Heavens

There are a number of things happening under the hood of Tropical Storm Ewiniar's clouds that have been deciphered by satellite data today, Sept. 28, 2012, and NASA's TRMM satellite has noticed one area of heavy rainfall remaining.

NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite noticed light to moderate rainfall around most of the tropical storm, with the heaviest rainfall east of the center of circulation. Rainfall in that area was falling at a rate of 2 inches (50 mm) per hour).

Super Typhoon Jelawat is a large and powerful storm that has been bringing very rough seas to areas in the western North Pacific. NASA's Terra satellite passed over the monster storm and captured a visible image as it nears the big island of Japan.

NASA's Terra satellite passed over Super Typhoon Jelawat on Sept. 28 at 0238UTC (10:38 p.m. EDT, Sept. 27) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer captured an infrared image as the storm approaches Okinawa, Japan.

The sun erupted with a wide, Earth-directed coronal mass ejection (CME) on Sept. 27, 2012 at 10:25 p.m. EDT. CMEs are a phenomenon that can send billions of tons of solar particles into space that can reach Earth one to three days later, affecting electronic systems in satellites and on the ground. Experimental NASA research models estimate that the CME is traveling at around 700 miles per second and will reach Earth on Sept. 29.

According to Einstein, whenever massive objects interact, they produce gravitational waves -- distortions in the very fabric of space and time -- that ripple outward across the universe at the speed of light. While astronomers have found indirect evidence of these disturbances, the waves have so far eluded direct detection. Ground-based observatories designed to find them are on the verge of achieving greater sensitivities, and many scientists think that this discovery is just a few years away.

Farmers are using maps created with free data from NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey's Landsat satellites that show locations that are good and not good for growing crops.

NASA infrared satellite imagery showed Tropical Storm Miriam had strong convection and thunderstorm activity in all quadrants of the storm on Sept. 26, except the western quadrant. That activity waned dramatically in 24 hours because of strong wind shear and cooler sea surface temperatures.

One day ago, Super Typhoon Jelawat's eye was about 25 nautical miles in diameter, today, Sept. 27, NASA satellite data indicated that eye has grown to 36 nautical miles!

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Storm Ewiniar and noticed strong convection still persists in the storm, despite now being embedded in a subtropical area of low pressure off the coast of Japan.

NASA's TRMM satellite noticed that the intensity of rainfall in Tropical Storm Nadine has diminished today, Sept. 27.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The point of no return: In astronomy, it's known as a black hole — a region in space where the pull of gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. Black holes that can be billions of times more massive than our sun may reside at the heart of most galaxies. Such supermassive black holes are so powerful that activity at their boundaries can ripple throughout their host galaxies.

A strange thing about black holes: they shine.

The current issue of Science features a paper by the Event Horizon telescope team – a collaboration that includes Avery Broderick, Associate Faculty at Perimeter Institute – that may shed light on the origin of the bright jets given off by some black holes. In a world first, the team has been able to look at a distant black hole and find out where its jets are launched from: the "launchpad".

Using a continent-spanning telescope, an international team of astronomers has peered to the edge of a black hole at the center of a distant galaxy. For the first time, they have measured the black hole's "point of no return" - the closest distance that matter can approach before being irretrievably pulled into the black hole.

A black hole is a region in space where the pull of gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. Its boundary is known as the event horizon.

WASHINGTON – Enormous troughs that reach across the asteroid Vesta may actually be stretch marks that hint of a complexity beyond most asteroids. Scientists have been trying to determine the origin of these unusual troughs since their discovery just last year. Now, a new analysis supports the notion that the troughs are faults that formed when a fellow asteroid smacked into Vesta's south pole. The research reinforces the claim that Vesta has a layered interior, a quality normally reserved for larger bodies, such as planets and large moons.

NASA's TRMM satellite measured the rainfall of Super Typhoon Jelawat and Tropical Storm Ewiniar as they continue moving through the western North Pacific Ocean. Super Typhoon Jelawat had super rainfall rates around its eye, while nearby Tropical Storm Ewinar's heaviest rainfall was pushed north and west of its center because of wind shear.

Once a powerful hurricane, Miriam is now a tropical storm off the coast of Baja California, Mexico. Tropical Storm Miriam was seen in the Eastern Pacific Ocean by NOAA's GOES-15 satellite, and the visible image revealed that the strongest part of the storm was north and west of the center.