Heavens

Berkeley, CA -- The price of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems installed on homes and small businesses spans a wide range, and researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have published a new study that reveals the key market and system drivers for low-priced PV systems.

NASA satellites and instruments have been monitoring Tropical Cyclone Victor, a hurricane in the South Pacific Ocean with a large eye. NASA's Aqua satellite, NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite and the RapidScat instrument aboard the International Space Station have all gathered data on the storm.

The RapidScat instrument that flies aboard the International Space Station measured Tropical Cyclone Victor's wind speed at the surface. Surface wind speed is always lower than speeds at higher altitude.

A new paradigm for the development of photo-bioelectrochemical cells has been reported in the journal Nature Energy by researchers from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in Israel, and the University of Bochum, in Germany.

The design of photo-bioelectrochemical cells based on native photosynthetic reaction is attracting substantial recent interest as a means for the conversion of solar light energy into electrical power.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Parents may intend to set strong limits on their teen drivers but their kids may not always be getting the message, a new nationally-representative poll suggests.

In families where parents reported limitations on their teen drivers -- such as restricting cell phone use, number of teen passengers and driving times and locations -- teens themselves sometimes said they did not have those limitations, according to the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health.

Tropical Storm Alex quickly acquired extra-tropical characteristics late on Jan. 15, 2016 as it sped northward toward Greenland in the North Atlantic Ocean. A GOES-East satellite image on Jan. 16 showed the elongated system south of Greenland.

Tropical Storm Alex became extra-tropical by Jan. 15, 2016 at 2100 UTC (4 p.m. EST). At that time the National Hurricane Center issued their final warning on the system and said "Satellite images and surface observations indicate that Alex has lost its tropical characteristics."

Daejeon, Republic of Korea, January 18, 2016--The 1974 American disaster film Towering Inferno depicted well the earnest struggles of firefighters engaged in ending a fire at a 138-story skyscraper. To this day, fires at high-rise buildings are considered one of the most dangerous disasters.

To investigate the influence of gravity on the propagation of light, researchers usually have to examine astronomical length scales and huge masses. However, physicists at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) and Friedrich Schiller University Jena have shown that there is another way. In a recent issue of the journal Nature Photonics they find the answers to astronomical questions in the laboratory, shifting the focus to a previously underappreciated material property - surface curvature.*

A team of astronomers led by Tomoharu Oka, a professor at Keio University in Japan, has found an enigmatic gas cloud, called CO-0.40-0.22, only 200 light years away from the center of the Milky Way. What makes CO-0.40-0.22 unusual is its surprisingly wide velocity dispersion: the cloud contains gas with a very wide range of speeds. The team found this mysterious feature with two radio telescopes, the Nobeyama 45-m Telescope in Japan and the ASTE Telescope in Chile, both operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

The most luminous galaxy known in the Universe - the quasar W2246-0526, seen when the Universe was less than 10% of its current age - is so turbulent that it is in the process of ejecting its entire supply of star-forming gas, according to new observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA).

The most luminous galaxy in the Universe - a so-called obscured quasar 12.4 billion light-years away - is so violently turbulent that it may eventually jettison its entire supply of star-forming gas, according to new observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA).

January 14, 2016 -- UPTON, NY -- Standard cosmology -- that is, the Big Bang Theory with its early period of exponential growth known as inflation -- is the prevailing scientific model for our universe, in which the entirety of space and time ballooned out from a very hot, very dense point into a homogeneous and ever-expanding vastness. This theory accounts for many of the physical phenomena we observe. But what if that's not all there was to it?

COLUMBUS, Ohio--Right now, astronomers are viewing a ball of hot gas billions of light years away that is radiating the energy of hundreds of billions of suns. At its heart is an object a little larger than 10 miles across.

And astronomers are not entirely sure what it is.

If, as they suspect, the gas ball is the result of a supernova, then it's the most powerful supernova ever seen.

Pasadena, CA--A team of astronomers, including Carnegie's Benjamin Shappee, Nidia Morrell, and Ian Thompson, has discovered the most-luminous supernova ever observed, called ASAS-SN-15lh. Their findings are published in Science.

Records are made to be broken, as the expression goes, but rarely are records left so thoroughly in the dust. Stunned astronomers have witnessed a cosmic explosion about 200 times more powerful than a typical supernova--events which already rank amongst the mightiest outbursts in the universe--and more than twice as luminous as the previous record-holding supernova.

In a new study, researchers describe the most luminous supernova yet observed, which resides in an unusual host galaxy. The discovery will provide important insights into super-luminous supernovae (SLSNe) and how they affect their host galaxies. SLSNe were first identified less than two decades ago and little is known about these exceptionally bright exploding stars. The new, record-breaking supernova was discovered last June using the All-Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae system.