Heavens

Infrared and near-infrared NASA satellite imagery provided signs to forecasters that Tropical Cyclone Narelle is intensifying as it moves southwest paralleling Western Australia coastline. Warnings have been posted as Narelle nears.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (ABM) issued the following watch and warnings for Narelle on Jan. 9: A cyclone watch is in effect for coastal areas from Whim Creek to Coral Bay. A Blue alert is in effect for coastal and island communities from Whim Creek to Mardie, including Wickham, Roebourne, Point Sampson, Karratha and Dampier.

What if you had a "Wayback Television Set" and could watch an entire month of ancient prehistory unfold before your eyes in real time? David Rubin of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) presented just such a scenario to the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Long Beach, CA, when he announced the discovery of a striking astronomical object: a Type Ia supernova with a redshift of 1.71 that dates back 10 billion years in time.

Newly released NASA Hubble Space Telescope images of a vast debris disk encircling the nearby star Fomalhaut and a mysterious planet circling it may provide forensic evidence of a titanic planetary disruption in the system.

A University of Arizona-led team of astronomers for the first time has used NASA's Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes simultaneously to peer into the stormy atmosphere of a brown dwarf, creating the most detailed "weather map" yet for this class of strange, not-quite-star-and-not-quite-planet objects. The forecast shows wind-driven, planet-sized clouds enshrouding these strange worlds.

Vega, the second brightest star in northern night skies, has an asteroid belt much like our sun, discovered by a University of Arizona-lead team of astronomers. A wide gap between the dust belts in nearby bright stars is a strong hint of yet-undiscovered planets orbiting the stars.

The sun ejects a continuous flow of electrically charged particles and magnetic fields in the form of the solar wind -- and this wind is hotter than it should be. A new study of data obtained by European Space Agency's Cluster spacecraft may help explain the mystery.

The eighth tropical cyclone to form during the Southern Indian Ocean cyclone season formed from low pressure System 98S and became Tropical Cyclone Narelle. NASA's TRMM satellite passed over System 98S and saw the hallmark "hot towers" that indicated the storm would soon likely intensify into Tropical Storm Narelle.

NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite passed over System 98S on Jan. 7 at 0901 UTC (4:01 a.m. EST/U.S.) hours before it intensified into Tropical Storm Narelle.

Tropical Depression Sonamu has been consistently slow moving over the last couple of days, and that has not changed. NASA's Aqua satellite captured an infrared image of the stubborn storm lingering in the South China Sea, and it still contained some strong thunderstorms.

Our Milky Way is a spiral galaxy - a pinwheel-shaped collection of stars, gas and dust. It has a central bar and two major spiral arms that wrap around its disk. Since we view the Milky Way from the inside, its exact structure is difficult to determine.

Astronomers have identified a new structure in the Milky Way: a long tendril of dust and gas that they are calling a "bone."

Two University of Texas at Arlington researchers want to bridge the gap between what is known about exploding stars and the remnants left behind thousands of years later. So they're trying something new – using SNSPH, a complex computer code developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

An analysis of the first three years of data from NASA's Kepler mission, which already has discovered thousands of potential exoplanets, contains good news for those searching for habitable worlds outside our solar system.

It shows that 17 percent of all sun-like stars have planets one to two times the diameter of Earth orbiting close to their host stars, according to a team of astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Stem cell manufacturing for drug screening and treatments for diseases such as Huntington's and Parkinson's could be boosted by a new method of generating stem cells, a study suggests.

Scientists have developed a family of compounds that can support the growth of human embryonic stem cells on a large scale for use in drug testing or treatments.

The new materials, which are water-based gels, act as a tiny scaffold to which cells can cling as they grow. Normally cells must be grown on expensive biological surfaces that can carry pathogens and contaminate cells.

Clinical pharmacologist Jens Titze, M.D., knew he had a one-of-a-kind scientific opportunity: the Russians were going to simulate a flight to Mars, and he was invited to study the participating cosmonauts.

TAMPA, Fla. (Jan. 8, 2013)—The current special issue of "Technology and Innovation-Proceedings of the National Academy of Inventors" is devoted to presentations from the Inaugural Conference of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), which was hosted by the University of South Florida, Feb. 16-17, 2012.

The research carried out at IIASA in collaboration with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research demonstrates that there is fundamental rigidity, known as lock-in, within the energy economy that favors the use of fossil fuels and nuclear power despite their large environmental and social costs. The researchers identify that this rigidity of the existing energy economy could be considerably reduced by introducing new rules that hold shareholders of companies liable for the damages caused by the companies they own.