Heavens

One of the most promising types of solar cells has a few drawbacks. A scientist at Michigan Technological University may have overcome one of them.

Dye-sensitized solar cells are thin, flexible, easy to make and very good at turning sunshine into electricity. However, a key ingredient is one of the most expensive metals on the planet: platinum. While only small amounts are needed, at $1,500 an ounce, the cost of the silvery metal is still significant.

Alexandria, VA -- The world is buzzing with the hum of servers containing terabytes of the world's collective datasets. And the geosciences are no different. Geoscientists are awash in data like never before. The challenge now for the geoscience community is how to best integrate disparate datasets for communal use and establish uniform standards for data entry.

Philadelphia, PA—One of the lesser known concerns about commercial aircraft is their stability on the ground during taxiing, takeoff, and landing. During these processes, planes must maintain stability under various operating conditions. However, in some situations, the aircraft landing gear displays unwanted oscillations, which are referred to as shimmy oscillations.

Young stars are violent objects that eject material at speeds as high as one million kilometres per hour. When this material crashes into the surrounding gas it glows, creating a Herbig-Haro object [1]. A spectacular example is named Herbig-Haro 46/47 and is situated about 1400 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Vela (The Sails). This object was the target of a study using ALMA during the Early Science phase, whilst the telescope was still under construction and well before the array was completed.

While observing a newborn star, astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope discovered twin jets of matter blasting out into space at record-breaking speed. These surprisingly forceful molecular "winds" could help refine our understanding of how stars impact their cloudy nurseries and shape their emerging stellar systems.

Live in a large city like New York, London, Beijing or Mumbai, and you are likely exposed to more air pollution than people in smaller cities in surrounding areas. But exactly how a city's pollution relates to the size of its population has never been measured, until now.

Using satellite observations, NASA scientists directly measured air pollution's dependence on population in four of the planet's major air pollution regions: the United States, Europe, China and India.

NASA has accepted ownership of its newest Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) from Boeing after successfully completing in orbit testing. TDRS-K, will be renamed TDRS-11 upon entry into service.

"This is a major step in replenishing an aging TDRS fleet which is essential in providing communications to support space exploration," said Badri Younes, deputy associate administrator for Space Communications and Navigation at NASA Headquarters. "We look forward to the launch of two additional satellites in the next few years to complete the replenishment program."

Reservoirs of silica-rich magma – the kind that causes the most explosive volcanic eruptions – can persist in Earth's upper crust for hundreds of thousands of years without triggering an eruption, according to new University of Washington modeling research.

That means an area known to have experienced a massive volcanic eruption in the past, such as Yellowstone National Park, could have a large pool of magma festering beneath it and still not be close to going off as it did 600,000 years ago.

Several fires are currently raging in central and northern California. These fires can be seen in this natural-color Terra satellite image taken by the MODIS instrument on August 18, 2013.

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the tropical cyclone known as Pewa after it strengthened into a typhoon in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. The Aqua satellite image revealed that Pewa had developed a small eye.

On Sunday, Aug. 18, Pewa was a tropical storm when it crossed the International Date Line and moved from the Central Pacific to the Northwestern Pacific Ocean. Pewa now falls under the forecast authority of the Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

Tropical Storm Trami appears to be a very large storm in infrared data from NASA's Aqua satellite. In a NASA image, Trami appears to be about two-thirds the size of the Philippines. Satellite data also indicates that the massive storm is now making a U-turn in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean, from a southeastern path to a northwestern path.

The thirteenth Tropical Depression of the Northwestern Pacific Ocean season didn't last long. In fact, Tropical Depression 13W lived for less than a day as a depression before fizzled.

TD13W was "born" at 1500 UTC/11 a.m. EDT on Aug. 17 with maximum sustained winds near 25 knots. Later that day at 2100 UTC/5 p.m. EDT, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center issued its final bulletin on the depression. At that time it was located near 28.0 north latitude and 126.0 east longitude, about 109 nautical miles northwest of Kadena Air Base, Japan.

Fires continue to ignite parts of the West. In this image, fires in Idaho and Wyoming can be seen.

The Hardluck Fire was started by lightning on July 17, 2013 deep in the wilderness. The small two acre fire was discovered on July 20 by a fire detection flight, but the inaccessible terrain precluded sending crews in safely. Now the fire is almost 20,000 acres in size, and increasing in size and activity due to winds from the southwest. Warm dry weather is forecast for the next 2-3 days so the fire is expected to burn actively.

NASA's Aqua satellite has been busy capturing temperature data from developing tropical cyclones around the world. Aqua captured an image of Tropical Storm Unala in the central Pacific Ocean where it formed early today, Aug. 19. Over several hours, Unala moved into the northwestern Pacific where it quickly weakened to a depression.

Fires have been burning out of control on the Portuguese island of Madeira. The fire that broke out in the early hours of the morning on August 16, 2013 above the village of Monte became stronger towards noontime as intense heat and the wind made the flames spread.