Heavens

The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) has helped to establish that femtosecond comb lasers can provide accurate measurement of absolute distance in formation flying space missions.

NPL, along with collaborators, produced technical reports for the European Space Agency. The conclusions demonstrated that the lasers were a suitable method for measurement in such missions.

Herschel has delivered spectacular vistas of cold gas clouds lying near the plane of the Milky Way, revealing intense, unexpected activity. The dark, cool region is dotted with stellar factories, like pearls on a cosmic string.

On 3 September, Herschel aimed its telescope at a reservoir of cold gas in the constellation of the Southern Cross near the Galactic Plane. As her telescope scanned the sky, the spacecraft's SPIRE and PACS instruments snapped the pictures. The region is located about 60° from the Galactic Centre, thousands of light-years from Earth.

Warnings have been posted in the extreme northeastern Philippines as Parma has powered up into a Super Typhoon, and its new forecast track takes it over the northeastern tip of the Philippines, and three NASA satellites are keeping tabs on it.

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite, orbits the Earth and measures the amount of rainfall created by a tropical cyclone. When Typhoon Ketsana (known in the Phillippines as "Ondoy") made landfall early this past weekend TRMM was monitoring its rainfall. That data was used to create a 3-D map of rainfall over the Philippines from September 21-28.

According to the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA), Ketsana dropped 17.9 inches (455 mm) of rain in Manila in just 24 hours on Saturday, September 26.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The most ambitious attempt yet to trace the history of the universe has seen "first light." The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III), took its first astronomical data on the night of Sept. 14-15 at the Sloan Foundation telescope in New Mexico.

At 11 a.m. EDT on October first, the eighteenth tropical depression of the Eastern Pacific hurricane season was born. He's a little guy, but is likely going to grow up to be a tropical storm and get the name Olaf later today or tomorrow. He's not, however, expected to reach hurricane strength.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed the Student Aid Financial Responsibility Act to address problems with the current financial aid system. The act calls for several changes to simplify the Federal Application for Student Financial Aid- FAFSA. In a new study, a University of Missouri researcher found flaws in the FAFSA's method for assessing net worth that can create inequalities in the distribution of financial aid.

Berkeley, CA - BOSS, the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, is the most ambitious attempt yet to map the expansion history of the Universe using the technique known as baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO). A part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III), BOSS achieved "first light" on the night of September 14-15, when it acquired data with an upgraded spectrographic system across the entire focal plane of the Sloan Foundation 2.5-meter telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The catastrophic decline around the world of "apex" predators such as wolves, cougars, lions or sharks has led to a huge increase in smaller "mesopredators" that are causing major economic and ecological disruptions, a new study concludes.

WASHINGTON - During its 2009 annual meeting, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) will present two awards for extraordinary impacts on the engineering profession. The Academy's Founders Award will be given to JOHN CASANI, who has made important contributions to deep space exploration, and SHEILA WIDNALL will receive the Arthur M. Bueche Award for leadership in expanding the opportunities for women and minorities in engineering. The awards will be presented at a ceremony on Sunday, Oct. 4.

KNOXVILLE -- Mercury pollution is a persistent problem in the environment. Human activity has lead to increasingly large accumulations of the toxic chemical, especially in waterways, where fish and shellfish tend to act as sponges for the heavy metal.

It's that persistent and toxic nature that has flummoxed scientists for years in the quest to find ways to mitigate the dangers posed by the buildup of mercury in its most toxic form, methylmercury.

Two tropical cyclones in the Western Pacific are keeping in tune to the 1969 hit song by the Beatles, "Come Together." Tropical Depression 18W and Tropical Storm Parma are already beginning to merge now that 18W made landfall in Guam and dissipated. 18W did bring gusty winds and heavy downpours to Guam, and will continue to affect the surf over the next day or two.

NOAA and Norwegian researchers recently completed a comparative analysis of marine ecosystems in the North Atlantic and North Pacific to see what factors support fisheries production, leading to new insights that could improve fishery management plans and the ecosystems.

So accustomed are we to the sunshine, rain, fog and snow of our home planet that we find it next to impossible to imagine a different atmosphere and other forms of precipitation.

To be sure, Dr. Seuss came up with a green gluey substance called oobleck that fell from the skies and gummed up the Kingdom of Didd, but it had to be conjured up by wizards and was clearly a thing of magic.

Not so the atmosphere of COROT-7b, an exoplanet discovered last February by the COROT space telescope launched by the French and European space agencies.

Ram pressure is the drag force that results when something moves through a fluid — much like the wind you feel in your face when bicycling, even on a still day — and occurs in this context as galaxies orbiting about the centre of the cluster move through the intra-cluster medium, which then sweeps out gas from within the galaxies.