Heavens

According to the Southern Area Coordination Center, which monitors and coordinates response to incidents throughout the Southeast, there are currently seven large fires burning in this area of the country. Six of them are located in the state of Oklahoma and the seventh is in the Gulf area of Louisiana. These fires currently have burned over 7,600 acres. The majority of the fires on this image, though, are not wildfires, but are prescribed fires.

Water, salts and gases dissolved in the huge ocean that scientists believe could exist below Europa´s icy crust can rise to the surface generating the enigmatic geological formations associated to red-tinged materials that can be seen on this Jupiter's satellite. This is confirmed by the experiment carried out in the laboratory with water, carbon dioxide and magnesium sulfate by researchers at Centro de Astrobiología (CAB, Spain).

If Galileo was still alive and kicking, he might want to take a selfie with some of the thousands of citizen scientists all around the world for their surprisingly accurate work of counting craters on the pock-marked moon.

The sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, peaking at 6:34 p.m. EDT on March 12, 2014, and NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, captured an image of it. 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.

Tropical Cyclone Lusi is battling vertical wind shear that has been pushing the bulk of precipitation away from its center. NASA's Terra satellite captured an image of the storm that showed the strongest thunderstorms were being pushed away from the center.

On March 12 at 22:25 UTC/6:25 p.m. EDT, The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Cyclone Lusi in the South Pacific Ocean. The image showed a concentration of thunderstorms just south of the center of circulation.

Ex-Tropical Cyclone Gillian weakened to a remnant low pressure area after making landfall in the Western Cape York Peninsula of Queensland, Australia then returned into the Gulf of Carpentaria. NASA's Aqua satellite flew over the tropical low as it struggled to re-intensify.

Tropical Cyclone Hadi is now a remnant low pressure area in the Southern Pacific Ocean. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the storm and captured a visible image of it on March 12.

When NASA's Aqua satellite flew over Hadi's remnants, the MODIS instrument aboard captured a visible image that showed the strongest thunderstorms associated with the low appeared south of the center of circulation. The center was located near 15.1 south and 156.1 east, about 585 nautical miles/673.2 miles/ 1,083 km west of Vanuatu.

LOS ANGELES (March 12, 2014) – Researchers at the Barbra Streisand Women's Heart Center at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute have found that emotional stressors – such as those provoking anger – may cause changes in the nervous system that controls heart rate and trigger a type of coronary artery dysfunction that occurs more frequently in women than men.

They will describe their findings at the American Psychosomatic Society's annual meeting on March 13 in San Francisco.

Tropical Cyclone Lusi reached hurricane force as NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead early on March 12.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Cyclone Lusi that showed the storm's western quadrant affecting Vanuatu on March 12 at 02:05 UTC. In the MODIS image, Lusi had the distinct comma shape of a mature tropical cyclone, however no eye was visible. However, animated multispectral satellite imagery does show a ragged eye with tightly curved bands of thunderstorms wrapping into it.

Tropical Cyclone Hadi is now a remnant low pressure area in the Southern Pacific Ocean. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the storm and captured a visible image of it on March 12.

When NASA's Aqua satellite flew over Hadi's remnants, the MODIS instrument aboard captured a visible image that showed the strongest thunderstorms associated with the low appeared south of the center of circulation. The center was located near 15.1 south and 156.1 east, about 585 nautical miles/673.2 miles/ 1,083 km west of Vanuatu.

Using ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), Olivier Chesneau (Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, Nice, France) and an international team of collaborators have found that the yellow hypergiant star HR 5171 A [1] is absolutely huge — 1300 times the diameter of the Sun and much bigger than was expected [2]. This makes it the largest yellow star known.

NASA's Aqua and TRMM satellites have been providing rainfall data, cloud heights and temperature and other valuable information to forecasters at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center as they track Tropical Cyclones Hadi and Lusi in the South Pacific.

Pasadena, CA— Some galaxies grew up in a hurry. Most of the galaxies that have been observed from the early days of the universe were young and actively forming stars. Now, an international team of astronomers, including Carnegie's Eric Persson and Andy Monson, have discovered galaxies that were already mature and massive in the early days. Fifteen mature galaxies were found at a record-breaking average distance of 12 billion light years, when the universe was just 1.6 billion years old.

PITTSBURGH—Too much garlic mustard in your neighborhood forest? Actually, the problem may be too many deer.

A research team led by Susan Kalisz, professor of evolutionary ecology in the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Biological Sciences, published a paper online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that takes a long view on why invasive garlic mustard plants thrive to the detriment of native species.

The JTWC noted that animated infrared imagery showed that the convection over the weak low-level circulation was poorly organized. Radar imagery showed that bands of thunderstorms were fragmented over the northwestern quadrant of the low pressure area.