It’s Earth Science Week. What are you doing to celebrate? Our colleagues within NASA and at other institutions have organized a series of educational and outreach activities this week that showcase our science and the people behind it. Some highlights include: + A webcast with NASA’s chief scientist, Waleed Abdalati, from 1-2 p.m. Eastern Time […]
Sunset at the ALaMO
A new color all-sky camera has opened its eyes at the ALaMO, or Automated Lunar and Meteor Observatory, at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Watch its inaugural video below, showing sunset fade into evening at the Marshall Center on Oct. 5, 2011. The time-lapse video spans about 2:28 hours, and the Moon is …
Crafting the Blue Marble
One of the best surprises of my life was turning on my brand-new iPhone—before it had even been activated—glancing down at the screen, and seeing an image I had made. Apple chose the NASA Blue Marble for the default welcome screen and wallpaper, and I had no idea beforehand. Here’s how I did it.
A Spectacular Double-Shot
A wide field meteor camera at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center recorded this spectacular meteor breaking up in Earth’s atmosphere on Sept. 30, 2011, 8:37 p.m. EDT. Also visible is a star-like object moving slowly toward the upper middle of the field of view — the upper stage of the Zenit booster that launched the …
How Much Does It Snow In Antarctica?
By Lora Koenig Hello! My name is Lora Koenig and I would like to welcome you to our Satellite Era Accumulation Traverse blog. I know that is a mouthful so we will call it the SEAT blog. So have a SEAT, grab a hot drink, and enjoy the blog. From now until mid-January, my colleagues […]
Odds & Ends: Volcanoes
During every minute of the day, every day, a volcano is erupting somewhere on Earth. Actually, it’s more like a dozen. Or two. Satellites capture much of this activity, and we try to highlight as many eruptions as possible, but for one reason or another (like clouds) some of them fall through the cracks. Here […]
Where are the stars?
Vishnu, an Earth Observatory reader, posed a great question after viewing “The Six-Million Mile View of Earth and Moon“: “I’ve never seen a photo like that. Was the background beyond Earth ‘photoshopped’ to remove background stars, or is that angle so narrow and the background space so coincidentally ’empty’ that no visible stars are there […]
News Roundup: Arctic Sea Ice Minimum, a Climate Marathon, and More
Floods Devastate Pakistan For the second straight year, torrential monsoon-driven rains have swamped portions of Pakistan. The AFP reports that more than 200 people have been killed and thousands have fled their homes. Researchers associated with the MODIS instrument on the Terra satellite recently posted an eye-opening set of images that shows the condition of the swollen Indus […]
Closing the Flight Campaign
Goddard Space Flight Center 12:30 p.m. Charles Gatebe: I’m calling in from my office at Goddard Space Flight Center today. We finished our flights for CAR yesterday, on Monday. I did try to call in my report late in yesterday evening as I was driving home from Wallops. I missed the connection at that time […]
Odds & Ends: Rabaul Volcano Erupts (in 1999)
Once upon a time Landsat images were expensive (Landsat 7 data was $600 per scene, and the earlier satellites were even pricier) and difficult to find. Now the data—which dates to 1972—is free, and reasonably easy (or at least not painfully difficult) to browse and download from the Global Visualization Viewer, or even the Google […]