Heavens

NASA's Terra satellite captured an image of Tropical Storm Fengshen as it continued moving away from the east coast of Japan. Satellite imagery showed that the storm resembled a frontal system more than a tropical storm because it appeared stretched from southwest to northeast

Storms have been the major cause of the huge fires that California has been battling in its northern regions.

A lightning strike from a storm on August 12, 2014 started the fires in the Happy Camp Complex. There are currently 99,200 acres affected and the fire complex is at 30% containment.

Washington, D.C.—A team of scientists led by Carnegie's Jacqueline Faherty has discovered the first evidence of water ice clouds on an object outside of our own Solar System. Water ice clouds exist on our own gas giant planets--Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune--but have not been seen outside of the planets orbiting our Sun until now. Their findings are published by The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Many people are unaware that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's mandated nutrition labels are based on a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet, but a simple weekly text message reminder can greatly improve that awareness, according to a new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

While not an outright recommendation, the 2,000-calorie benchmark is what the FDA considers a reasonable daily calorie intake for many adults. More importantly, nutrition labels on food products sold in the U.S. are based on it.

PITTSBURGH—A smart headlight developed at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute enables drivers to take full advantage of their high beams without fear of blinding oncoming drivers or suffering from the glare that can occur when driving in snow or rain at night.

Scientists believe they have found a way to explain why there are not as many galaxies orbiting the Milky Way as expected.

Computer simulations of the formation of our galaxy suggest that there should be many more, smaller galaxies around the Milky Way than are observed through telescopes.

This has thrown doubt on the generally accepted theory of cold dark matter, a substance that scientists predict should allow for more galaxy formation around the Milky Way than is seen.

Tropical Storm Fengshen is a large storm and infrared imagery from NASA's Aqua satellite shows that it's about as long as the big island of Japan.

Tropical Depression 14W was a short-lived storm that only lasted through four bulletins from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center. NASA's Aqua satellite captured infrared data on the storm's cloud top temperatures as it passed over China's Hainan Island and headed toward a final landfall in mainland China.

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Storm Norbert on September 7 before it weakened to a post- tropical storm. The AIRS instrument aboard captured infrared data that showed a "sliver" of strong thunderstorms remained around the center of the waning storm.

When the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument gathered infrared data on Tropical Storm Norbert on Sept. 7 at 4:53 p.m. EDT, it showed only a small area of strong thunderstorms around the center where cloud top temperatures were near the -63F/-52C threshold for strong storms.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- Around the world, there is more salty groundwater than fresh, drinkable groundwater. For example, 60 percent of India is underlain by salty water — and much of that area is not served by an electric grid that could run conventional reverse-osmosis desalination plants.

As Hurricane Norbert continued dropping heavy amounts of rainfall on Mexico's Baja California on September 5, NASA's TRMM satellite calculated the rain that had already fallen.

From its orbit in space, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite has the capability of determining how much rainfall has occurred over given areas. Data from TRMM was compiled into a rainfall map that showed the rainfall generated from Tropical Storm Dolly and Hurricane Norbert from August 28 through September 4, 2014.

Over 60 million Americans are thought to experience mental illness in a given year, and the impacts of mental illness are undoubtedly felt by millions more in the form of family members, friends, and coworkers. Despite the availability of effective evidence-based treatment, about 40% of individuals with serious mental illness do not receive care and many who begin an intervention fail to complete it.

Tropical Storm Dolly fizzled out quickly on September 3 after making landfall in eastern Mexico, and NASA's Aqua satellite saw some of the remnants moving into southern Texas. NASA's TRMM satellite analyzed the rainfall occurring in the storm as it was approaching landfall.

The Eastern Pacific's Hurricane Norbert resembled a pinwheel in an image from NASA's Terra satellite as bands of thunderstorms spiraled into the center. NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement or GPM mission has helped forecasters see that Norbert has lost some of its organization early on September 4.

Boulder, Colo. — Sept. 4, 2014 — NASA's Alice ultraviolet (UV) spectrograph aboard the European Space Agency's Rosetta comet orbiter has delivered its first scientific discoveries. Rosetta, in orbit around comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, is the first spacecraft to study a comet up close.