Heavens

Southern Japan received a soaking from Tropical Storm Neoguri on July 9 and 10 and data from the TRMM satellite was used to create a map that shows how much rain fell in Kyushu.

Kyushu is the southwestern most and third largest island of Japan. The island is mountainous and is home to Mount Aso. Heavy rainfall from Neoguri fell on land that was already soaked in the past week from a slow moving frontal system.

Typhoon Neoguri made landfall on Kyushu early Thursday, July 10, local time after affecting the Okinawa island chain.

Guam and surrounding areas were under a Tropical Storm Warning and Watch on July 11 as NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead. During the early morning hours on July 11, Tropical Depression 09W strengthened into a tropical storm.

For many years scientists have been trying to unravel mechanisms that guide function and differentiation of blood stem cells, those cells that generate all blood cells including our immune system. The study of human blood stem cells is difficult because they can only be found in the bone marrow in specialized "niches" that cannot be recapitulated in a culture dish. Now a group of scientists from Dresden led by stem cell researcher Prof.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has photographed an unusual structure 100,000 light years long, which resembles a corkscrew-shaped string of pearls and winds around the cores of two colliding galaxies.

The unique structure of the star spiral may yield new insights into the formation of stellar superclusters that result from merging galaxies and gas dynamics in this rarely seen process.

Meet the seven new dwarf galaxies.

Yale University astronomers, using a new type of telescope made by stitching together telephoto lenses, recently discovered seven celestial surprises while probing a nearby spiral galaxy. The previously unseen galaxies may yield important insights into dark matter and galaxy evolution, while possibly signaling the discovery of a new class of objects in space.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Nuclear engineers at Oregon State University have developed a small, portable and inexpensive radiation detection device that should help people all over the world better understand the radiation around them, its type and intensity, and whether or not it poses a health risk.

The device was developed in part due to public demand following the nuclear incident in Fukushima, Japan, in 2011, when many regional residents were unsure what level of radiation they were being exposed to and whether their homes, food, environment and drinking water were safe.

Defining what makes a star "Sun-like" is as difficult as defining what makes a planet "Earth-like." A solar twin should have a temperature, mass, and spectral type similar to our Sun. We also would expect it to be about 4.5 billion years old. However, it is notoriously difficult to measure a star's age so astronomers usually ignore age when deciding if a star counts as "Sun-like."

In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that many diseases are triggered or maintained by changes in bacterial communities in the gut. However, the general view up into now has been rather simple: bacteria stimulate the immune system, leading to inflammation or autoimmune disorders in a single direction.

NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite or GOES-West satellite spotted smoke over the U.S. Mid-West from dozens of fires raging in Canada's Northwestern Territories.

At 1200 UTC (8 a.m. EDT) on July 9, 2014, GOES-West captured this image of the brownish-colored haze created by forest fires in Canada's Northwest Territories that drifted all the way into South Dakota. This image was created by the NASA GOES Project at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Once a powerful super typhoon, now an weakening tropical storm, NASA's Terra satellite saw a much weaker Tropical Storm Neoguri moving along the southern coast of Japan.

On July 10 at 0:35 UTC, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradometer (MODIS) instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured an image of a more disorganized Tropical Storm Neoguri over east central Japan. At the time of the image, a more elongated Tropical Storm Neoguri's center was east of Kyushu, Japan.

The Universe is filled with objects springing to life, evolving and dying explosive deaths. This new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures a snapshot of some of this cosmic movement. Embedded within the egg-shaped blue ring at the centre of the frame are two galaxies. These galaxies have been found to be merging into one and a "chain" of young stellar superclusters are seen winding around the galaxies' nuclei.

Stars forming like a string of blue pearls along two elliptical galaxies could be the result of a galactic merger, according to an international team of astronomers. The structure could reveal rare insights about elliptical galaxies.

This natural-color satellite image was collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Aqua satellite on July 10, 2014. Each hot spot, which appears as a red mark, is an area where the thermal detectors on the MODIS instrument recognized temperatures higher than background. When accompanied by plumes of smoke, as in this image, such hot spots are diagnostic for fire.

The discovery of a split-second burst of radio waves by scientists using the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico provides important new evidence of mysterious pulses that appear to come from deep in outer space.

Choosing mobile phone cases and customizing phones with charms and decorations may reveal a lot about a person's culture, as well as increase attachment to the devices, according to researchers.

In a study on culture and mobile phone customization, researchers found that people from Eastern cultures tend to be more motivated to change the look and sound of their mobile phones than people in Western countries, said S. Shyam Sundar, Distinguished Professor of Communications and co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory, Penn State.