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Tropical Cyclone 05B forms southeast of Chennai, India

Tropical Cyclone 05B has formed out of "System 96B" in the Northern Indian Ocean and is forecast to approach southeastern India by Sunday, December 13 and make landfall on Monday.

On Friday, December 11 at 15:00 UTC (10 a.m. ET or 8 p.m. local Asia/ Kolkata time in Chennai, India), Tropical Storm 05B had maximum sustained winds near 40 mph. It was located about 370 nautical miles southeast of Chennai, India, near 9.3 North latitude and 85.1 East longitude. It was moving north-northeast near 7mph, but is expected to gradually turn west and head for landfall.

Weir in space and dimmed sun creates 200-million-mile-long lab bench for turbulence research

Physicists working in space plasmas have made clever use of the Ulysses spacecraft and the solar minimum to create a massive virtual lab bench to provide a unique test for the science underlying turbulent flows.

VISTA: Pioneering new survey telescope starts work

VISTA is the latest telescope to be added to ESO's Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. It is housed on the peak adjacent to the one hosting the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) and shares the same exceptional observing conditions. VISTA's main mirror is 4.1 metres across and is the most highly curved mirror of this size and quality ever made — its deviations from a perfect surface are less than a few thousandths of the thickness of a human hair — and its construction and polishing presented formidable challenges.

Scientists observe super-massive black holes using Keck Observatory in Hawaii

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– An international team of scientists has observed four super-massive black holes at the center of galaxies, which may provide new information on how these central black hole systems operate. Their findings are published in December's first issue of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Researchers explain Iapetus's yin-yang appearance

ITHACA, N.Y. - Iapetus is often called Saturn's most bizarre moon, due to its starkly contrasting hemispheres – one black as coal, the other white as snow.

Images taken by the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, orbiting Saturn since 2004, offer the most compelling evidence to date of why and how the moon got its yin-yang appearance, as well as clues to how other such satellites might have formed in the early universe. Analyzed by a research team that includes Cornell scientists, the images are detailed in the Dec. 10 online edition of the journal Science.

Cassini closes in on the centuries-old mystery of Saturn's moon Iapetus

Extensive analyses and modeling of Cassini imaging and heat-mapping data have confirmed and extended previous ideas that migrating ice, triggered by infalling reddish dust that darkens and warms the surface, may explain the mysterious two-toned "yin-yang" appearance of Saturn's moon Iapetus. The results, published online Dec. 10 in a pair of papers in the journal Science, provide what may be the most plausible explanation to date for the moon's bizarre appearance, which has puzzled astronomers for more than 300 years.

A novel, 10,000-year study of strata compaction and sea-level rise on English coast

PHILADELPHIA –- Environmental scientists at the University of Pennsylvania and Durham University have employed a novel combination of geological and model reconstructions of wetland environments during a 10,000-year period to address spatial variations in sea-level history and provide quantitative estimates of subsidence along the east coast of England.

Suzaku catches retreat of a black hole's disk

Studies of one of the galaxy's most active black-hole binaries reveal a dramatic change that will help scientists better understand how these systems expel fast-moving particle jets.

Binary systems where a normal star is paired with a black hole often produce large swings in X-ray emission and blast jets of gas at speeds exceeding one-third that of light. What fuels this activity is gas pulled from the normal star, which spirals toward the black hole and piles up in a dense accretion disk.

First known binary star is discovered to be a triplet, quadruplet, quintuplet, sextuplet system

In ancient times, people with exceptional vision discovered that one of the brightest stars in the Big Dipper was, in fact, two stars so close together that most people cannot distinguish them. The two stars, Alcor and Mizar, were the first binary stars—a pair of stars that orbit each other—ever known.

Modern telescopes have since found that Mizar is itself a pair of binaries, revealing what was once thought of as a single star to be four stars orbiting each other. Alcor has been sometimes considered a fifth member of the system, orbiting far away from the Mizar quadruplet.

Alcor B - red dwarf companion found in the Big Dipper

Next time you spy the Big Dipper, keep in mind that there is another star, invisible to the unaided eye, contributing to this constellation. According to a new paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, one of the stars that makes the bend in the ladle's handle, Alcor, has a smaller red dwarf companion.

3C 454.3: brightest-ever blazar flare

A galaxy located billions of light-years away is commanding the attention of NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and astronomers around the globe. Thanks to a series of flares that began September 15, the galaxy is now the brightest source in the gamma-ray sky -- more than ten times brighter than it was in the summer.

Astronomers identify the object as 3C 454.3, an active galaxy located 7.2 billion light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. But even among active galaxies, it's exceptional.

Polarization neatness: Magnetic power revealed in gamma-ray burst jet

A specialized camera on a telescope operated by U.K. astronomers from Liverpool has made the first measurement of magnetic fields in the afterglow of a gamma-ray burst (GRB). The result is reported in the Dec.10 issue of Nature magazine by the team of Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) astronomers who built and operate the telescope and its unique scientific camera, named RINGO.

Cyclone Cleo has reached its maximum wind speed

NASA Satellites noticed that Tropical Cyclone Cleo had reached its maximum strength, and was now moving into areas that will weaken it. Cleo's maximum sustained winds were near 115 mph (100 knots), with gusts to (138 mph) 120 knots today, December 9, 2009.

Two NASA satellites, Aqua and the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite captured three different views of Cleo earlier today. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on Aqua captured an infrared and visible image of Cleo, while TRMM was able to see the rate of rainfall within the storm.

Older dental fillings contain form of mercury unlikely to be toxic

A new study on the surface chemistry of silver-colored, mercury-based dental fillings suggests that the surface forms of mercury may be less toxic than previously thought. It appears online in ACS' journal Chemical Research in Toxicology.

Safer space vehicles thanks to optic fiber sensors

A research team from the TECNALIA Technological Corporation, through its Aerospace Unit, together with the ITEAM Institute at the Valencia Polytechnic University, the ilicitana Emxys aerospace company and the Institute for Photonic Sciences (ICFO), have developed a new protection system for the European Space Agency (ESA) through which safety for space vehicles is enhanced.