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A Prime Seat to a Once-in-a-Lifetime Spectacle

By Guest PostJune 8, 2012Scienceadam block, alan strauss, astrophotographer, black void, digital slr camera, earth, east coast, England, exoplanets, expedition, filaments, Hubble Space Telescope, hydrogen alpha filter, jeremiah horrocks, liverpool, martin hamar, mount lemmon skycenter, much hoole, planet, planet venus, schulman telescope, southern arizona, sun, telescope, transit of venus, ua, venus, venus transit, village

Hosted by world-renowned astrophotographer Adam Block at the UA’s Mount Lemmon SkyCenter, a group of sky and astronomy enthusiasts watched Venus cross the sun from the highest vantage point in Southern Arizona.

On Nov. 24, 1639, in the tiny village of Much Hoole not far from Liverpool, England, a poor farmer’s son and self-taught astronomer affixed a sheet of paper in front of a makeshift telescope pointed at the sun and waited.

Thirty-five minutes before sunset, a dark, round spot appeared right next to the bright disc that was the sun’s face projected on the paper, and made Jeremiah Horrocks, only 20 years old at the time, the first known human to predict, observe and record a transit – the passage of a planet across the sun as seen from Earth.

Almost 373 years later, a group of sky enthusiasts is gathered beneath the dome of one of the University of Arizona’s observatories on Mount Lemmon just north of Tucson, Ariz. (more…)

Clean Energy From CO2?

By Guest PostMay 23, 2012Environmentcarbon dioxide, cpg, crust, cycle, deane morrison, earth, electricity, fossil fuels, geologic formation, geothermal heat, geothermal systems, global warming, green future, heat mining company, hydrofracking, impermeable rock, international space station, jimmy randolph, martin saar, mobility, renewable energy, supercritical, thomas kuehn, underground storage, united states, university of minnesota, villain co2

Global warming villain CO₂ may have a surprisingly green future

The next frontier in the search for renewable energy lies less than two miles from where you are now.

Unless you’re reading this on the International Space Station.

Geothermal heat a mile or two deep in Earth’s crust is a potential source of energy that could be tapped by an unlikely carrier: carbon dioxide (CO₂), the central villain in global warming. That energy, unlike solar and wind, could be easily turned on and off without the intermediate step of being stored in a battery. And it would be constant and reliable. (more…)

UMD Finding May Hold Key to Gaia Theory of Earth as Living Organism

By Guest PostMay 16, 2012Sciencedimethylsulfide emissions, earth, gaia hypothesis, gaia theory, radiation balance, sulfur isotope signatures

Discovery ultimately could lead to better climate understanding and prediction

COLLEGE PARK, Md. Is Earth really a sort of giant living organism as the Gaia hypothesis predicts? A new discovery made at the University of Maryland may provide a key to answering this question. This key of sulfur could allow scientists to unlock heretofore hidden interactions between ocean organisms, atmosphere, and land — interactions that might provide evidence supporting this famous theory. (more…)

Mojave Desert Tests Prepare for NASA Mars Roving

By Guest PostMay 14, 2012Sciencecalifornia, curiosity, dumont dunes, earth, Environment, gale crater, gravity of mars, human mission, mars, mars roving, michael malin, microbial life, mobility system, mojave desert, mount sharp, NASA, safe landing, tests

Team members of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission took a test rover to Dumont Dunes in California’s Mojave Desert this week to improve knowledge of the best way to operate a similar rover, Curiosity, currently flying to Mars for an August landing.

The test rover that they put through paces on various sandy slopes has a full-scale version of Curiosity’s mobility system, but it is otherwise stripped down so that it weighs about the same on Earth as Curiosity will weigh in the lesser gravity of Mars. (more…)

The Flowing Sands of Mars

By Guest PostMay 13, 2012ScienceAntarctica, caltech, craters, digital terrain model, doug mccuistion, dtm, earth, flowing sands, geological processes, gullies, high speed winds, hirise camera, jean philippe avouac, mars, martian equator, martian landscape, martian surface, mro, NASA, nathan bridges, nili patera, red planet, rocks on mars, sand dunes, sarah mattson, valleys

Sand dunes on Mars move not unlike those on Earth, despite a much thinner atmosphere and weaker winds, as revealed by images taken with the UA-led HiRISE camera.

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or MRO, has revealed that movement in sand dune fields on the Red Planet occurs on a surprisingly large scale, about the same as in dune fields on Earth.

This is unexpected because Mars has a much thinner atmosphere than Earth is only about 1 percent as dense, and its high-speed winds are less frequent and weaker than Earth’s.

For years, researchers debated whether or not sand dunes observed on Mars were mostly fossil features related to past climate, rather than currently active. In the past two years, researchers using images from MRO’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, camera have detected and reported sand movement. (more…)

A NASA Weather ‘Eye in the Sky’ Marks 10 Years

By Guest PostMay 7, 2012Environment, Scienceairs, amsu a, atmosphere, atmospheric infrared sounder, bae systems, boston, carbon dioxide, climate change, climate research, earth, energy cycle, eric fetzer, eye, global water, greenhouse gases, hyperspectral sounding, instrument, jet propulsion laboratory, model, monster, moustafa chahine, NASA, sky, tom pagano, water vapor, weather forecasting, weather satellites

For 10 years, it has silently swooped through space in its orbital perch 438 miles (705 kilometers) above Earth, its nearly 2,400 spectral “eyes” peering into Earth’s atmosphere, watching. But there’s nothing alien about NASA’s Atmospheric Infrared Sounder, or AIRS, instrument, a “monster” of weather and climate research that celebrates its 10th birthday in orbit May 4.

AIRS, built by BAE Systems, Boston, under the direction of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., is one of six instruments flying on NASA’s Aqua spacecraft as part of NASA’s Earth Observing System. AIRS, along with its partner microwave instrument, the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU-A), has faithfully measured our planet’s atmospheric temperature, water vapor, clouds and greenhouse gases with unprecedented accuracy and stability. Over the past decade, AIRS and AMSU-A have improved our understanding of Earth’s global water and energy cycles, climate change and trends and how Earth’s climate system is responding to increased greenhouse gases. (more…)

NASA’s Spitzer Finds Galaxy with Split Personality

By Guest PostApril 27, 2012Sciencearchetypal galaxy, centaurus, Chile, constellation virgo, dimitri gadotti, earth, elliptical galaxy, ellipticals, Galaxy, galaxy evolution, globular cluster, NASA, ngc 4594, ruben sanchez janssen, sean carey, sombrero galaxy, spiral disk, spiral milky way, spitzer space telescope, split personality

PASADENA, Calif. — While some galaxies are rotund and others are slender disks like our spiral Milky Way, new observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope show that the Sombrero galaxy is both. The galaxy, which is a round elliptical galaxy with a thin disk embedded inside, is one of the first known to exhibit characteristics of the two different types. The findings will lead to a better understanding of galaxy evolution, a topic still poorly understood.

“The Sombrero is more complex than previously thought,” said Dimitri Gadotti of the European Southern Observatory in Chile and lead author of a new paper on the findings appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. “The only way to understand all we know about this galaxy is to think of it as two galaxies, one inside the other.” (more…)

Cassini Finds Titan Lake is Like a Namibia Mudflat

By Guest PostApril 20, 2012Scienceatmosphere, bonnie buratti, cassini spacecraft, earth, ethane, etosha salt pan, geological feature, groundwater level, hydrocarbon cycle, lake, liquid hydrocarbon, methane, moon, mudflats, NASA, ontario lacus, propane, rainy season, saturated sand, saturn, south polar, thomas cornet, titan

A new study analyzing data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft suggests that the lake, known as Ontario Lacus, behaves most similarly to what we call a salt pan on Earth.

A group led by Thomas Cornet of the Université de Nantes, France, a Cassini associate, found evidence for long-standing channels etched into the lake bed within the southern boundary of the depression. This suggests that Ontario Lacus, previously thought to be completely filled with liquid hydrocarbons, could actually be a depression that drains and refills from below, exposing liquid areas ringed by materials like saturated sand or mudflats. (more…)

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