Heavens

A network of cameras deployed around the Arctic in support of NASA's THEMIS mission has made a startling discovery about the Northern Lights. Sometimes, vast curtains of aurora borealis collide, producing spectacular outbursts of light. Movies of the phenomenon were unveiled at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union today in San Francisco.

Although the center of Tropical Cyclone Laurence has been over land for two days, it's still holding together and bringing heavy rains and gusty winds to the northern coastal areas of West Australia and will do so into the weekend. Warnings and watches are still in effect in some areas as Laurence will continue moving west before re-entering the Southern Indian Ocean.

At a very early age, children learn how to classify objects according to their shape. Now, new research suggests studying the shape of the aftermath of supernovas may allow astronomers to do the same.

A new study of images from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory on supernova remnants - the debris from exploded stars - shows that the symmetry of the remnants, or lack thereof, reveals how the star exploded. This is an important discovery because it shows that the remnants retain information about how the star exploded even though hundreds or thousands of years have passed.

New research by the University of Adelaide could help explain why some people are more prone to Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis and other autoimmune diseases.

A critical imbalance of the regulatory cells required to control the immune system has been revealed among people suffering inflammatory bowel disease.

Laurence is still a tropical cyclone even though the storm has made landfall in northern West Australia and is moving over land. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite noticed some powerful and high thunderstorms in Laurence before he made landfall, and the storm is still maintaining intensity for now, but that will wane as the storm continues to interact with the friction caused by traveling over land.

Astronomers announced today that they have discovered a "super-Earth" orbiting a red dwarf star 40 light-years from Earth. They found the distant planet with a small fleet of ground-based telescopes no larger than those many amateur astronomers have in their backyards. Although the super-Earth is too hot to sustain life, the discovery shows that current, ground-based technologies are capable of finding almost-Earth-sized planets in warm, life-friendly orbits.

The discovery is being published in the December 17 issue of the journal Nature.

In this week's issue of Nature, astronomers announce the discovery of a planet around the nearby, low-mass star GJ1214 [2]. It is the second time a transiting super-Earth has been detected, after the recent discovery of the planet Corot-7b [3]. A transit occurs when the planet's orbit is aligned so that we see it crossing the face of its parent star. The newly discovered planet has a mass about six times that of our terrestrial home and 2.7 times its radius, falling in size between the Earth and the ice giants of the Solar System, Uranus and Neptune.

Herschel has peered inside an unseen stellar nursery and revealed surprising amounts of activity. Some 700 newly-forming stars are estimated to be crowded into filaments of dust stretching through the image. The image is the first new release of 'OSHI', ESA's Online Showcase of Herschel Images.

GREENBELT, Md. -- NASA's Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) satellite has captured five complete polar seasons of noctilucent (NLC) or "night-shining" clouds with an unprecedented horizontal resolution of 3 miles by 3 miles. Results show that the cloud season turns on and off like a "geophysical light bulb" and they reveal evidence that high altitude mesospheric "weather" may follow similar patterns as our ever-changing weather near the Earth's surface. These findings were unveiled today at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union today in San Francisco.

GREENBELT, Md. – NASA's current mission in orbit around the moon, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, has been providing crucial insights about our nearest celestial neighbor since its launch in June. At a scientific meeting today, researchers unveiled the latest findings from three instruments of the powerful suite of seven aboard the satellite. LRO is expected to return more data about the moon than all previous orbital missions combined.

Starting from the end of November, Queen Mary's Particle Physics Research Centre is the sole recipient of the T2K experiment data. The T2K Collaboration is a 500-strong alliance of scientists in 12 countries, who have come together to investigate the ghostly neutrino.

Tropical Cyclone Laurence made landfall in Northwestern Australia this morning (Eastern Time) December 15, 2009. NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Laurence just before the center of the storm made landfall at 0503 UTC (12:03 a.m. ET). The Moderate Resolution Image Spectroradiometer instrument on Aqua captured the image.

For the first time, astronomers have photographed these dramatic changes in detail. They reported their work in the December 10 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

"We have essentially created an animation of a pulsating star using real images," stated Lacour. "Our observations show that the pulsation is not only radial, but comes with inhomogeneities, like the giant hotspot that appeared at minimum radius."

'While shepherds watched' was the first carol to cross over to the Church of England from the secular, folk tradition and carol singers might be surprised to hear that it used to be commonly sung to the tune 'Cranbrook', better known as 'Ilkley Moor' ('On Ilkla Moor baht 'at'') according to research by a hymn expert from Durham University.

The tune used in most church services today is one of many variations used over the 300-year history of this much-loved carol according to Professor Jeremy Dibble a hymnologist in the Department of Music at Durham University.

Tropical Depression 05B is dissipating on the east coast of Sri Lanka today and over the next couple of days, but not before bringing some moderate and heavy rain over the next couple of days to some areas in Sri Lanka and the southeast coast of India, from Chennai, southward.