Heavens

Cambridge, MA - In 1987, light from an exploding star in a neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, reached Earth. Named Supernova 1987A, it was the closest supernova explosion witnessed in almost 400 years, allowing astronomers to study it in unprecedented detail as it evolves.

Today a team of astronomers announced that the supernova debris, which has faded over the years is now brightening. This shows that a different power source has begun to light the debris, and marks the transition from a supernova to a supernova remnant.

The first tropical depression in the Eastern Pacific Ocean is now the first tropical storm, and two satellites are providing NASA insights into its thunderstorms, rainfall, and intensity. NASA satellite data on newly born Tropical Storm Adrian shows high cloud tops and moderate rainfall, indications that the storm is getting stronger, triggering a tropical storm watch in Mexico.

Although adding gravel to a river to replace lost sediments won't likely cool the whole river channel, it can create cool water refuges that protect fish from thermal pollution, according to a U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station study.

The research—featured in the June 2011 issue of Science Findings, a monthly publication of the station—is among the first to explore the interplay between sub-surface water flow and temperature in large rivers and is helping to guide river restoration strategies in the Pacific Northwest.

They say that history is written by the victors. But the combatants, fundamental to the outcome of war, rarely appear in this history – whether victors or vanquished. University of the Basque Country anthropologists Pío Pérez and Ignazio Aiestaran have rebelled against this injustice, "uncovering" the memory of those who fought in the trenches in the 1936 war in Spain.

WASHINGTON, June 8—Scientists today reported that the tiny light-sensing cells known as rods have been clearly and directly imaged in the living eye for the first time. Using adaptive optics (AO), the same technology astronomers use to study distant stars and galaxies, scientists can see through the murky distortion of the outer eye, revealing the eye's cellular structure with unprecedented detail.

The VLT Survey Telescope (VST) is the latest telescope to be added to ESO's Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. It is housed in an enclosure immediately adjacent to the four VLT Unit Telescopes on the summit of Cerro Paranal under the pristine skies of one of the best observing sites on Earth. The VST is a wide-field survey telescope with a field of view twice as broad as the full Moon. It is the largest telescope in the world designed to exclusively survey the sky in visible light.

The Sun unleashed an M-2 (medium-sized) solar flare, an S1-class (minor) radiation storm and a spectacular coronal mass ejection (CME) on June 7, 2011 from sunspot complex 1226-1227. The large cloud of particles mushroomed up and fell back down looking as if it covered an area of almost half the solar surface.