Water confirmed on the moon

13 11 2009

LCROSS Impact Finds Water on the Moon

LCROSS Impact Data Indicates Water on MoonEnlarge

 

The visible camera image showing the ejecta plume at about 20 seconds after impact. Credit: NASA

(PhysOrg.com) — The argument that the moon is a dry, desolate place no longer holds water. Secrets the moon has been holding, for perhaps billions of years, are now being revealed to the delight of scientists and space enthusiasts alike.

NASA today opened a new chapter in our understanding of the moon. Preliminary data from the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, indicates that the mission successfully uncovered water during the Oct. 9, 2009 impacts into the permanently shadowed region of Cabeus cater near the moon’s south pole. Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : space

Close call – Asteroid near miss for Earth yesterday

7 11 2009

From NASA’s Spaceweather.com and NASA JPL Twitter feed. It only takes one missed space rock to ruin your day.

asteroids_Potentially_Hazardous_As_1

Potentially Hazardous Asteroid - 3D rendering by by Arlene Ducao

On Friday November 6th at 2132 UT (16:32/ 4:32PM EST) asteroid 2009 VA barely missed Earth when it flew just 14,000 km above the planet’s surface. For comparison, Earth’s diameter is 12,756.1 km. That near miss was well inside the “Clarke Belt” of geosynchronous satellites.(35,786 km/22,236 mi)

Friday’s (Nov 6) flyby of asteroid 2009 VA is the third closest on record. (That we know about.) Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 91 Comments »

Categories : space

Study – Solar winds magnetically driven

4 11 2009

From a University College, London Press Release – Solar winds triggered by magnetic fields

Solar wind generated by the sun is probably driven by a process involving powerful magnetic fields, according to a new study led by UCL researchers based on the latest observations from the Hinode satellite.

Solar winds (courtesy Hinode)

Image: Solar winds (courtesy of Hinode)

 

Scientists have long speculated on the source of solar winds. The Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (EIS), on board the Japanese-UK-US Hinode satellite, is now generating unprecedented observations enabling scientists to provide a new perspective on the 50-year old question of how solar wind is driven. The collaborative study, published in this month’s issue of Astrophysical Journal, suggests that a process called slipping reconnection may drive these winds. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 133 Comments »

Categories : solar, space

NASA grant to create Mars weather forecasts

4 11 2009

From a Texas A&M Press Release

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA11418.jpg

Mars, Image: NASA JPL

Is there such a thing as “weather” on Mars? There are some doubts, considering the planet’s atmosphere is only 1 percent as dense as that of the Earth. Mars, however, definitely has clouds, drastically low temperatures and out-of-this-world dust storms, and Istvan Szunyogh, a Texas A&M professor of atmospheric sciences, has been awarded a NASA grant to analyze and forecast Martian weather.

Mars is the most Earth-like planet we know, but it is still quite different. For example, it is much colder on Mars.

The south pole of the Earth is covered by water ice, but the south pole of Mars wears a dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) cap. In winter, the temperature at the poles can dip to -140°C (-220 degrees Fahrenheit), which is so cold that even carbon dioxide freezes.

“Planet-encircling Martian dust storms, which occur every two to four Mars years, can cover the whole planet with dust for months,” notes Szunyogh, who is working with colleagues from the University of Maryland and the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J., to forecast Martian weather.

Why care about weather on Mars? After all, nobody lives, works or goes to school there. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 55 Comments »

Categories : forecasting, space, weather

Asteroid explosion over Indonesia

28 10 2009

From NASA’s Spaceweather.com

INDONESIAN ASTEROID: Picture this: A 10-meter wide asteroid hits Earth and explodes in the atmosphere with the energy of a small atomic bomb. Frightened by thunderous sounds and shaking walls, people rush out of their homes, thinking that an earthquake is in progress. All they see is a twisting trail of debris in the mid-day sky:

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 75 Comments »

Categories : space

Cosmic Rays and tree growth patterns linked

19 10 2009

Here’s a surprise. The growth of trees in Britain appears to correlate to cosmic ray intensity. University of Edinburgh researchers have found that trees are growing faster when high levels of cosmic radiation arrive from space. This may also correlate to the Interplanetary Magnetic Field which tends to modulate Galactic Cosmic Rays. The discover lends credence to Svensmark’s work on GCR to cloud cover correlation by demonstrating yet another tangible effect.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/images/geminids/Brock1.jpg

Photograph by Jason A.C. Brock of Roundtimber, Texas. Image source: NASA

The researchers made the discovery studying how growth rings of spruce trees changed over the past half a century.

Here’s the kicker: the variation in cosmic rays affected the tree growth more than changes in temperature or precipitation.

The study is published in the scientific journal New Phytologist. Abstract below.
A relationship between galactic cosmic radiation and tree rings
Sigrid Dengel, Dominik Aeby and John Grace

Institute of Atmospheric and Environmental Science, School of GeoSciences, Crew Building, University of Edinburgh, EH9 3JN, UK

Comments : 110 Comments »

Categories : paleoclimatology, space

Discoveries from the IBEX satellite show we still don’t know quite a few things about the heliosphere and solar system

17 10 2009

Voyagers 1 and 2 reached the termination shock in 2005 and 2007, respectively, taking point measurements as they left the solar system. Before IBEX, there was only data from these two points at the edge of the solar system. While exciting and valuable, the data they provided about this region raised more questions than they resolved. IBEX has filled in the entire interaction region, revealing surprising details completely unpredicted by any theories. IBEX completes one all-sky map every six months. IBEX completed the first map of the complex interactions occurring at the edge of the solar system (shown) this summer. (Credit: SwRI via Science Daily)

From the University of Chicago

Satellite reveals surprising cosmic ‘weather’ at edge of solar system


IMAGE: Image from one of the IBEX papers published in the Oct. 16, 2009, issue of Science showing a map of the ribbon of energetic neutral atoms (in green and yellow)…

The first solar system energetic particle maps show an unexpected landmark occurring at the outer edge of the solar wind bubble surrounding the solar system. Scientists published these maps, based mostly on data collected from NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer satellite, in the Oct. 15 issue of Science Express, the advance online version of the journal Science.

“Nature is full of surprises, and IBEX has been lucky to discover one of those surprises,” said Priscilla Frisch, a senior scientist in astronomy & astrophysics at the University of Chicago. “The sky maps are dominated by a giant ribbon of energetic neutral atoms extending throughout the sky in an arc that is 300 degrees long.” Energetic neutral atoms form when hot solar wind ions (charged particles) steal electrons from cool interstellar neutral atoms. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 221 Comments »

Categories : Science, solar, space

Follow up: Meteorite from September 25 hits SUV, warmists thrilled

17 10 2009

WUWT readers may recall the story I did last week:

Live in Ontario Canada? – help find this meteorite

Warmists thrilled about the SUV impact? Well I can only imagine but the meteorite did hit an SUV, according to CBC.  No major damage though.

From a University of Western Ontario Press release.

By Communications Staff
Friday, October 16, 2009

GRIMSBY, ONT. – When Tony Garchinski heard a loud crash just after 9 p.m. on Friday, September 25 he didn’t think much of it. That is, until he awoke the next morning to find the windshield of his mom’s Nissan Pathfinder with a huge crack in it. Making note of the ‘unusual’ rocks he later found on the car’s hood, Garchinski chalked the incident up to vandalism and filed a police report. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 20 Comments »

Categories : fun_stuff, space

What climate news you aren’t seeing in the American press but can in Iran

8 10 2009

It’s really rather sad that you can read about Svensmark’s climate research in an Iranian news outlet (FARS) but you won’t see any mention of it in American press, such as in the NYT. A search for Svensmark (and also cosmic rays) yields nothing. Maybe Andy Revkin just hasn’t gotten around to it yet, but if I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t enjoy being scooped by Iran. WUWT covered this story, complete with comments direct from Dr. Svensmark, nearly one month ago. See here.

NYT-svensmark-search

FARS-iran

Here’s the story from FARS:

===

TEHRAN (FNA)- New research by the National Space Institute in the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) validated 13 years of discoveries that point to a key role for cosmic rays in climate change.

Billions of tons of water droplets vanish from the atmosphere in events that reveal in detail how the Sun and the stars control our everyday clouds.

DTU Researchers have traced the consequences of eruptions on the Sun that screen the Earth from some of the cosmic rays – the energetic particles raining down on our planet from exploded stars.

“The Sun makes fantastic natural experiments that allow us to test our ideas about its effects on the climate,” lead author of a report newly published in Geophysical Research Letters Prof. Henrik Svensmark said.

When solar explosions interfere with the cosmic rays there is a temporary shortage of small aerosols, chemical specks in the air that normally grow until water vapor can condense on them, so seeding the liquid water droplets of low-level clouds.

Because of the shortage, clouds over the ocean can lose as much as 7 per cent of their liquid water within seven or eight days of the cosmic-ray minimum.

“A link between the Sun, cosmic rays, aerosols, and liquid-water clouds appears to exist on a global scale,” the report concludes. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 106 Comments »

Categories : Science, climate_change, clouds, space

Live in Ontario Canada? – help find this meteorite

7 10 2009
Astronomers from The University of Western Ontario have released footage of a meteor that was approximately 100 times brighter than a full moon. The meteor lit up the skies of southern Ontario two weeks ago and Western astronomers are now hoping to enlist the help of local residents in recovering one or more possible meteorites that may have crashed in the area of Grimsby, Ontario. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 45 Comments »

Categories : space

NASA: Cosmic rays up 19% since last peak – new record high could lead to cooling

29 09 2009

In an announcement sure to cause controversy over Svensmark’s theory of cosmic ray to cloud modulation, which is said to be affecting earth’s climate. Svensmark says this is now leading to a global cooling phase. Just a couple of weeks after Svensmark’s bold announcement, NASA has announced that we have hit a new record high in Galactic Cosmic Rays, GCR’s. Apparently, Nature is conducting a grand experiment. – Anthony

Click for larger image - Source: NASA (ACE) spacecraft

Click for larger image - Source: NASA (ACE) spacecraft

From NASA News: Cosmic Rays Hit Space Age High

Planning a trip to Mars? Take plenty of shielding. According to sensors on NASA’s ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer) spacecraft, galactic cosmic rays have just hit a Space Age high.

“In 2009, cosmic ray intensities have increased 19% beyond anything we’ve seen in the past 50 years,” says Richard Mewaldt of Caltech. “The increase is significant, and it could mean we need to re-think how much radiation shielding astronauts take with them on deep-space missions.”

The cause of the surge is solar minimum, a deep lull in solar activity that began around 2007 and continues today. Researchers have long known that cosmic rays go up when solar activity goes down. Right now solar activity is as weak as it has been in modern times, setting the stage for what Mewaldt calls “a perfect storm of cosmic rays.”

“We’re experiencing the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century,” says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center, “so it is no surprise that cosmic rays are at record levels for the Space Age.” Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 141 Comments »

Categories : Climate News, Science, space

The Australian dust storm as seen from space – Dry lake Eyre not Global Warming?

23 09 2009

There’s been quite a bit of buzz about the dust storm in Australia that hit Queensland, New South Wales, and NSW city Sydney on September 23rd. Pictures like the ones below have been all over the web.

http://a123.g.akamai.net/f/123/12465/1d/www.nationalpost.com/news/2023719.bin?size=614x414 http://image3.examiner.com/images/blog/EXID3122/images/Sydney_dust.jpg

Left: National Post Tim Wimborne/Reuters, Right: Examiner.com AP Photo/Rob Griffith

But it is the photos taken from space that are the most interesting I think. NASA’s Earth Observatory captured a truly amazing photo that shows the dust storm front as it swept across the continent and headed out to sea over eastern Australia where the borders of Queensland and NSW meet.

Dust over Eastern Australia

That dust headed to sea has an unappreciated benefit – it will fertilize the ocean with its mineral rich dust. There may be some interesting blooms of sea life in the weeks to come.

There’s also a cool Google Earth KML file to download and use with the space imagery. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 93 Comments »

Categories : aerosols, space

Antarctica to get surface based space weather monitoring network

25 08 2009

Of course the big question is, will they be able to keep the stations from becoming buried in snow like weather stations in the flawed Steig et al paper that determined that “Antarctica is warming”?

From EurekaAlert and Virginia Tech

NSF awards Space@VT $2 million to improve space weather understanding

IMAGE: Robert Clauer, Virginia Tech professor of electrical and computer engineering, will lead a team of the Space@VT researchers to build a chain of space weather instrument stations in Antarctica.

Click here for more information.

Blacksburg, Va. — Members of Virginia Tech’s Space@VT research group (http://www.space.vt.edu/) are receiving a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to build a chain of space weather instrument stations in Antarctica. Space weather affects a variety of everyday consumer technologies including global positioning systems (GPS), satellites for television reception, and cellular phones. Also, the understanding of space weather is critical to space programs.

For example, “satellites experience the disruptive effects of energetic charged particles and electrical charging across the satellite structure during various weather conditions. Astronauts are vulnerable to energetic radiation that may occur at space station altitudes. Navigation signals from global positioning satellites are affected by irregularities in the ionosphere that develop under some conditions, and massive disruption in electric power distribution systems can be triggered by geomagnetic storms,” explained Robert Clauer, professor of electrical and computer engineering (ECE) at Virginia Tech. http://www.space.vt.edu/people/faculty/clauer.html

Clauer is leading the team of researchers who include: Joseph Baker, assistant professor of ECE, Tamal Bose, professor of ECE, Brent Ledvina of Coherent Navigation, but who continues to hold an adjunct assistant professor of ECE position, and Majeid Manteghi, assistant professor of ECE. Bose is also the associate director of Wireless@Virginia Tech, a second Virginia Tech research group that is acting as a collaborator on this project (http://www.wireless.vt.edu/).

The northern hemisphere is already well-instrumented as a number of stations currently exist in the Arctic, including an array in Greenland. But due primarily to the “extreme Antarctic climate and lack of manned facilities with the necessary infrastructure to support facilities, the southern polar region is not,” Clauer said.

Data from the southern magnetic field is weaker than the northern magnetic polar field because its “magnetic dipole is offset from the center of the earth and tilted,” Clauer, an expert in atmospheric sciences, explained.

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 12 Comments »

Categories : Science, Technology, solar, space

Burt Rutan: engineer, aviation/space pioneer, and now, active climate skeptic

16 08 2009
Burt_Rutan_large

Burt Rutan - aviation pioneer, engineer, test pilot, climate skeptic. Note the car.

Recently after some conversations with a former chemical engineer who provided me with some insight, I’ve come to the conclusion that many engineers have difficulty with many of the premises of AGW theory because in their “this has to work or people die” world of exacting standards, the AGW argument doesn’t hold up well by their standards of performance.

Today I was surprised to learn that one of the foremost and world famous engineers on the planet, Burt Rutan, has become an active climate skeptic. You may be familiar with some of Rutan’s work through his company, Scaled Composites:
Click here to learn about X-Prize flight #1Click here to learn about X-prize flight 2

Thanks to WUWT reader Dale Knutsen, I was provided a PowerPoint file recently by email presented by Mr. Rutan at the Oshkosh fly-in convention on  July 29th, 2009 and again on August 1st, 2009. It has also now been posted online by an associate of Mr. Rutan’s. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 347 Comments »

Categories : Announcements, Technology, fun_stuff, space

SOHO and Solar update

11 08 2009

A couple of interesting tidbits from NASA’s Spaceweather.com

First:

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 31 days
2009 total: 173 days (78%)
Since 2004: 684 days
Typical Solar Min: 485 days

Second: The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory is passing through a telemetry keyhole. Daily sun images will be intermittently delayed until routine contact is established later this week.

What is a ‘keyhole’, anyway?

SOHO's HGA Keyhole

Schematic of SOHO’s orbit, indicating the geometry of the now parked High Gain Antenna
Print media: High-res TIFF version
Also: Closeup showing Low Gain and High Gain Antennae, high-res TIFF version. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 50 Comments »

Categories : Science, solar, space

Which is the bigger threat: PHA’s or GHG’s ?

29 07 2009

This makes a lot of sense if you are a rational thinking person. I thought I’d alert WUWT readers to it. Below is a table from the front page of Spaceweather.com today, operated by NOAA and Dr. Tony Phillips.

Spaceweather-NEA-table

And this week, we saw what can happen when PHA’s come calling:

jupiter-impact-hst

So in light of that, I thought this article was rather interesting.

Death from the Skies = Boring, Sweat from GHGs = Sexy [Jonah Goldberg]

Published at The Corner, part of NRO

From a longtime reader:

Dear Jonah,

I thoroughly enjoyed your article today, and not just because you touched on an area where I worked – at least tangentially – for over a decade.  You are right, virtually nobody is doing the leg work on keeping track of all the debris and potentially nasty sized rocks out there compared to the number of people shrieking about our impending slightly warmer earth.  The big reason is that it isn’t very sexy work, unlike being a proponent of Anthropocentric Global Warming (AGW).  If you work on space debris, minor planet orbits and earth crossing orbits about the best you can hope for is getting to name a new rock nobody else saw, or maybe getting your name in the paper while being misquoted by some reporter who doesn’t have a clue about what preliminary results or margin of error means when he says that your recently discovered rock will destroy the earth in 2029.

By comparison if you use your computer model to predict that according to your model the earth might possibly warm by somewhere between 0.9 and 3.5 degrees Celsius by the year 2100 you get to hang out with Al Gore and Bono and morally scold the ignorant proles for driving their SUVs to pick up the kids from daycare as you jet off to Switzerland for another speaking engagement.  Of course there is one other distinction.  The guy cataloging rocks is actually doing science, and that’s hard work. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 152 Comments »

Categories : Science, climate_change, space

Thanks Neil, Michael, and Buzz

20 07 2009

http://z.about.com/d/history1900s/1/7/Q/C/1/apollo11.jpg

America, and the world, is in your eternal debt.

My fond memories from this time would not be complete without the mention of another person. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 188 Comments »

Categories : space

The Sun puts on some fireworks for the 4th of July

4 07 2009

Leif Svalgaard has been saying for sometime now that Solar Cycle 24 seems to be getting underway. Seeing sunspot group 1024 today, I’m tending to agree.

SOHO_MDI_070409

Click for larger image

The magnetic polarity (seen on the SOHO magnetogram)  of the spot group combined with the middle latitude indicates it is a cycle 24 spot.

From Spaceweather.com

The most active sunspot of the year so far is emerging in the sun’s southern hemisphere: movie. Sunspot 1024 has at least a dozen individual dark cores and it is crackling with B-class solar flares. This morning, amateur astronomer David Tyler caught one of the flares in action from his backyard solar observatory in England: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 189 Comments »

Categories : solar, space

Apollo moonwalker Dr. Buzz Aldrin announces his climate skepticism

3 07 2009

How’d ya like the news in the paper, Mr. Potter? You just can’t keep those deniers down.

keep_those_bailey_boys_down

From the UK Telegraph, yet another prominent NASA figure says “no” to AGW.

Buzz, the man in the photo above, quoted in the interview:

“I think the climate has been changing for billions of years,” he said.

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 150 Comments »

Categories : Announcements, space

ISS has best balcony seat for volcanic eruption

23 06 2009
Source: International Space Station - Click for larger image

Sarychev Peak Eruption, Kuril Islands Source: International Space Station - Click for a larger image

I can’t ever recall seeing a more stunning image of a volcanic eruption. The ash plume from it has spread quite a bit. What effect will it have?

Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 71 Comments »

Categories : space, vulcanism

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