Princeton researchers have found a simple and economic way to nearly triple the efficiency of organic solar cells, the cheap and flexible plastic devices that many scientists believe could be the future of solar power.
Heavens
Forty years after the last Apollo spacecraft launched, the science from those missions continues to shape our view of the moon. In one of the latest developments, readings from the Apollo 14 and 15 dust detectors have been restored by scientists with the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
"This is the first look at the fully calibrated, digital dust data from the Apollo 14 and 15 missions," said David Williams, a Goddard scientist and data specialist at NSSDC, NASA's permanent archive for space science mission data.
NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, or TRMM satellite can estimate rainfall rates from its orbit in space, and its data is also used to compile estimated rainfall totals. NASA just released an image showing those rainfall totals over the Philippines, where severe flooding killed several hundred people. Bopha is now a tropical storm in the South China Sea.
High winds, flooding and landslides from heavy rains with Typhoon Bopha have caused close to 300 deaths in the southern Philippines.
Thanks to improved data analysis techniques and a new operating mode, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) aboard NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is now 10 times better at catching the brief outbursts of high-energy light mysteriously produced above thunderstorms.
The latest telescope at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile -- the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) -- was inaugurated today at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) Observatory of Capodimonte, in Naples, Italy. The ceremony was attended by the Mayor of Naples, Luigi De Magistris, the INAF President, Giovanni Bignami, the ESO representatives Bruno Leibundgut and Roberto Tamai, and the main promoter of the telescope, Massimo Capaccioli of the University of Naples Federico II and INAF.
In Hubble's image, NGC 922 clearly reveals itself not to be a normal spiral galaxy. The spiral arms are disrupted, a stream of stars extends out towards the top of the image, and a bright ring of nebulae encircles the core. Observing with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory reveals more chaos in the form of ultraluminous X-ray sources dotted around the galaxy.
In July 2012, farmers in the U.S. Midwest and Plains regions watched crops wilt and die after a stretch of unusually low precipitation and high temperatures. Before a lack of rain and record-breaking heat signaled a problem, however, scientists observed another indication of drought in data from NASA and NOAA satellites: plant stress.
Typhoon Bopha proved deadly to residents in the Mindanao region of the Philippines after ravaging islands in Micronesia. NASA's Aqua and TRMM satellites peered at the storm inside and out, providing forecasters with valuable data as the storm moved into the South China Sea.
"The use of the day-night band by the National Weather Service isgrowing," said Mitch Goldberg, program scientist for NOAA's JointPolar Satellite System. For example, the NOAA Weather Service'sforecast office in Monterey, Calif., is now using VIIRS day-nightband images to improve monitoring and forecasting of fog and lowclouds for high air traffic coastal airports like San Francisco.According to Goldberg, VIIRS images were used on Nov. 26, the Mondayafter Thanksgiving, to map the dense fog in the San Francisco Bayarea that resulted in flight delays and cancellations.
SAN FRANCISCO—Satellite observations have revealed the first direct evidence of smoke from Arctic wildfires drifting over the Greenland ice sheet, tarnishing the ice with soot and making it more likely to melt under the sun.
At the American Geophysical Union meeting this week, an Ohio State University researcher presented images from NASA's Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) satellite, which captured smoke from Arctic fires billowing out over Greenland during the summer of 2012.
Astronomers have found the youngest still-forming solar system yet seen, an infant star surrounded by a swirling disk of dust and gas more than 450 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus.
The star currently has about one-fifth the mass of the Sun, but, the scientists say, will likely pull in material from its surroundings to eventually match the Sun's mass. The disk surrounding the young star contains at least enough mass to make seven Jupiters, the largest planet in our Solar System.
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- As far back in time as astronomers have been able to see, the universe has had some trace of heavy elements, such as carbon and oxygen. These elements, originally churned from the explosion of massive stars, formed the building blocks for planetary bodies, and eventually for life on Earth.
SAN FRANCISCO—In the search for rogue nukes, researchers have discovered an unlikely tool: astronomical radio telescopes.
Ohio State University researchers previously demonstrated another unlikely tool, when they showed that South Korean GPS stations detected telltale atmospheric disturbances from North Korea's 2009 nuclear test.
Both techniques were born out of the discovery that underground nuclear explosions leave their mark—on the outer reaches of Earth's atmosphere.
Many galaxies have a giant black hole at their centre that causes the gas around it to glow. However, in the case of green bean galaxies, the entire galaxy is glowing, not just the centre. These new observations reveal the largest and brightest glowing regions ever found, thought to be powered by central black holes that were formerly very active but are now switching off.
SANTA CRUZ, CA--An ongoing investigation of elevated mercury levels in coastal fog in California suggests that upwelling of deep ocean water along the coast brings mercury to the surface, where it enters the atmosphere and is absorbed by fog.