Heavens

The AIRS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite provided forecasters with an infrared look at what was happening "under the hood" of Tropical Storm Irina's clouds and saw two reasons why it temporarily weakened before moving into the Mozambique Channel and heading for landfall in Mozambique in a couple of days.

Tropical Cyclone 15S has had a difficult "childhood." It was born on March 1 and immediately dealt with a harsh environment. The cyclone weakened within 24 hours to a remnant low pressure area, and NASA's TRMM satellite revealed there was still some strength remaining in the storm.

Astronomers using data from NASA's Hubble Telescope have observed what appears to be a clump of dark matter left behind from a wreck between massive clusters of galaxies. The result could challenge current theories about dark matter that predict galaxies should be anchored to the invisible substance even during the shock of a collision.

PITTSBURGH—The origin of an important type of exploding stars—Type Ia supernovae—have been discovered, thanks to a research team at the University of Pittsburgh.Studying supernovae of this type helps researchers measure galaxy distances and can lead to important astronomical discoveries. A paper detailing this research has been accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Particles from comet 81P/Wild 2 brought to Earth in 2006 by NASA's Stardust spacecraft indicate that Jupiter formed more than three million years after the formation of the first solids in our Solar System. The new finding helps test Solar System formation theories, which do not agree on the timing of Jupiter though it is certain the formation of this giant planet affected how materials moved, collided, and coalesced during the complex planet-forming process.

GREENBELT, Md. -- A new NASA study revealed that the oldest and thickest Arctic sea ice is disappearing at a faster rate than the younger and thinner ice at the edges of the Arctic Ocean's floating ice cap.

Visible and Infrared satellite imagery together provide a clearer picture of what a tropical cyclone is doing. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over newly strengthened Cyclone Irene and captured both types of images, which showed the extent and power of the storm.

The low pressure area called System 92S that tracked across northern Madagascar this week and brought flooding rains has moved into the Mozambique Channel, strengthen and has been renamed Irina. NASA satellites captured a visible image of Irina as it filled up the northern half of the Mozambique Channel.

"We used a trick called earthshine observation to look at the Earth as if it were an exoplanet," says Michael Sterzik (ESO), lead author of the paper [1]. "The Sun shines on the Earth and this light is reflected back to the surface of the Moon. The lunar surface acts as a giant mirror and reflects the Earth's light back to us — and this is what we have observed with the VLT."

Propulsion by a novel jet engine is the crux of the innovation behind a University of Colorado Boulder-developed aircraft that's accelerating toward commercialization.

Jet engine technology can be small, fuel-efficient and cost-effective, at least with Assistant Professor Ryan Starkey's design. The CU-Boulder aerospace engineer, with a team of students, has developed a first-of-its-kind supersonic unmanned aircraft vehicle, or UAV. The UAV, which is currently in a prototype state, is expected to fly farther and faster -- using less fuel -- than anything remotely similar to date.

The prevailing model for planetary accretion, also called fractal assembly, and dating back as far as the 18th century, assumes that the Solar System's planets grew as small grains colliding chaotically, coalescing into bigger ones, colliding yet more until they formed planetesimals. The planetesimals then collided until they formed planets as varied as the Earth and Jupiter.

The model assumes that this occurred in an extremely hot (as high as 1,600 degrees Celsius) environment for the inner Solar System, fostered by a dusty, two-dimensional disk post-dating the Sun.

A weak tropical low pressure area known as System 92S, and locally called Irina caused flooding over northern Madagascar less than two weeks after deadly flooding by Tropical Cyclone Giovanna in the south and central part of the island nation. NASA's TRMM satellite measured System 92S's rainfall over Madagascar, and measured some high rain totals.

System 92S didn't have very strong winds when it passed over the coastal city of Vohemar on Madagascar's northeastern coast over the last couple of days, but street flooding was reported.

NASA satellites have been watching the low pressure area called System 92S for days, and infrared imagery from NASA's Aqua satellite showed cloud temperatures were cooling, indicating the storm was getting more organized after it moved over northern Madagascar. Now it may be headed for landfall in Mozambique.

Fairbanks, Alaska -- On Saturday, Feb. 18 at 8:41 p.m. Alaska time, scientists launched a NASA sounding rocket from Poker Flat Research Range into a brilliant aurora display. The rocket mission, designed to gather information on space weather conditions that affect satellite communications, was a success.

A curious correlation between the mass of a galaxy's central black hole and the velocity of stars in a vast, roughly spherical structure known as its bulge has puzzled astronomers for years. An international team led by Francesco Tombesi at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., now has identified a new type of black-hole-driven outflow that appears to be both powerful enough and common enough to explain this link.

CLEMSON — A study of X-rays emitted a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away has unmasked a stellar mass black hole in Andromeda, a spiral galaxy about 2.6 million light-years from Earth.

Two Clemson University researchers joined an an international team of astronomers, including scientists at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, in publishing their findings in a pair of scientific journals this week.