tracks distance (perigee/apogee), independent of all space weather.
- · An interesting day: 'Magnetotail crossing' with a next-crossing countdown under a day.
Fed by: Pure orbital mechanics + the live boundary model. Feeds: Sets the Earth–Moon panel's interaction story.
Earth–Moon Interaction
Bz is oscillating (6.9/h zero crossings) in a 711 km/s wind — the valve is swinging open and shut, pumping the magnetosphere intermittently.
The stored population the Moon transits when it crosses the tail — charged by earlier driving, not today's input. Full gauge in Loading & Memory.
No magnetotail boundary crossing within the last 10 days — next regime change in ~14.0 d.
Moon upstream in the direct solar wind, near the Sun–Earth line; its wake trails generally Earthward.
▸What am I looking at?
The Earth–Moon system as one plasma environment: the coupling state, where the Moon sits in it, the boundary-crossing watch, and what the combination means.
- · The geometry dial shows the Moon on its orbit relative to the tail cone — inside it near full moon.
- · The crossing watch opens a 12-hour observation window at each tail entry/exit; anything seen during it is correlation, not causation.
- · An interesting day: the Moon entering the tail while the belt is elevated — transiting a charged reservoir.
Fed by: Lunar orbital geometry + the live magnetopause from wind conditions. Feeds: ARTEMIS checks these predicted crossings against real spacecraft data.
Upstream Alignment Watch
Alignment window open — elongation 13.5° and closing on the Sun–Earth line
The full-moon passage gets the Transit Observatory; this is its new-moon mirror — the Moon crossing the Sun–Earth line upstream, wake toward Earth. Each passage is archived with upstream and Earth-response captures. Whether these passages ever register on Earth-side sensors is a question the archive will answer with data, not assumption.
▸What am I looking at?
The Moon's classical state — phase, distance, tides — joined to its modern one: which plasma regime it currently occupies.
- · Phase and regime are the same geometry seen two ways: full moon = deep in the tail's direction.
- · Tidal force tracks distance (perigee/apogee), independent of all space weather.
- · An interesting day: 'Magnetotail crossing' with a next-crossing countdown under a day.
Fed by: Pure orbital mechanics + the live boundary model. Feeds: Sets the Earth–Moon panel's interaction story.
ARTEMIS in-situ check
The two ARTEMIS probes orbit the Moon and measure the plasma it sits in. We compare their latest available reading with what our geometric model said the Moon's regime was at that same moment — model vs. measurement.
ARTEMIS/THEMIS L2 (NASA/SPDF via HAPI) lags real time by ~2–3 days with gaps — this validates the geometric model against the last spacecraft measurement, it is not a live overlay. The model it checks currently reads: New-Moon Upstream Alignment.
▸What am I looking at?
Reality check: NASA's ARTEMIS probes at the Moon versus this dashboard's geometric model — model vs measurement.
- · The data is 2–3 days old by design; this validates the model, it does not nowcast.
- · 'Agree' means the model put the Moon in the right plasma at the measured moment.
- · A disagreement is interesting — it usually means an unusual wind compressed the boundaries.
Fed by: NASA/SPDF spacecraft archives (HAPI protocol). Feeds: Confidence in every lunar-regime claim elsewhere on the dashboard.
Parallel Physics
the same load-store-release grammar in Earth's water system
Planetary Water Engine
The movement, storage, and release of energy through Earth's water cycle — parallel physics beside the electromagnetic system, never claimed as its effect.
The water engine is loading: sustained rainfall is filling receiving basins faster than they drain.
- · Moisture availability: grid-mean precipitable water 26.9 kg/m², peak 61.9 in the E Tropical Pacific Model Estimate
- · Transport: 17 grid cells carry ≥45 kg/m² of column moisture (strongest: E Tropical Pacific, S Asia / Indian Ocean, North America) Model Estimate
- · Land storage: 6 of 30 sampled basins loaded, 3 near saturation (soil-moisture proxy) Calculated
- · Active release: 0 current flood events, 0 at Orange/Red alert (GDACS) Observed
Transport shifts in hours; watersheds load over days; soil and snow remember for weeks. A release can arrive after the intake that caused it has moved on.
Dashboard-derived indices, scoring v1.0.1 — inputs shown in evidence; not physical constants.
Water vapor is the carrier: condensation converts stored latent heat into cloud, rain and motion. Sampled on a coarse model grid — a summary, not a map.
Basin classes (wild / hybrid / regulated / cascade) are static, literature-based. Wild systems turn surplus water into space; dammed systems into time. Live reservoir storage, remaining flood-control capacity and spillway state have no open global feed — a quiet regulated basin may be safe or merely holding the pulse behind finite storage. "Release underway" cannot distinguish managed from forced.
The receiving landscape has memory: saturated soil converts more of each new rainfall directly into runoff. Soil percentiles are a 0–7 cm model proxy, not deep groundwater.
▸What am I looking at?
The Planetary Water Engine follows water as an energy carrier. Solar heating helps evaporate water from oceans and land; atmospheric circulation transports that vapor; condensation releases latent heat; and soil, snow, rivers, reservoirs, and groundwater temporarily store the result. Floods and landslides are visible release events from a system that may have been loading for hours, days, or weeks.
- · Precipitable water shows how much moisture the atmospheric column carries — the pipe's capacity, not the rain itself.
- · Soil moisture and antecedent rainfall show watershed memory: how much capacity remains to absorb new water.
- · Flood alerts show realized or expected release, not the complete upstream cause.
- · An interesting state: strong transport entering a saturated basin before widespread release begins.
- · This is parallel physics beside the solar system panels — proximity in time is never causation.
Fed by: Open-Meteo model fields (precipitation, column moisture, soil — Model Estimate) and GDACS flood alerts (Observed). Feeds: The System Timeline's water events and the Rosetta Note's hydrologic sentence.
The Record
the day's events across every stream, chained where they connect
System Timeline
▸What am I looking at?
The last 24 hours across every stream as one ribbon: flares, CMEs, shocks, Bz regime changes, particle threshold crossings, geomagnetic responses and lunar boundaries.
- · Only persistent changes make the ribbon — flutter is filtered by design.
- · Chain markers (⛓) group events that plausibly belong to one sequence: solid = a matched forecast, dashed = timing only.
- · 'Coincident' tags cross-stream events within 30 minutes — an observation, never a causal claim.
Fed by: Every feed's event detections. Feeds: The day's story the Rosetta Note narrates.