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Archive for December, 2009

This astronaut photograph shows the Calabria region of southern Italy–the toe of Italy’s “boot”–outlined by the Ionian and Tyrrhenian Seas to the southeast and northwest, respectively. The water appears almost mirror-like due to sunglint. This phenomenon is caused by sunlight reflecting off the water surface directly back towards the observer aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The ISS was located over northwestern Romania, to the northeast of Calabria, when this image was taken. The Calabrian Peninsula appears shortened and distorted due to the extreme sideways viewing angle from the ISS. Such a perspective is termed oblique, as opposed to a nadir view, in which the astronaut is looking directly downwards towards the Earth’s surface from the ISS. This highly oblique view also highlights two distinct cloud patterns over the Calabrian interior. Patchy, highly textured cumulus clouds are present at lower altitudes, while grey altostratus clouds are stretched out by prevailing winds at higher altitudes. The Strait of Messina, just visible at image upper right, marks the boundary between the coastline of Italy and the island of Sicily. Image Credit: NASA

Wisconsin Rep. Mary Williams will attend a discussion Jan. 6, 2010, among astronauts orbiting 220 miles above Earth and students from two Wisconsin schools.

Saturn, stately and resplendent in this natural color view, dwarfs its icy moon Rhea. Rhea (949 miles in diameter) orbits beyond the rings on the right of the image. The moon Tethys is not shown here, but its shadow is visible on the planet on the left of the image. This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Nov. 4, 2009, at a distance of approximately 808,000 miles from Saturn. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

NASA has selected three proposals as candidates for the agency’s next space venture to another celestial body in our solar system.

Like a whirl of shiny flakes sparkling in a snow globe, Hubble caught this glimpse of many hundreds of thousands of stars moving about in the globular cluster M13, one of the brightest and best-known globular clusters in the northern sky. This glittering metropolis of stars is easily found in the winter sky in the constellation Hercules and can even be glimpsed with the unaided eye under dark skies. M13 is home to over 100,000 stars and located at a distance of 25,000 light-years. These stars are packed so closely together in a ball, approximately 150 light-years across, that they will spend their entire lives whirling around in the cluster. Near the core of this cluster, the density of stars is about a hundred times greater than the density in the neighborhood of our sun. These stars are so crowded that they can, at times, slam into each other and even form a new star, called a “blue straggler.” The brightest reddish stars in the cluster are ancient red giants. These aging stars have expanded to many times their original diameters and cooled. The blue-white stars are the hottest in the cluster. Globular clusters can be found spread largely in a vast halo around our galaxy. M13 is one of nearly 150 known globular clusters surrounding our Milky Way galaxy. Globular clusters have some of the oldest stars in the universe. They likely formed before the disk of our Milky Way, so they are older than nearly all other stars in our galaxy. Studying globular clusters therefore tells us about the history of our galaxy. This image is a composite of archival Hubble data taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Acknowledgment: C. Bailyn (Yale University), W. Lewin (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), A. Sarajedini (University of Florida), and W. van Altena (Yale University)

Wishing all the happiest of holidays, members of the Cassini-Huygens team offer their views of Saturn and its moons as gifts to the universe. Cassini-Huygens, a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency, is a mission that is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA. The Cassini orbiter (pictured at the bottom of this image) and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. Image Credit: NASA/JPL

Tens of thousands of people living within the danger zone of Mayon Volcano in the Philippines were forced to evacuate to emergency shelters in mid-December 2009 as small earthquakes, incandescent lava at the summit and minor ash falls suggested a major eruption was on the way. On the evening of Dec. 14, the local volcano observatory raised the alert level to Level 3, which means “magma is close to the crater and hazardous explosive eruption is imminent.” This natural-color image of Mayon was captured on Dec. 15, 2009, by the Advanced Land Imager on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite. A small plume of ash and steam is blowing west from the summit. Dark-colored lava or debris flows from previous eruptions streak the flanks of the mountain. A ravine on the southeast slope is occupied by a particularly prominent lava or debris flow. The Phillipine Star said on Dec. 22 that “ashfall blanketed at least three towns in Albay, raising new health fears for thousands already bracing for an eruption that could come at any time … Health officials warned the tiny particles could cause respiratory problems or skin diseases, and could affect the thousands of people crammed into evacuation centers. Also on Dec. 22, CNN reported that “tens of thousands of people have already fled their homes. More than 9,000 families — a total of 44,394 people — are being housed in evacuation camps after authorities raised the alert status of the country’s most active volcano” as “fountains of red-hot lava shot up from the intensifying Mayon volcano.” Image Credit: NASA/Jesse Allen

Some U.S. forces in Iraq will get the chance during the holidays to talk with two NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station who also are far away from their families and friends.

NASA flies three large, multi-sensor satellites that monitor Earth?s land, atmosphere, oceans and energy balance. Because the instruments on each satellite take measurements at the same time from the same vantage point, scientists are able to compare observations and tease out connections between different parts of the Earth system. The first of the three satellites, Terra, launched ten years ago on Dec. 18, 1999. In the decade since Terra launched, scientists have gained insight into the intricate connections that shape our planet’s climate. The relationship between snow, clouds, and sunlight is a good example. In November, the chill and snow of a Northern Hemisphere winter is on the horizon. Snow covers the far north and high elevations, as shown in the map of percent snow cover in November 2009. White areas show where snow covers the ground completely, while blue points to areas with partial snow cover. At the peak of the northern winter, more than 40 percent of the Earth?s land will be covered in snow. In addition to being an important, life-sustaining source of water, the snow also reflects sunlight, limiting the amount of heat the Earth absorbs from the sun. Image Credit: NASA