Heavens

Slight changes in the timing of the annual loss of sea-ice in polar regions could have dire consequences for ecosystems, by allowing a lot more sunlight to reach the sea floor, a study from UNSW and the Australian Antarctic Division shows.

The research predicts that biodiversity on some areas of the polar seabed could be reduced by as much as one third within decades, as the poles warm.

Don't hire someone to wash your dirty solar panels. That's the conclusion of a study recently conducted by a team of engineers at the University of California, San Diego. Their findings were published in the July 25 online issue of Solar Energy.

Tropical Storm Flossie weakened as it interacted with the Hawaiian Islands and became a depression. NASA's TRMM satellite saw mostly light rain and one isolated area of heavy rainfall within the storm after it weakened. All watches and warnings were dropped for the Hawaiian Islands on July 30.

Former Tropical Storm Dorian has been hanging around the Caribbean Sea for a couple of days, and appears stretched out on satellite imagery.

Tropical Depression 7E formed in the Eastern Pacific Ocean during the morning of July 30, and a NASA satellite was overhead to get an infrared baby picture. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the depression and saw strong, but fragmented thunderstorms around the center.

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite. AIRS creates infrared data that helps determine temperature, such as cloud top and sea surface temperatures.

It might be easier than previously thought for a planet to overheat into the scorchingly uninhabitable "runaway greenhouse" stage, according to new research by astronomers at the University of Washington and the University of Victoria published July 28 in the journal Nature Geoscience.

In the runaway greenhouse stage, a planet absorbs more solar energy than it can give off to retain equilibrium. As a result, the world overheats, boiling its oceans and filling its atmosphere with steam, which leaves the planet glowing-hot and forever uninhabitable, as Venus is now.

July 30, 2013, Boston, Mass. -- Sun-drenched rooms make for happy residents, but large glass windows also bring higher air-conditioning bills. Now a bioinspired microfluidic circulatory system for windows developed by researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University could save energy and cut cooling costs dramatically -- while letting in just as much sunlight.

Just as remotely-operated vehicles help humans explore the depths of the ocean from above, NASA has begun studying how a similar approach may one day help astronauts explore other worlds. On June 17 and July 26, NASA tested the Surface Telerobotics exploration concept, in which an astronaut in an orbiting spacecraft remotely operates a robot on a planetary surface. In the future, astronauts orbiting other planetary bodies, such as Mars, asteroids or the moon, could use this approach to perform work on the surface using robotic avatars.

Astronomers have found a new way of measuring the spin in supermassive black holes, which could lead to better understanding about how they drive the growth of galaxies.

The scientists at Durham University, UK, observed a black hole - with mass 10 million times that of our Sun - at the centre of a spiral galaxy 500 million light years from Earth while it was feeding on the surrounding disc of material that fuels its growth and powers its activity.

The GOES-R Magnetometer Engineering Development Unit made an important development in the construction of the spacecraft recently after completing a successful boom deployment test at an ATK facility in Goleta, Calif.

The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite – R Series advanced spacecraft and instrument technology will result in more timely and accurate weather forecasts. It will improve support for the detection and observations of meteorological phenomena and directly affect public safety, protection of property, and ultimately, economic health and development.

NASA and NOAA satellites continue to keep a close eye on the remnants of Tropical Storm Dorian as they make their way through the eastern Caribbean Sea.

On Saturday, July 27 at 11 a.m. EDT, Dorian was still a tropical storm, but that didn't last. Dorian was near 18.5N and 52.1W, about 720 miles (1,160 km) east of the Northern Leeward Islands. Dorian's maximum sustained winds were near 40 mph (65 kph) and it was moving to the west at 23 mph (37 kph).

Tropical Storm Flossie is expected to bring a lot of moisture to the leeward side of the Hawaiian Islands where the Kona coffee crops are located. That moisture will then be pushed up the mountainous terrain (orographic lift), which will go over the mountainous areas and rain on the windward side.

Flossie will be moving in the big island during the morning (local time) today, July 29.

Washington, D.C.— Hydrogen is deceptively simple. It has only a single electron per atom, but it powers the sun and forms the majority of the observed universe. As such, it is naturally exposed to the entire range of pressures and temperatures available in the whole cosmos. But researchers are still struggling to understand even basic aspects of its various forms under high-pressure conditions.

A team of researchers has devised a way to measure the internal properties of stars—a method that offers more accurate assessments of their orbiting planets.

The research, which appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was conducted by a multi-national team of scientists, including physicists at New York University, Princeton University, and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research.

For the first time since exoplanets, or planets around stars other than the sun, were discovered almost 20 years ago, X-ray observations have detected an exoplanet passing in front of its parent star.

An advantageous alignment of a planet and its parent star in the system HD 189733, which is 63 light-years from Earth, enabled NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency's XMM Newton Observatory to observe a dip in X-ray intensity as the planet transited the star.