[RD]

3D Fractals  [:0]


http://0encrypted0.deviantart.com/art/MB3D-0781-hd-409242367

[neilep]

Coronas Around the Moon as Observed from Thessaloniki, Greece



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Photographer: Kallias Ioanndis; Kallias' Web site
Summary Authors: Kallias Ioanndis; Jim Foster

The photo above shows colorful concentric rings, coronas, about the nearly full Moon as observed from Thessaloniki, Greece, on May 12, 2014. These colorful rings result from diffraction of sunlight by randomly spaced water droplets in mid-level clouds. When the droplets are of uniform sizes, multiple rings may be observed, as was the case on this spring evening -- look to the right of the Moon. Note also the pale aureole surrounding the lunar disk.

[neilep]

Methane Ignition, Alaska
Photograph by Mark Thiessen, National Geographic



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Methane is bubbling from lakes all over the warming Arctic. Here ecologist Katey Walter Anthony (at right) ignites a large bubble that was trapped by the fall freeze—then freed by an ice pick.

CREDIT http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/methane-alaska-thiessen/

[neilep]

Butterfly Egg





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Photograph by Martin Oeggerli, National Geographic



Dryas iulia
Perched on the tendril of a Passiflora plant, the egg of the Julia heliconian butterfly may be safe from hungry ants. This species lays its eggs almost exclusively on this plant's twisted vines.

CREDIT: National Geographic

[SciencyGummyWorms]

This is a artist rendering of a black hole ripping a star apart.


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[neilep]

Milky Way over Uluru




Image Credit & Copyright: Babak Tafreshi (TWAN)
Explanation: The central regions of our Milky Way Galaxy rise above Uluru/Ayers Rock in this striking night skyscape. Recorded on July 13, a faint airglow along the horizon shows off central Australia's most recognizable landform in silhouette. Of course the Milky Way's own cosmic dust clouds appear in silhouette too, dark rifts along the galaxy's faint congeries of stars. Above the central bulge, rivers of cosmic dust converge on a bright yellowish supergiant star Antares. Left of Antares, wandering Saturn shines in the night.

[neilep]

Dent De Morcles


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Provided by: GLOBE at Night
Summary authors & editors: Jim Foster

Parts of many of the world's mountain belts contain twisted outcrops of rocks that display beautiful patterns of folding and other geologic distortions. Making sense of these formations has been a challenge to geologists for more than 100 years. The photo above shows an example of the complex processes that often take place during mountain building. It was taken in the Pennine Alps of southwestern Switzerland and shows a portion of a geological formation known as the Dent de Morcles. The Morcles is a classic alpine nappe structure. A nappe is a large plate of rocks moved from its place of origin by faulting or folding - in this case folding is the mechanism. The rocks (mostly limestone) in the recumbent folds of the Dent de Morcles have been turned nearly up side down. These rocks date from the Mesozoic Era (65-245 million years ago).

[neilep]

A Slice Through Time


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The striking contrast between the light buff colored Coconino Sandstone and the muddy red Hermit Shale is cause for this portrait of rock wall along the Bright Angel trail in the Grand Canyon. The easily eroded shale was deposited as mud in flood plains and tidal flats, and owes its red color to iron oxides. Fossilized reptile tracks and plants are found in the shale. The mud flats dried and cracked as they were overrun by advancing sand dunes. The tilted bedding and uniform size and purity of the quartz grains of the Coconino formation indicates deposition as wind-blown sand. Some of that sand can be seen filling a deep crack in the underlying red shale (right center).


Provided by: Martin Ruzek, USRA
Summary authors & editors: Martin Ruzek
credit: http://epod.usra.edu/

[neilep]

Life-Enabling Plumes above Enceladus



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Image Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA


Does Enceladus have underground oceans that could support life? The discovery of jets spewing water vapour and ice was detected by the Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft in 2005. The origin of the water feeding the jets, however, was originally unknown. Since discovery, evidence has been accumulating that Enceladus has a deep underground sea, warmed by tidal flexing. Pictured here, the textured surface of Enceladus is visible in the foreground, while rows of plumes rise from ice fractures in the distance. These jets are made more visible by the Sun angle and the encroaching shadow of night. A recent fly-through has found evidence that a plume -- and so surely the underlying sea -- is rich in molecular hydrogen, a viable food source for microbes that could potentially be living there.

Credit:APOD

[Leck1962]

Great picture of science images, I would like to see more like these.

[neilep]

 Death Valley Dunes and Former Lake Bed



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Photographer: Marli Bryant Miller
Summary Author: Marli Bryant Miller

The Mesquite Flat dune field, part of which is shown above, is the largest and most accessible of five dune fields in Death Valley National Park. Like all dune fields, it requires three conditions to form: 1) a steady supply of sand, which here is supplied by nearby alluvial fans, 2) plenty of wind to move the sand, and 3) a natural windbreak so the wind will actually deposit the sand. Most of the dune fields of Death Valley lie in windbreaks afforded by irregularities in the adjacent mountain front. The fine-grained, mud-cracked deposits in the foreground underlie many of the interdune areas of the dune field. They're sediments of a former lake, which covered the area when the climate was wetter. The mountains in the background, the Grapevine Mountains, were uplifted relative to the valley floor along an active fault zone. They consist mostly of Paleozoic limestone, dolomite, and sandstone. Photo taken on May 2, 2011.

Photo Details: Camera Model: Canon EOS 5D Mark II; Lens: EF17-40mm f/4L USM; Focal Length: 19.0mm; Aperture: f/10.0; Exposure Time: 0.020 s (1/50); ISO equiv: 100; Software: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

CREDIT EPOD

[neilep]

Between the Rings


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Image Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA


 On April 12, as the Sun was blocked by the disk of Saturn the Cassini spacecraft camera looked toward the inner Solar System and the gas giant's backlit rings. At the top of the mosaicked view is the A ring with its broader Encke and narrower Keeler gaps visible. At the bottom is the F ring, bright due to the viewing geometry. The point of light between the rings is Earth, 1.4 billion kilometers in the distance. Look carefully and you can even spot Earth's large moon, a pinprick of light to the planet's left. Today Cassini makes its final close approach to Saturn's own large moon Titan, using Titan's gravity to swing into the spacecraft's Grand Finale, the final set of orbits that will bring Cassini just inside Saturn's rings.

Credit APOD

[neilep]

Three Parts Of the Night Sky


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Photographer: Marcelo Zurita
Summary Authors: Marcelo Zurita; Jim Foster

In this one photo I was able to capture cloud-to-cloud lightning (at bottom), a starry sky above the storm clouds and a dazzling meteor. It was taken from a rural area in Brazil's eastern-most state of Paraiba. My attention was actually on the distant storm on the horizon but as I snapped the shutter a meteor passed through the field of view. The lightning is at an altitude of perhaps 40,000 ft (12,192 m); the meteor is streaking by 70 mi (112 km) or so above the Earth's surface; the brightest star in the frame, Menkar (at upper right center in the constellation of Cetus), lies approximately 250 light years from our solar system.

Photo Details: Camera Model: NIKON D5100; Focal Length: 14.0mm (35mm equivalent: 21mm); Aperture: ƒ/5.0; Exposure Time: 30.000 s; ISO equiv: 800; Software: GIMP 2.8.14.


CREDIT ESPOD

[neilep]

Ice cave in Transylvania yields window into region's past


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Credit: C. Ciubotarescu

Ice cores drilled from a glacier in a cave in Transylvania offer new evidence of how Europe's winter weather and climate patterns fluctuated during the last 10,000 years, known as the Holocene period.

The cores provide insights into how the region's climate has changed over time. The researchers' results, published this week in the journal Scientific Reports, could help reveal how the climate of the North Atlantic region, which includes the U.S., varies on long time scales.

The project, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Romanian Ministry of Education, involved scientists from the University of South Florida (USF), University of Belfast, University of Bremen and Stockholm University, among other institutions.

Researchers from the Emil Racoviță Institute of Speleology in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and USF's School of Geosciences gathered their evidence in the world's most-explored ice cave and oldest cave glacier, hidden deep in the heart of Transylvania in central Romania.

With its towering ice formations and large underground ice deposit, Scărișoara Ice Cave is among the most important scientific sites in Europe.

Scientist Bogdan Onac of USF and his colleague Aurel Perșoiu, working with a team of researchers in Scărișoara Ice Cave, sampled the ancient ice there to reconstruct winter climate conditions during the Holocene period.

Over the last 10,000 years, snow and rain dripped into the depths of Scărișoara, where they froze into thin layers of ice containing chemical evidence of past winter temperature changes.

Until now, scientists lacked long-term reconstructions of winter climate conditions. That knowledge gap hampered a full understanding of past climate dynamics, Onac said.

"Most of the paleoclimate records from this region are plant-based, and track only the warm part of the year -- the growing season," says Candace Major, program director in NSF's Directorate for Geosciences, which funded the research. "That misses half the story. The spectacular ice cave at Scărișoara fills a crucial piece of the puzzle of past climate change in recording what happens during winter."

Reconstructions of Earth's climate record have relied largely on summer conditions, charting fluctuations through vegetation-based samples, such as tree ring width, pollen and organisms that thrive in the warmer growing season.

Absent, however, were important data from winters, Onac said.

Located in the Apuseni Mountains, the region surrounding the Scărișoara Ice Cave receives precipitation from the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea and is an ideal location to study shifts in the courses storms follow across East and Central Europe, the scientists say.

Radiocarbon dating of minute leaf and wood fragments preserved in the cave's ice indicates that its glacier is at least 10,500 years old, making it the oldest cave glacier in the world and one of the oldest glaciers on Earth outside the polar regions.

From samples of the ice, the researchers were able to chart the details of winter conditions growing warmer and wetter over time in Eastern and Central Europe. Temperatures reached a maximum during the mid-Holocene some 7,000 to 5,000 years ago and decreased afterward toward the Little Ice Age, 150 years ago.

A major shift in atmospheric dynamics occurred during the mid-Holocene, when winter storm tracks switched and produced wetter and colder conditions in northwestern Europe, and the expansion of a Mediterranean-type climate toward southeastern Europe.

"Our reconstruction provides one of the very few winter climate reconstructions, filling in numerous gaps in our knowledge of past climate variability," Onac said.

Warming winter temperatures led to rapid environmental changes that allowed the northward expansion of Neolithic farmers toward mainland Europe, and the rapid population of the continent.

"Our data allow us to reconstruct the interplay between Atlantic and Mediterranean sources of moisture," Onac said. "We can also draw conclusions about past atmospheric circulation patterns, with implications for future climate changes. Our research offers a long-term context to better understand these changes."

The results from the study tell scientists how the climate of the North Atlantic region, which includes the U.S., varies on long time scales. The scientists are continuing their cave study, working to extend the record back 13,000 years or more.

CREDIT NSF

[ashley102]

HIDDEN IN THE LEAVES


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Image Credits : Walter Dodds, Kansas State University

The time it takes for a leaf to decompose might be the key to understanding how temperature affects ecosystems, according to ecologists. Using leaf litter data in streams from 1,025 publications, a team of international stream ecologists found average leaf litter decomposition rates are less than half of what the metabolic theory of ecology would predict. The relationships among temperature, leaf decomposition and running water could help ecologists better predict how the carbon cycle will react with future climate adjustments.

[neilep]

Ancient Ogunquit Beach on Mars



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Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, MSSS;
This was once a beach -- on ancient Mars. The featured 360-degree panorama, horizontally compressed, was taken by the robotic Curiosity rover currently exploring the red planet. Named Ogunquit Beach after its terrestrial counterpart, evidence shows that at times long ago the area was underwater, while at other times it was at the edge of an ancient lake. The light peak in the central background is the top of Mount Sharp, the central feature in Gale Crater where Curiosity has been deployed. Curiosity is slowly ascending Mount Sharp. Portions of the dark sands in the foreground have been scooped up for analysis. The light colored bedrock is composed of sediment that likely settled at the bottom of the now-dried lakebed. The featured panorama (interactive version here) was created from over 100 images acquired in late March and seemingly signed by the rover on the lower left. Currently, Curiosity is carefully crossing deep megaripples of dark sands on its way to explore Vera Rubin Ridge.

CREDIT APOD

[neilep]

The Multiwavelength Crab


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Image Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Dubner (IAFE, CONICET-University of Buenos Aires) et al.;
A. Loll et al.; T. Temim et al.; F. Seward et al.; VLA/NRAO/AUI/NSF; Chandra/CXC;
Spitzer/JPL-Caltech; XMM-Newton/ESA; Hubble/STScI


Explanation: The Crab Nebula is cataloged as M1, the first object on Charles Messier's famous list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab is now known to be a supernova remnant, expanding debris from massive star's death explosion, witnessed on planet Earth in 1054 AD. This brave new image offers a 21st century view of the Crab Nebula by presenting image data from across the electromagnetic spectrum as wavelengths of visible light. From space, Chandra (X-ray) XMM-Newton (ultraviolet), Hubble (visible), and Spitzer (infrared), data are in purple, blue, green, and yellow hues. From the ground, Very Large Array radio wavelength data is in shown in red. One of the most exotic objects known to modern astronomers, the Crab Pulsar, a neutron star spinning 30 times a second, is the bright spot near picture center. Like a cosmic dynamo, this collapsed remnant of the stellar core powers the Crab's emission across the electromagnetic spectrum. Spanning about 12 light-years, the Crab Nebula is 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus.

Biggy PiCCY HERE

credit:APOD

[evan_au]

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This dangerous-looking 3-legged stool by Dutch artist Jolan van der Wiel is formed from ferrofluid polyurethane.

The title is "gravity stool" and no two are the same. The description mentions the use of two large magnets. They also showed a video of him forming the shapes, and two members of the public who had apparently never heard of ferrofluids were astounded at the variety of bizarre shapes that formed and collapsed quite quickly.

Seen at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia.

[neilep]

A Whole New Jupiter: First Science Results from NASA’s Juno Mission


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This image shows Jupiter’s south pole, as seen by NASA’s Juno spacecraft from an altitude of 32,000 miles (52,000 kilometers). The oval features are cyclones, up to 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) in diameter. Multiple images taken with the JunoCam instrument on three separate orbits were combined to show all areas in daylight, enhanced color, and stereographic projection.BIGGY PICCY HERE



Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Betsy Asher Hall/Gervasio Robles


Early science results from NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter portray the largest planet in our solar system as a complex, gigantic, turbulent world, with Earth-sized polar cyclones, plunging storm systems that travel deep into the heart of the gas giant, and a mammoth, lumpy magnetic field that may indicate it was generated closer to the planet’s surface than previously thought.

“We are excited to share these early discoveries, which help us better understand what makes Jupiter so fascinating,” said Diane Brown, Juno program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "It was a long trip to get to Jupiter, but these first results already demonstrate it was well worth the journey.”

Juno launched on Aug. 5, 2011, entering Jupiter’s orbit on July 4, 2016. The findings from the first data-collection pass, which flew within about 2,600 miles (4,200 kilometers) of Jupiter's swirling cloud tops on Aug. 27, are being published this week in two papers in the journal Science, as well as 44 papers in Geophysical Research Letters.

“We knew, going in, that Jupiter would throw us some curves,” said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “But now that we are here we are finding that Jupiter can throw the heat, as well as knuckleballs and sliders. There is so much going on here that we didn’t expect that we have had to take a step back and begin to rethink of this as a whole new Jupiter.”

Among the findings that challenge assumptions are those provided by Juno’s imager, JunoCam. The images show both of Jupiter's poles are covered in Earth-sized swirling storms that are densely clustered and rubbing together.

“We're puzzled as to how they could be formed, how stable the configuration is, and why Jupiter’s north pole doesn't look like the south pole,” said Bolton. “We're questioning whether this is a dynamic system, and are we seeing just one stage, and over the next year, we're going to watch it disappear, or is this a stable configuration and these storms are circulating around one another?”

Another surprise comes from Juno’s Microwave Radiometer (MWR), which samples the thermal microwave radiation from Jupiter’s atmosphere, from the top of the ammonia clouds to deep within its atmosphere. The MWR data indicates that Jupiter’s iconic belts and zones are mysterious, with the belt near the equator penetrating all the way down, while the belts and zones at other latitudes seem to evolve to other structures. The data suggest the ammonia is quite variable and continues to increase as far down as we can see with MWR, which is a few hundred miles or kilometers.

Prior to the Juno mission, it was known that Jupiter had the most intense magnetic field in the solar system. Measurements of the massive planet’s magnetosphere, from Juno’s magnetometer investigation (MAG), indicate that Jupiter’s magnetic field is even stronger than models expected, and more irregular in shape. MAG data indicates the magnetic field greatly exceeded expectations at 7.766 Gauss, about 10 times stronger than the strongest magnetic field found on Earth.

“Juno is giving us a view of the magnetic field close to Jupiter that we’ve never had before,” said Jack Connerney, Juno deputy principal investigator and the lead for the mission’s magnetic field investigation at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Already we see that the magnetic field looks lumpy: it is stronger in some places and weaker in others. This uneven distribution suggests that the field might be generated by dynamo action closer to the surface, above the layer of metallic hydrogen. Every flyby we execute gets us closer to determining where and how Jupiter’s dynamo works.”

Juno also is designed to study the polar magnetosphere and the origin of Jupiter's powerful auroras—its northern and southern lights. These auroral emissions are caused by particles that pick up energy, slamming into atmospheric molecules. Juno’s initial observations indicate that the process seems to work differently at Jupiter than at Earth.

Juno is in a polar orbit around Jupiter, and the majority of each orbit is spent well away from the gas giant. But, once every 53 days, its trajectory approaches Jupiter from above its north pole, where it begins a two-hour transit (from pole to pole) flying north to south with its eight science instruments collecting data and its JunoCam public outreach camera snapping pictures. The download of six megabytes of data collected during the transit can take 1.5 days.

“Every 53 days, we go screaming by Jupiter, get doused by a fire hose of Jovian science, and there is always something new,” said Bolton. “On our next flyby on July 11, we will fly directly over one of the most iconic features in the entire solar system -- one that every school kid knows -- Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. If anybody is going to get to the bottom of what is going on below those mammoth swirling crimson cloud tops, it’s Juno and her cloud-piercing science instruments.”

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for NASA. The principal investigator is Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. The Juno mission is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, in Denver, built the spacecraft.

CREDIT NASA

[neilep]

Pink Rainbow Over Marysville, Ohio


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BIGGY PICCY



Photographer: Raj Muddana
Summary Authors: Raj Muddana; Jim Foster

I noticed this eye-catching pinkish rainbow as I was driving to work in western Ohio earlier this spring and pulled off the road to snap a photo. The camera is facing west. Since the bow is arching so high, it's evident that it was taken when the Sun was very low in the sky -- in this case, the eastern sky. The reason it looks pink is because the Sun is reddened when lying close to the horizon. The thicker atmosphere (greater path length) sunlight must pass through when it's very low in the sky effectively extinguishes the shorter wavelength colors (violets, blues and greens). Sunlight must pass through about 40 times as much atmosphere when the Sun is on the horizon compared to when it's overhead. So raindrops in between my camera and the antisolar point are being illuminated by the reddish Sun directly behind me. Therefore the rainbow takes on a pinkish hue. Note that a portion of the secondary bow can be detected near the ground at left. Photo taken on March 20, 2017, at 7:36 a.m.

Photo Details: Camera Maker: Apple; Camera Model: iPhone 6; Focal Length: 4.2mm (35mm equivalent: 29mm); Aperture: ƒ/2.2; Exposure Time: 0.0083 s (1/120); ISO equiv: 500.

CREDIT EPOD