On the night of July 26, allsky cameras of the NASA fireball network detected three Perseid meteors in the skies above Tennessee and Alabama. The first seen by the cameras this year, these meteors are the “advance guard” of the Perseid meteor shower, which will peak on the night of Aug. 12. A bright Perseid meteor …
NASA has released a new book for visually impaired people to experience the wonders of the moon. Called “Getting a Feel for Lunar Craters,” the 17-page book features Braille and tactile diagrams of the lunar surface, craters and peaks. The book was created and funded by NASA’s Lunar Science Institute, or NLSI, at Moffett Field, …
Arctic Ice Update It’s good fun to follow the progress of our ship full of scientists cruising the Arctic Ocean and scrutinizing the health of marine ecosystems, but what do satellites show is happening to the central part of that ecosystem – the sea ice? The National Snow and Ice Data Center released an update noting that Arctic sea […]
Guest blogger Katie Bethea chimes in from NASA’s Langley Research Center… To call it a “bird’s eye view” is, in this case, not an exaggeration. The bumpy video above was captured by a camera mounted to the belly of a plane that was rising, falling, and pirouetting about 1,000 feet above the roadways and suburbs between […]
Take a break Friday night, step outside and gaze up at the full moon. July 15 is the full moon for this month — perhaps most commonly nicknamed the Buck Moon. Image credit/copyright to Synapped. Used with permission, all rights reserved.View large image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fotomakr/960009806/ According to many Native American traditions, July is normally the month when the …
Satellite sensors provide an unprecedented perspective on our planet. Some zoom in for spectacular detail, while others take the wide view. But while our eyes in the sky give us encyclopedias full of information, they can give us something else: optical illusions. Many of us have an unconscious expectation to see objects illuminated from above. When […]
No Ordinary Sight If you’re driving along Interstate 95 between Washington and Baltimore this July, don’t be alarmed if you see a large aircraft hurtling toward you from above. It’s not a a terrorist attack or a pilot dozing at the stick; it’s just NASA’s P-3B doing air quality research. The 117-foot plane is the workhorse […]
Discovered only a few days ago, the house-sized asteroid 2011 MD whizzed by at only 7,600 miles above Earth’s surface on June 27 at approximately 1:00 p.m. EDT. This approximately 10-yard rock came closer than many communications satellites and will rapidly recede over the next few hours and days. Rob Suggs, operating a Marshall Space Flight …
In the process of researching a feature for the Earth Observatory, I always come across fascinating tidbits that just don’t quite fit into my article. For instance, there’s this great carbon calculator tool from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Early during the development of the recent carbon cycle feature, I heard NASA scientist Peter Griffith speak to […]
Maunder’s Return This sounds like a straight-to-DVD sci-fi title. But the National Solar Observatory announcement last week that the Sun could be entering a grand minimum should probably be filed with cable TV’s “What Would Happen If…” documentaries. The last time the Sun went quiet for a long stretch – dubbed the Maunder Minimum — […]
