Heavens

The Fourmile fire located 20 miles northeast of Morenci, Arizona is basically a grass fire. Currently it is over 5000 acres in size and is not contained at all. Because of the hot, dry conditions, the potential for growth of this fire is high. Officials are estimating that containment of this fire will be on or about June 15, 2013.

Tropical Storm Yagi is not expected to make landfall in Japan, but NASA satellite imagery showed that the storm was just south of the big island.

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Storm Yagi on Tuesday, June 11 at 04:10 UTC (12:10 a.m. EDT/1:10 p.m. Japan local time) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument captured a visible image of the storm. The image showed that clouds associated with the northern fringes of the storm were draped over southeastern coastal Japan.

Vancouver, British Columbia – The Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging's 2013 Annual Meetingmarks the unveiling of the successful application of a new preclinical hybrid molecular imaging system—single photon emission tomography and magnetic resonance (SPECT/MR)—which has exceptional molecular imaging capabilities in terms of potential preclinical and clinical applications, technological advancement at a lower cost, and reduction of patient exposure to ionizing radiation.

AKRON, OHIO, June 10, 2013 – It's not going to happen while you're peering through your binoculars, but African glossy starlings change color more than 10 times faster than their ancestors and even their modern relatives, according to researchers at The University of Akron and Columbia University. And these relatively rapid changes have led to new species of birds with color combinations previously unseen, according to the study funded in part by the National Science Foundation and published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.

Most of the matter in the universe may be made out of particles that possess an unusual, donut-shaped electromagnetic field called an anapole.

This proposal, which endows dark matter particles with a rare form of electromagnetism, has been strengthened by a detailed analysis performed by a pair of theoretical physicists at Vanderbilt University: Professor Robert Scherrer and post-doctoral fellow Chiu Man Ho. An article about the research was published online last month by the journal Physics Letters B.

Researchers at the University of Southampton have proposed an answer to the long-running debate as to how stable the Earth system is.

The Earth, with its core-driven magnetic field, oceans of liquid water, dynamic climate and abundant life is arguably the most complex system in the known Universe. Life arose on Earth over three and a half billion years ago and it would appear that despite planetary scale calamities such as the impacts of massive meteorites, runaway climate change and increases in brightness of the Sun, it has continued to grow, reproduce and evolve ever since.

Tropical Storm Yagi developed over the weekend of June 8 and 9 in the Western North Pacific from Tropical Depression 03W and NASA satellites captured the storm coming together. NASA's TRMM satellite measured rainfall rates within the storm and found the heaviest rain falling mostly south of the center.

Irvine, Calif., June 10, 2013 – The least massive galaxy in the known universe has been measured by UC Irvine scientists, clocking in at just 1,000 or so stars with a bit of dark matter holding them together.

The findings, made with the world's most powerful telescopes at the W. M. Keck Observatory and published today in The Astrophysical Journal, offer tantalizing clues about how iron, carbon and other elements key to human life originally formed. But the size and weight of Segue 2, as the star body is called, are its most extraordinary aspects.

Post-Tropical cyclone Andrea's remnants sped into the North Atlantic Ocean over the weekend of June 8 and 9. NOAA's GOES-14 satellite data was used to create an animation of imagery that showed Andrea's movement from off the Maine coast through Atlantic Canada and into the Northern Atlantic Ocean. The animation was created by the NASA GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. NOAA operates and manages the GOES series of satellites.

University and NASA researchers predict that the severity of the 2013 fire season will be considerably higher than in 2011 and 2012 for many Amazon forests in the Southern Hemisphere. The outlook is based on a fire severity model that produced a successful first forecast in 2012.

Using an innovative satellite technique, NASA scientists have determined that a previously unmapped type of wildfire in the Amazon rainforest is responsible for destroying several times more forest than has been lost through deforestation in recent years.

In the southern Amazon rainforest, fires below the forest treetops, or "understory fires," have been hidden from view from NASA satellites that detect actively burning fires. The new method has now led to the first regional estimate of understory fire damages across the southern Amazon.

The rainfall rate image was created at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. by adding together data from two TRMM instruments. The rain rates in the center of the swath are from the TRMM Precipitation Radar (PR), and those in the outer swath are from the TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI). The rain rates are overlaid on infrared (IR) data from the TRMM Visible Infrared Scanner (VIRS).

NASA's Aqua satellite collected this natural-color image with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, MODIS, instrument on June 05, 2013. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS's thermal bands, are outlined in red. All three fires noted here are more than 100 hectares in size (>247 acres).

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — UC Davis Health System Eye Center research has found that visually impaired individuals and those with uncorrected refractive error — those who could benefit from glasses to achieve normal vision but don't wear glasses — have a significantly greater risk of diminished balance with their eyes closed on a compliant, foam surface than individuals with normal vision.

If one looks only for the shiniest pennies in the fountain, chances are one misses most of the coins because they shimmer less brightly. This, in a nutshell, is the conundrum astronomers face when searching for Earth-like planets outside our solar system.

Astronomers at the University of Arizona are part of an international team of exoplanets hunters developing new technology that would dramatically improve the odds of discovering planets with conditions suitable for life – such as having liquid water on the surface.