The Milky Way galaxy is orbited by more than 150 globular star clusters, which are balls of hundreds of thousands of old stars dating back to the formation of the galaxy. One of these, along with several others in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer), was found in the late eighteenth century by the French comet hunter Charles Messier and given the designation Messier 54.
Heavens
Pasadena, CA—Quasars are supermassive black holes that live at the center of distant massive galaxies. They shine as the most luminous beacons in the sky across the entire electromagnetic spectrum by rapidly accreting matter into their gravitationally inescapable centers. New work from Carnegie's Hubble Fellow Yue Shen and Luis Ho of the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (KIAA) at Peking University solves a quasar mystery that astronomers have been puzzling over for 20 years.
This simulated flyby of NASA's TRMM satellite on Sept. 8 saw rain falling at a rate of over 62 mm (2.4 inches) per hour in some downpours over Arizona. Some thunderstorm tops reached heights of 13.5 km (about 8.4 miles).
Image Credit:SSAI/NASA, Hal Pierce
Objects in space tend to spin — and spin in a way that's totally different from the way they spin on earth. Understanding how objects are spinning, where their centers of mass are, and how their mass is distributed is crucial to any number of actual or potential space missions, from cleaning up debris in the geosynchronous orbit favored by communications satellites to landing a demolition crew on a comet.
The Eastern Pacific Ocean continues to turn out tropical cyclones and NASA's Aqua satellite caught the birth of the fifteenth tropical depression on September 10 and shortly afterward, it strengthened into a tropical storm and was renamed Odile.
The 790 Fire in Oregon began as a lightning strike on July 31, 2014. Over 3,000 acres have been affected by this fire which is 54% contained. In the next 12 to 48 hours there is a potential risk to Sky Lakes Wilderness and natural resources including the Northern Spotted Owl habitat, Coho habitat, water quality, the Pacific Crest Trail, and Cherry Creek Research Natural Area. Area and trail closures exist on the Pacific Crest Trail. The weather is not helping the fire fighters with gusty winds and low relative humidity.
The sun emitted a significant solar flare, peaking at 1:48 p.m. EDT on Sept. 10, 2014. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured images of the event.
Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground. However -- when intense enough -- they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.
Lower rates of suicide are associated with more daily sunshine in the prior 14 to 60 days.
Light interacts with brain serotonin systems and possibly influences serotonin-related behaviors. Those behaviors, such as mood and impulsiveness, can play a role in suicide.
University of Cincinnati geography researchers have developed a large-scale mapping technique to track a variety of demographic data across the United States, including researching populations based on gender, race and economic diversity. Details on the technique behind the new, high resolution, grid-based map of U.S. demographics developed by Anna Dmowska, a postdoctoral fellow for UC's Space Informatics Lab, and Tomasz Stepinski, the Thomas Jefferson Chair Professor of Space Exploration at UC, are published in this month's issue of Applied Geography.
Rice University wireless researchers have found a way to make the most of the unused UHF TV spectrum by serving up fat streams of data over wireless hotspots that could stretch for miles.
In a presentation today at the Association for Computing Machinery's MobiCom 2014 conference in Maui, Hawaii, researchers from Rice's Wireless Network Group will unveil a multiuser, multiantenna transmission scheme for UHF, a portion of the radio spectrum that is traditionally reserved for television broadcasts.
NASA's Terra satellite captured an image of Tropical Storm Fengshen as it continued moving away from the east coast of Japan. Satellite imagery showed that the storm resembled a frontal system more than a tropical storm because it appeared stretched from southwest to northeast
Storms have been the major cause of the huge fires that California has been battling in its northern regions.
A lightning strike from a storm on August 12, 2014 started the fires in the Happy Camp Complex. There are currently 99,200 acres affected and the fire complex is at 30% containment.
Washington, D.C.—A team of scientists led by Carnegie's Jacqueline Faherty has discovered the first evidence of water ice clouds on an object outside of our own Solar System. Water ice clouds exist on our own gas giant planets--Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune--but have not been seen outside of the planets orbiting our Sun until now. Their findings are published by The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Many people are unaware that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's mandated nutrition labels are based on a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet, but a simple weekly text message reminder can greatly improve that awareness, according to a new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
While not an outright recommendation, the 2,000-calorie benchmark is what the FDA considers a reasonable daily calorie intake for many adults. More importantly, nutrition labels on food products sold in the U.S. are based on it.
PITTSBURGH—A smart headlight developed at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute enables drivers to take full advantage of their high beams without fear of blinding oncoming drivers or suffering from the glare that can occur when driving in snow or rain at night.