Our colleague and NASA video producer, Jefferson Beck, offered his own take on the gaping crack in the Pine Island Glacier. He had the privilege of flying over that rift last fall, so he included some film footage from the flights. Jefferson has been to both Antarctica and Greenland with the IceBridge mission, and his crew has […]
For those of you who played geographical detective with the MISR image quiz, here are this month’s clues and answers: 1) Within this country lies a picturesque desert, located at the bottom right of the image. This desert was home to a group of enigmatic ancient people who were known for their skill and resourcefulness. […]
By Lora Koenig I am feeling a little sad as I write this post. I always do when writing the last post of a research season. Being able to share my science is one of my favorite parts of my job. I assume some of you looked at our blog’s photos and thought “they’re crazy,” […]
There was a bright fireball visible over north Georgia, eastern Tennessee, and South Carolina at 7:02:36 PM EST last night. All 4 NASA meteor cameras in the SouthEast picked it up 48 miles above the town of Rossville, just south of Chattanooga, moving at 9 miles per second (32,400 mph) slightly north of east. The …
By Randy Skinner The wind began to blow at approximately 1:00AM on December 20. In Antarctica the wind blows most of the time, as there is nothing to slow it down and air is continually shifting from location to location due to density. But this was different: The force of the wind was strong enough […]
Much of the ice that blankets Antarctica is tied up in glaciers that slide slowly toward the sea. Fed by these glaciers, ice shelves form along the Antarctic coast, floating as thick, frozen plates on the sea surface. Every so often, these ice shelves calve large icebergs. In March 2000, a colossal iceberg calved off […]
By Ludovic Brucker The only wildlife we saw during our three-week traverse was three snow petrels and one Antarctic petrel. I still haven’t decided if they were sort of a Christmas gift, or the announcement of a storm! The birds visited us when we were at camp 5,430 km (265 mi) inland. I was surprised […]
By Ludovic Brucker Once the traverse was over and we had drilled nine snow cores (with a combined length of 156 meters, or 512 ft), the next step was flying to each of our drilling sites and bringing the cores to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) station to store them before they are shipped […]
Credit: NASA/MSFC/Meteoroid Environment Office/Rhiannon Blaauw Asteroid 433 Eros made a close approach to Earth the morning of January 31st coming within 0.17 AU (15 million miles) of our planet. In this set of images taken that morning, the bright moving dot near the center of the field is the 21 mile long Eros. Somewhere on …
A meteor streaks across the skies above Huntsville, Ala. (NASA) The night sky is constantly changing. The Earth rotates and revolves about the sun, creating a backdrop of stars that is always in motion. The moon grows large in the sky, and then smaller again, in a seemingly endless cycle. Now and then, brilliant streaks …
