Heavens

On July 31, NASA's TRMM satellite saw Tropical Storm Gil intensifying and the storm became a hurricane. NASA's Aqua satellite and NOAA's GOES-15 satellite captured views of Gil on Aug. 1 as it was being chased by another developing tropical system.

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured an infrared image of Hurricane Gil on August 1 at 10:11 UTC or 6:11 a.m. EDT. Strongest storms and heaviest rains appear around the center where cloud top temperatures exceed -63F/-52.

Tropical Storm Jebi developed on July 31 and NASA satellite data on Aug. 1 shows the storm filling up at least half of the South China Sea.

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured an infrared image of Tropical Storm Jebi on August 1 at 6:11 UTC or 2:11 a.m. EDT when it passed overhead from space. Strongest storms and heaviest rains appeared south of the center and in a large band of thunderstorms wrapping into the center from the southwest. Additionally, fragmented bands of thunderstorms are also east of the center of the system.

Scientists have identified a molecule that enables starfish to carry out one of the most remarkable forms of feeding in the natural world.

A starfish feeds by first extending its stomach out of its mouth and over the digestible parts of its prey, such as mussels and clams. The prey tissue is partially digested externally before the soup-like "chowder" produced is drawn back into its 10 digestive glands.

Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope (LCOGT), with first lights at nine new 1-meter telescopes since April of 2012, achieved another critical milestone by capturing the first on-sky image with a production Sinistro camera. In development for over six years, the camera is arguably more important than the telescopes that will use them. "A telescope is really nothing more than a large camera lens," explained Joe Tufts, instrumentation scientist on the Sinistro project. "A large, precise, stable, and very expensive camera lens."

A University of Colorado Boulder team has developed a radically new technique that uses the power of sunlight to efficiently split water into its components of hydrogen and oxygen, paving the way for the broad use of hydrogen as a clean, green fuel.

Spending just one week exposed only to natural light while camping in the Rocky Mountains was enough to synch the circadian clocks of eight people participating in a University of Colorado Boulder study with the timing of sunrise and sunset.

The study, published online today in the journal Current Biology, found that the synchronization happened in that short period of time for all participants, regardless of whether they were early birds or night owls during their normal lives.

Some galaxies hit a point in their lives when their star formation is snuffed out, and they become "quenched". Quenched galaxies in the distant past appear to be much smaller than the quenched galaxies in the Universe today. This has always puzzled astronomers -- how can these galaxies grow if they are no longer forming stars? A team of astronomers has now used a huge set of Hubble observations to give a surprisingly simple answer to this long-standing cosmic riddle.

Until now, these small, snuffed-out galaxies were thought to grow into the larger quenched galaxies we see nearby.

Tropical Depression Flossie fizzled fast on July 30 in the Central Pacific Ocean. Satellite imagery on July 31 showed remnant clouds northwest of the Hawaiian Island chain.

Principal Investigator George Ricker likes to call it the "Goldilocks orbit" — it's not too close to Earth and her Moon, and it's not too far. In fact, it's just right.

Traveling to remote locations sometimes involves navigating through stop-and-go traffic, traversing long stretches of highway and maneuvering sharp turns and steep hills. The same can be said for guiding spacecraft to far-flung destinations in space. It isn't always a straight shot.

A NASA technologist has developed a fully automated tool that gives mission planners a preliminary set of detailed directions for efficiently steering a spacecraft to hard-to-reach interplanetary destinations, such as Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, and most comets and asteroids.

No sooner had Tropical Storm Flossie dissipated then another tropical cyclone called Tropical Depression 7E formed yesterday, July 30, in the eastern Pacific Ocean. NASA's TRMM satellite saw "hot towers" in the storm's center early on July 31, that indicated it would likely strengthen, and it became Tropical Storm Gil hours later.

HONOLULU – About one in three American youths age 14-20 say they've been of victims of dating violence and almost one in three acknowledge they've committed violence toward a date, according to new research presented at the American Psychological Association's 121st Annual Convention.

"These rates of adolescent dating violence are alarming and suggest that dating violence is simply too common among our youth," said Michele Ybarra, PhD, MPH, with the Center for Innovative Public Health Research, based in San Clemente, Calif.

ARLINGTON, Va.—Scientists recently launched unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from a research vessel in a significant experiment that could help boost the Navy's radar and communications performance at sea.

Sailing off Virginia Beach, Va., from July 13 to 18, the Office of Naval Research's (ONR) Research Vessel (R/V) Knorr explored ocean and atmospheric weather variations that can change the angle that radar and radio waves bend, making it more difficult for ships to remain undetected and hindering their ability to communicate or locate adversaries.

In 1924, Science magazine reported on a fatal case of potato poisoning: James B. Matheney of Vandalia, Illinois, had gathered about one and a half bushels of tubers, which had turned green due to sunlight exposure. Two days after eating the potatoes, most of his family -- wife, two daughters and four sons -- showed symptoms of poisoning; the only exceptions were James himself, who didn't eat the potatoes, and a breast-fed baby boy. His wife, aged 45, died a week later, followed by their 16-year-old daughter. The other five members of the family recovered.

AUSTIN, Texas — This summer, a radio navigation research team from The University of Texas at Austin set out to discover whether they could subtly coerce a 213-foot yacht off its course, using a custom-made GPS device.