NASA Earth Observatory captures Blue Eye of Cyclone Bansi

Tropical Cyclone Bansi was seen from the International Space Station.

Image Credit: NASA's Earth Observatory/NASA JSC/ISS

The Electric Eye of Cyclone Bansi
Though this image may look like they come from a science fiction movie, it is in fact a photograph of tropical cyclone Bansi as seen at night by astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS).

The image was taken when the ISS was east of Madagascar.

Bansi formed in the southwestern Indian Ocean on January 11, 2015. By the time the photo was taken on the following day, Bansi had achieved tropical cyclone strength, with sustained maximum winds over 185 kilometers (115 miles) per hour.

The cyclone would reach category 4 strength before becoming a weak extra-tropical system on January 19.

The dim swirl of the cloud bands covers the ocean surface in this night image. The eye of the cyclone is brilliantly lit by lightning in or near the eye wall.

Image of Cyclone Bansi taken by ESA Astronaut Sam Cristoforetti (@AstroSamantha) on the ISS.

Image shows lightning illuminating the eye-wall of Cyclone Bansi in the Indian Ocean.

Credit: ESA

The low-light settings of the camera used to take the image accentuate the contrast.

The camera also accentuates the yellow-green airglow above the Earth’s limb, an atmospheric phenomenon frequently seen by astronauts.

Stars appear above the airglow layer, and the solar panels of a docked Russian spacecraft jut into the image (upper left).

Astronaut photographs ISS042-E-135015 and ISS042-E-135030 were acquired on January 12, 2015, with a Nikon D4 digital camera using a 28 millimeter lens, and are provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center.

The image was taken by the Expedition 42 crew.They have been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed.

The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet.

Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by William L. Stefanov, NASA-JSC.

NASA MODIS: The Shrinking of the Aral Sea 2001 - 2014

The Aral Sea in 2001

Although irrigation made the desert bloom, it devastated the Aral Sea.

This series of images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite documents the changes.

At the start of the series in 2000, the lake was already a fraction of its 1960 extent (black line).

The Northern Aral Sea (sometimes called the Small Aral Sea) had separated from the Southern (Large) Aral Sea.

The Southern Aral Sea had split into eastern and western lobes that remained tenuously connected at both ends.

The Aral Sea in 2014

Read the full story and view the full series of images taken by MODIS from 2001 to 2014, here.

NASA Earth Observatory: King Fire in California, False-Colour Infrared image

On Sept. 19, 2014, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite captured these images of the King fire in Eldorado National Forest. 

In the false-colour image, burned forest appears red; unaffected forests are green; cleared forest is beige; and smoke is blue. 

As of Sept. 23, the blaze had charred 36,320 hectares (89,571 acres).

Credit: NASA Earth Observatory

Cloud Bands Over the Western Sahara Desert, Mauritania

This photograph of cloud bands over southern Mauritania was taken from the International Space Station with an oblique angle such that the cloud shadows are a prominent part of the view. 

Beneath the clouds, the plateau of dark sedimentary rocks appears as a ragged, near-vertical escarpment (image top right). 

Isolated remnants of the plateau appear as dark mesas (flat-topped hills) across the top and near the center of the image.

The escarpment is about 250 meters high, with a field of orange-colored dunes at the base (image upper right).

Prevailing winds in this part of the Sahara Desert blow from the northeast. (Note that north is to the right.)

The wavy dunes are aligned transverse (roughly right angles) to these winds. The sand that makes the dunes is blown in from a zone immediately upwind (just out of the bottom of the image), where dry river beds and dry lakes provide large quantities of mobile sand.

This pattern is typical in the western Sahara Desert, where plateau surfaces are mostly dune free and dune fields are located in the surrounding lowlands.

Larger rivers deposit sandy sediment on the few occasions when they flow, sometimes only once in decades.

The image was taken by the ISS Expedition 38 crew and it has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, with lens artifacts removed.

Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory

NASA, USGS release first Landsat 8 images

The area around Boulder, Colo., is shown here in a true colour image collected by the OLI aboard LDCM on March 18, 2013. 

The OLI and an important component of TIRS, its cryocooler, were built at the Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation facility in Boulder. 

Credit: USGS/NASA Earth Observatory

NASA and the Department of the Interior's U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) have released the first images from the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) satellite, which was launched Feb. 11.

The natural-colour images show the intersection of the United States Great Plains and the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming and Colorado.

In the images, green coniferous forests in the mountains stretch down to the brown plains with Denver and other cities strung south to north.

"We are very excited about this first collection of simultaneous imagery," said Jim Irons, LDCM project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

"These images confirm we have two healthy, functioning sensors that survived the rigors of launch and insertion into Earth orbit."

Since launch, LDCM has been going through on-orbit testing.

The mission operations team has completed its review of all major spacecraft and instrument subsystems, and performed multiple spacecraft attitude maneuvers to verify the ability to accurately point the instruments.

The two LDCM sensors collect data simultaneously over the same ground path. OLI collects light reflected off the surface of Earth in nine different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, including bands of visible light and near-infrared and short-wave-infrared bands, which are beyond human vision.

TIRS collects data at two longer wavelength thermal infrared bands that measure heat emitted from the surface.

By looking at different band combinations, scientists can distinguish features on the land surface.

These features include forests and how they respond to natural and human-caused disturbances, and the health of agricultural crops and how much water they use.

Data from LDCM will extend a continuous, 40-year-long data record of Earth's surface from previous Landsat satellites, an unmatched, impartial perspective that allows scientists to study how landscapes all across the world change through time.

The natural-colour images were processed by the EROS Data Center north of Sioux Falls.

"These first scenes from the new Landsat satellite continue the remarkable output from the Landsat program with better, more useful imagery and information," said Matthew C. Larsen, associate director for climate and land use change at the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Va.

"We are gratified that this productive partnership between USGS and NASA has maintained the continuity and utility of this essential satellite tool, providing the foundation for land and water management around the globe."

As planned, LDCM currently is flying in an orbit slightly lower than its operational orbit of 438 miles (705 kilometers) above Earth's surface.

As the spacecraft's thrusters raise its orbit, the NASA-USGS team will take the opportunity to collect imagery while LDCM is flying under Landsat 7, also operating in orbit.

Measurements collected simultaneously from both satellites will allow the team to cross-calibrate the LDCM sensors with Landsat 7's Enhanced Thematic Mapper-Plus instrument.

"So far, our checkout activities have gone extremely well," said Ken Schwer, LDCM project manager at Goddard.

"The mission operations team has done a tremendous job getting us to the point of imaging Earth." During the next few weeks, this team will calibrate the instruments and verify they meet performance specifications.

After its checkout and commissioning phase is complete, LDCM will begin its normal operations in May. At that time, NASA will hand over control of the satellite to the USGS, which will operate it throughout its planned five-year mission life.

The satellite will be renamed Landsat 8. USGS will process data from OLI and TIRS and add it to the Landsat Data Archive at the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science Center, where it will be distributed for free via the Internet.

For more information on these first LDCM images

For more information on the LDCM mission.

Global observatory sees first light

At 1-metre across, the telescopes of Las Cumbres Observatory in Goleta, California, will be small fry but they will soon be stitched into a global network that will provide researchers with around-the-clock coverage of quickly changing objects such as extrasolar planets, asteroids and supernovae.

On 31 March, the first telescope in the network saw first light, at McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, Texas, just 60 hours after it was unloaded from the truck.

Eventually, the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope (LCOGT) network will deploy two or three identical 1-metre telescopes, each costing about US$1 million, at observatories in Hawaii, Chile, South Africa, Australia and the Canary Islands. LCOGT also has two 2-metre robotic Faulkes telescopes in Australia and Hawaii.

The philosophy behind the telescopes' design is “don’t be cute, don’t be fancy", says LCOGT scientific director Tim Brown. "Make something you know will work and make a lot of them. Put them out in the field and let them do their thing.”

LCOGT was founded by the computing pioneer Wayne Rosing, a veteran of companies including Apple and Google.

Rosing was also an amateur astronomer, and would help other amateurs to customize their hardware and software. Eventually, he decided he wanted to make a more serious contribution to astronomy.

Rosing cashed in his stake in Google, and gave tens of millions of dollars to the LCOGT project. “I was employee number 6, back in 2006,” says Brown. “We’ve expanded to 60 these days.”

Remote control
The LCOGT team wanted to design a telescope that astronomers would never have to visit. The telescope mount is compact, making it easier to drive with robust mechanical systems.

Every telescope is made from the same components and none of them need to be cooled with liquid nitrogen, which would have required occasional replenishing.

Brown hopes that astronomers will be able to control the network remotely, with one telescope handing over to the next so that the object under study is always in view.

Even though it uses small telescopes, this sort of work can have a big pay-offs. Astronomy has shifted towards broad, shallow surveys of the sky that are aimed at detecting unusual events.

After it is completed early next decade, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), for example, will take a snapshot of the entire southern sky every three days.

The LCOGT network is being designed to provide continuous coverage of some of the objects that the LSST reveals.

Brown says that the LCOGT has three priorities: tracking the motion of candidate exoplanets found by NASA's Kepler space telescope; measuring the decay of light from supernovae to help reduce uncertainties in the estimates of dark energy; and pinpointing the trajectories of near-Earth asteroids.

Mike Montgomery, an astronomer at the University of Texas at Austin and the scientific director for the Whole Earth Telescope (WET), welcomes the LCOGT.

The WET, an ad hoc global network of about 25 telescopes, has since 1986 been pursuing one or two annual campaigns involving several weeks of observations.

He says that every year he has to come up with a science proposal so that collaborators can apply for time on the small telescopes in the WET network.

Sometimes, there are gaps in coverage. “It’s a headache,” says Montgomery. “Every telescope in the world has a different deadline and a different proposal format.”

Montgomery says that, as a one-stop shop for global observations, the LCOGT will be less bureaucratic.

Because they own the telescopes outright, LCOGT will be able to pursue year-round campaigns on many more objects. “It’s the difference between renting and owning,” Montgomery says.

China and India Invest in World's Biggest Telescope

China and India have signed up to take part in the construction of the world’s largest telescope, which will be able to find objects up to 13 billion light years away.

The Thirty Metre Telescope, or TMT, will have a 30 metre-wide optical lens and is over nine times bigger than anything being used today.

It will be built on the Big Island of Hawaii. Its isolated position on top of a volcano makes it ideal for astronomical observations.

The two countries have agreed to pay a share of the $1 billion cost of the telescope, which is to be built at the summit of Mauna Kea volcano and is expected to be completed in 2018. Japan is also a partner in the project.

“This will represent a quantum leap for the Chinese community,” said Shude Mao, professor of astrophysics at the National Astronomical Observatories of China in Beijing.

Mao said the project represented an opportunity for Chinese scientists to increase the scale of their ambitions as they study the origin of planets, black holes and dark matter.

TMT is unlikely to be the largest telescope for long, however, as the European Extremely Large Telescope will surpass it in size and power after it is constructed in Chile's Atacama Desert.

ESA Herschel Observatory: The Case of the Warped Galactic Ring

In a strange twist of science, astronomers using the Herschel Space Observatory have discovered that a suspected ring at the center of our galaxy is warped for reasons they cannot explain.

This image from Herschel, an infrared European Space Agency-led mission with important NASA contributions, reveals the ring with greater clarity than ever before.

It can be seen as the yellow loop that appears to have two lobes (see annotated version). In fact, the ring, which is a collection of very dense and cold gas and dust, is twisted so that part of it rises above and below the plane of our Milky Way galaxy.

Previous observations had revealed portions of the ring. Herschel sees long-wavelength infrared light, which can penetrate through the murky region at the center of our galaxy, allowing Herschel to get a more complete view.

Astronomers aren't sure how rings like this form in galaxies but some theories suggest they arise out of gravitational disturbances with neighboring galaxies. New stars are thought to be forming in the dense gas making up the ring.

The ring stretches across more than 600 light-years of space, and is about 15 Kelvin (minus 433 degrees Fahrenheit). The warmest material in this picture is blue, and the coldest is red.

The image was taken using two of Herschel's instruments -- the photodetector array camera and spectrometer (70-micron-light is coded blue; 160-micron light is coded green) and the spectral and photometric imaging receiver (350-micron light is red).

Image credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech

Gemini Observatory: Most distant Quasar

Artist's conception of how the quasar would appear close up. 

The very hot extremely luminous quasar at the center of the image is very bright at ultraviolet wavelengths, and light from the quasar ionizes the surrounding gas, producing the red color that is characteristic of ionized hydrogen.

Faint compact galaxies that have just been born appear in the background. 

The galaxies' hot stars also ionize their surroundings, but only in the immediate vicinity as they are far less luminous than the quasar which can ionize over a much larger volume. Image Credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA by Lynette Cook

Read more at Gemini Observatory

An international team of astronomers announced today the discovery of the most distant known supermassive black hole, seen as a luminous quasar caused by gas falling into the black hole.

The discovery came to light using data from an ongoing infrared sky survey being conducted at the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) and critical follow-up confirmation observations with the Gemini North telescope, both on Mauna Kea in Hawai'i. The results are presented in the June 30, 2011 issue of the Journal Nature.

The light from the quasar started its journey toward us when the universe was only 6% of its present age, a mere 770 million years after the Big Bang, at a redshift of about 7.1. "This gives astronomers a headache," says lead author Daniel Mortlock, from Imperial College London.

"It's difficult to understand how a black hole a billion times more massive than the Sun can have grown so early in the history of the universe. It's like rolling a snowball down the hill and suddenly you find that it's 20 feet across!"

However, as well as being a headache, the new quasar is a great opportunity, because it allows scientists to measure the conditions in the gas that the quasar's light passes through on its way to us. "What is particularly important about this source is how bright it is," says Mortlock.

"It's hundreds of times brighter than anything else yet discovered at such a great distance. This means that we can use it to tell us for the first time what conditions were like in the early universe."

NASA Earth Observatory Image: V olcano Kilauea Hawaii

This NASA Earth Observatory image shows volcanic activity at Kilauea on Hawaii, one of the world's most active volcanoes.

An eruption opened a new fissure, and sparked a forest fire.

NASA Earth Observatory: Klyuchevskaya Volcano eruption

After a respite of less than a month, Klyuchevskaya Volcano resumed erupting in late November 2010.

The Global Volcanism Program reported several ash plumes that rose up to 7.9 kilometers (26,000 feet) above sea level from November 25–29.

According to the Kamchatka Volcanic Eruption Response Team (KVERT) seismicity was “slightly above background levels” on November 26th and 27th, and they reported observations of strombolian activity on December 1st and 2nd.

A plume of ash, steam, and other volcanic gases streamed from Klyuchevskaya on December 4, 2010, visible in this natural-color image acquired by the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) aboard the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite.

In the large image, a much smaller plume is visible above neighboring Bezymianny Volcano.

NASA SOFIA Stratospheric Observatory

SOFIA, NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, is ready to take off into the heavens for its first science flight this week.

Two astronomy professors, Mark Morris of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), and Paul Harvey of the University of Colorado at Boulder will use the Faint Object InfraRed Camera for the SOFIA Telescope (FORCAST), a mid-spectrum infrared camera developed by Terry Herter of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. to learn more about star formation from the airborne observatory.

"My primary target is the Orion nebula, which is a star formation factory," Morris said. "It's close and offers the best views of stars forming right before our very eyes."

Morris hopes to better understand the complexities of the star formation process by viewing the infrared energy emitted by warm dust in the interstellar clouds that are forming the stars. The dust is heated by the luminous, newborn stars.

"Nature doesn't form stars in isolation," he said. "It forms them in clusters, out of natal clouds that collapse under their own gravity.

If you observe carefully, you start to get a clearer picture of how all the new stars are interacting with each other and with their environment."

Harvey's immediate goal is to use the unique combination of high image IR resolution available with SOFIA and FORCAST to study the distribution of dust and gas around Sharpless 140, a young, forming star cluster. Sharpless 140 lies almost 3,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cepheus.

"Observing the birth of stars in our own galaxy is critical, because planetary systems form at the same time that a central star is formed," Harvey said. "Some of the most luminous galaxies in the universe appear to be powered by extreme bursts of star formation."

NASA Earth Observatory MODIS image: Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

The oil slick, which resulted from the accident at the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico, lingered near the Mississippi Delta on May 1, 2010.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image the same day.

The oil slick appears as a tangle of dull gray on the ocean surface, made visible to the satellite sensor by the Sun’s reflection on the ocean surface. Most of the oil slick occurs southeast of the Mississippi Delta.

An April 20 explosion at the rig led to a leak of crude oil at the sea floor, roughly 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) below the ocean surface, where intense pressure impedes most mitigation efforts.

The New York Times reported that bad weather further hampered cleanup efforts as Gulf Coast communities braced for arrival of the oil along the shore. As much as 210,000 gallons (790,000 liters) of crude oil a day were leaking into the Gulf at the beginning of May, and that amount might increase.

NASA Earth Observatory: Llullaillaco Volcano, Argentina-Chile Border

The summit of South America’s Llullaillaco Volcano has an elevation of 6,739 meters (22,110 feet) above sea level, making it the highest historically active volcano in the world.

The current stratovolcano—a cone-shaped volcano built from successive layers of thick lava flows and eruption products like ash and rock fragments—is built on top of an older stratovolcano. The last explosive eruption of the volcano, based on historical records, occurred in 1877.

This detailed astronaut photograph of Llullaillaco illustrates an interesting volcanic feature known as a coulée (image top right). Coulées are formed from highly viscous, thick lavas that flow onto a steep surface.

As they flow slowly downwards, the top of the flow cools and forms a series of parallel ridges oriented at 90 degrees to the direction of flow (somewhat similar in appearance to the pleats of an accordion). The sides of the flow can also cool faster than the center, leading to the formation of wall-like structures known as flow levees (image center).

Llullaillaco is also a well-known archaeological site; the mummified remains of three Inca children, ritually sacrificed 500 years ago, were discovered on the summit in 1999.

NASA Earth Observatory image: Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull Volcano, Iceland

Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull Volcano burst into life for the first time in 190 years on March 20, 2010.

A 500-meter- (2,000-foot) long fissure opened in the Fimmvörduháls pass to the west of the ice-covered summit of Eyjafjallajökull.

Lava fountains erupted fluid magma, which quickly built several hills of bubble-filled lava rocks (scoria) along the vent. A lava flow spread northeast, spilling into Hrunagil Gully.

This natural-colour satellite image shows lava fountains, lava flows, a volcanic plume, and steam from vapourised snow. The image was acquired on March 24, 2010, by the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) aboard NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite.

The lava fountains are orange-red, barely visible at the 10-meter (33-foot) resolution of the satellite.

The scoria cones surrounding the fissure are black, as is the lava flow extending to the northeast. White volcanic gases escape from the vent and erupting lava, while a steam plume rises where the hot lava meets snow. (The bright green colour along the edge of the lava flow is an artifact of the sensor.)



Click on the image above to see the full size version.

The eruption of Eyjafjallajökull was presaged by a series of earthquakes starting in early March. Over time, the earthquakes rose towards the surface, and land near the volcano rose at least 40 millimeters (2 inches)—both indications that magma was moving underneath the volcano. The eruption may continue for several more months.

Previous eruptions in the area have caused flooding due to the melting of glacial ice (a Jökulhlaup), but the current eruption is in an area covered by winter snow, not permanent ice.

Although some past eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull were followed by larger, explosive eruptions at nearby Katla Volcano, there is currently no sign of activity at Katla.