Heavens

Canadian wildfires have been raging this summer and some of the smoke from those fires is drifting downward into the U.S. In this image collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Aqua satellite on July 24, 2014 a swath of smoke has descended over the Great Lakes region of the United States. What is particularly interesting is the fire image from July 23, 2014 (first image feature highlighted below) clearly shows the path of the smoke as it drifts off southeastward.

Scalping gets a bad rap. For years, artists and concert promoters have stigmatized ticket resale as a practice that unfairly hurts their own sales and forces fans to pay exorbitant prices for tickets to sold-out concerts. But is that always true?

The burn scars on this false-color image from the Terra satellite show the different areas that have been affected by this year's rash of wildfires in Eastern Russia. The burn scars show up as reddish-brown splotches of color against the green background. The wildfires have broken across the remote parts of Eastern Russia in the Sakha Republic. Even in this false-color image from the MODIS instrument, it is still possible to see the smoke rising from the fires that continue.

When Typhoon Matmo crossed over the island nation of Taiwan it left tremendous amounts of rainfall in its wake. NASA used data from the TRMM satellite to calculate just how much rain fell over the nation.

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite orbits the Earth and provides coverage over the tropics. TRMM is a satellite that is managed by both NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) that acts as a "flying rain gauge in space," that can estimate how fast rain is falling within storms on Earth and how much rain has fallen.

Hundreds of fires covered central Africa in mid-July 2014, as the annual fire season continues across the region. Multiple red hotspots, which indicate areas of increased temperatures, are heavily sprinkled across the Congo (northwest), Angola (south), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (northeast), and Zambia (southeast). Thick gray smoke rises from some of the hotspots, and in some areas, especially in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, strong winds drive the smoke to the south.

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have gone looking for water vapor in the atmospheres of three planets orbiting stars similar to the sun -- and have come up nearly dry.

The three planets, known as HD 189733b, HD 209458b, and WASP-12b, are between 60 and 900 light-years away from Earth and were thought to be ideal candidates for detecting water vapor in their atmospheres because of their high temperatures where water turns into a measurable vapor.

Irvine, Calif., July 24, 2014 — A new study by University of California, Irvine and NASA scientists finds more than 75 percent of the water loss in the drought-stricken Colorado River Basin since late 2004 came from underground resources. The extent of groundwater loss may pose a greater threat to the water supply of the western United States than previously thought.

Although most natural and synthetic processes prefer to settle into equilibrium—a state of unchanging balance without potential or energy—it is within the realm of non-equilibrium conditions where new possibilities lie. Non-equilibrium systems experience constant changes in energy and phases, such as temperature fluctuations, freezing and melting, or movement. These conditions allow humans to regulate their body temperature, airplanes to fly, and the Earth to rumble with seismic activity.

Narcissism, considered by some as the "dark side of the executive personality," may actually be a good thing when it comes to certain financial measures, with companies led by narcissistic CEOs outperforming those helmed by non-narcissistic executives, according to recent research co-authored by faculty at the USC Marshall School of Business.

Hundreds of fires covered central Africa in mid-July 2014, as the annual fire season continues across the region. Multiple red hotspots, which indicate areas of increased temperatures, are heavily sprinkled across the Congo (northwest), Angola (south), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (northeast), and Zambia (southeast). Thick gray smoke rises from some of the hotspots, and in some areas, especially in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, strong winds drive the smoke to the south.

A new home-grown instrument based on bundles of optical fibres is giving Australian astronomers the first 'Google street view' of the cosmos — incredibly detailed views of huge numbers of galaxies.

Developed by researchers at the University of Sydney and the Australian Astronomical Observatory, the optical-fibre bundles can sample the light from up to 60 parts of a galaxy, for a dozen galaxies at a time.

This news release is available in German.

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have mapped the mass within a galaxy cluster more precisely than ever before. Created using observations from Hubble's Frontier Fields observing programme, the map shows the amount and distribution of mass within MCS J0416.1-2403, a massive galaxy cluster found to be 160 trillion times the mass of the Sun. The detail in this mass map was made possible thanks to the unprecedented depth of data provided by new Hubble observations, and the cosmic phenomenon known as strong gravitational lensing.

TORONTO, ON (23 JULY 2014) – A team of astronomers has made the most precise measurements yet of water vapour in the atmospheres of Jupiter-like planets beyond our Solar System and found them to be much drier worlds than expected.

The team, including Dr. Nicolas Crouzet of the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Toronto, has found that the abundance of atmospheric water vapour is between ten and a thousand times less than what models predict.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Researchers have discovered a previously unknown mechanism for wear in metals: a swirling, fluid-like microscopic behavior in a solid piece of metal sliding over another.

The findings could be used to improve the durability of metal parts in numerous applications.