Heavens

Using data from NASA's Van Allen Probes, researchers have tested and improved a model to help forecast what's happening in the radiation environment of near-Earth space -- a place seething with fast-moving particles and a space weather system that varies in response to incoming energy and particles from the sun.

There are two developing areas of tropical low pressure that lie east and west of Queensland, Australia. System 96P and System 98P, respectively. The MODIS instrument that flies aboard both NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites captured images of both tropical trouble-makers as each satellite passed overhead on March 7.

Agricultural fires are still burning in Indochina ten days after the last NASA web posting about the fires. This natural-color image, taken on March 07, 2014, by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, MODIS, aboard the Aqua satellite, shows a more comprehensive area of burning agricultural fires that stretch from Burma through to Laos and south throughout Thailand. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS's thermal bands, are outlined in red.Fire is used in cropland areas for pest and weed control and to prepare fields for planting.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has recorded the never-before-seen break-up of an asteroid into as many as 10 smaller pieces.

Fragile comets, comprised of ice and dust, have been seen falling apart as they near the sun, but nothing like this has ever before been observed in the asteroid belt.

"This is a rock, and seeing it fall apart before our eyes is pretty amazing," said David Jewitt of the University of California at Los Angeles, who led the astronomical forensics investigation.

The ALMA images reveal a vast belt of carbon monoxide located at the fringes of the Beta Pictoris system. Much of the gas is concentrated in a single clump located about 8 billion miles (13 billion kilometers) from the star, or nearly three times the distance between the planet Neptune and the sun. The total amount of CO observed, the scientists say, exceeds 200 million billion tons, equivalent to about one-sixth the mass of Earth's oceans.

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite provided a look at the rainfall associated with the large storm system that brought soaking rains to California on Feb. 28 and Mar. 1. Satellite imagery created at NASA shows the movement of the storm from the U.S. West Coast to the East Coast.

In the giant system that connects Earth to the sun, one key event happens over and over: solar material streams toward Earth and the giant magnetic bubble around Earth, the magnetosphere helps keep it at bay. The parameters, however, change: The particles streaming in could be from the constant solar wind, or perhaps from a giant cloud erupting off the sun called a coronal mass ejection, or CME. Sometimes the configuration is such that the magnetosphere blocks almost all the material, other times the connection is long and strong, allowing much material in.

Beta Pictoris, a nearby star easily visible to the naked eye in the southern sky, is already hailed as the archetypal young planetary system. It is known to harbour a planet that orbits some 1.2 billion kilometres from the star, and it was one of the first stars found to be surrounded by a large disc of dusty debris [1].

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope have discovered the splattered remains of comets colliding together around a nearby star; the researchers believe they are witnessing the total destruction of one of these icy bodies once every five minutes.

The "smoking gun" implicating this frosty demolition is the detection of a surprisingly compact region of carbon monoxide (CO) gas swirling around the young, nearby star Beta Pictoris.

Astronomers exploring the disk of debris around the young star Beta Pictoris have discovered a compact cloud of carbon monoxide located about 8 billion miles (13 billion kilometers) from the star. This concentration of poisonous gas – usually destroyed by starlight – is being constantly replenished by ongoing rapid-fire collisions among a swarm of icy, comet-like bodies.

In fact, to offset the destruction of carbon monoxide (CO) molecules around the star, a large comet must be getting completely destroyed every five minutes, say researchers.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Much of the research on post-combat mental health of veterans focuses on problems like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depression. A paper co-authored by R. Tyson Smith, visiting assistant professor of sociology, takes an even broader snapshot of returning soldiers' mental state by focusing instead on the identity conflict many face when transitioning from soldier to civilian life and how that conflict manifests as mental distress. The paper was published in the January issue of Society and Mental Health.

The Earth's magnetic field, or magnetosphere, stretches from the planet's core out into space, where it meets the solar wind, a stream of charged particles emitted by the sun. For the most part, the magnetosphere acts as a shield to protect the Earth from this high-energy solar activity.

After more than a decade of incremental – and paradigm shifting, advances in stem cell biology, almost anyone with a basic understanding of life sciences knows that stem cells are the basic form of cell from which all specialized cells, and eventually organs and body parts, derive.

Future lunar missions may be fueled by gas stations in space, according to MIT engineers: A spacecraft might dock at a propellant depot, somewhere between the Earth and the moon, and pick up extra rocket fuel before making its way to the lunar surface.

Orbiting way stations could reduce the fuel a spacecraft needs to carry from Earth — and with less fuel onboard, a rocket could launch heavier payloads, such as large scientific experiments.

Astronomers have witnessed for the first time the breakup of an asteroid into as many as 10 smaller pieces. The discovery is published online March 6 in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Though fragile comet nuclei have been seen falling apart as they near the sun, nothing resembling this type of breakup has been observed before in the asteroid belt. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope photographed the demolition.