Scientists plan to use the moon as a mirror to watch this year’s June 5-6 transit of Venus with the Hubble Space Telescope. That’s because Hubble can’t look at the sun directly – the bright light could damage the telescope’s super-sensitive instruments.This
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed that movement in sand dune fields on the Red Planet occurs on a surprisingly large scale, about the same as in dune fields on Earth.This is unexpected because Mars has a much thinner atmosphere than Earth, is only about
A transit of Venus is the observed passage of the planet across the disk of the Sun. The planet Venus, orbiting the Sun “on the inside track,” catches up to and passes the slower Earth. Venus, appearing as a small dot in the foreground, will move from left to
This weekend will provide the full Moon’s closest approach of the year to Earth. On Saturday, May 5, 2012 the Moon could appear as much as 14% bigger and 30% brighter than other full Moons of 2012, according to some calculations.Every month, as the Moon circles the
A new National Research Council report says that budget shortfalls, cost-estimate growth, launch failures, and changes in mission design and scope have left U.S. earth observation systems in a more precarious position than they were five years ago.The report cautions
The Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft carrying Commander Dan Burbank and Flight Engineers Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin landed in Kazakhstan on Friday, April 27 at 11:45 UTC (7:45 a.m. EDT). They undocked earlier from the International Space Station at 8:18 UTC (4:18
Recently lost ENVISAT still shows no signs of “life”. While satellite observing community wait for some news lets take a look at breathtaking imagery of land and oceans by Envisat’s optical and radar instruments. The satellite is orbiting 497 miles above the
For more than a week, solar activity has been low. Today, around 0600 UT, an active region on the farside of the sun broke the calm with a powerful eruption. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded a massive cloud of plasma flying over the southwestern
The large fireball illuminated the sky over the Sierra Nevada mountains and created sonic booms that were heard over a wide area on Sunday, April 22, 2012. Peter Jenniskens, an expert in meteors and meteorites, has been successful in locating fragments from the huge
This is the third day in a row that geomagnetic storms have circled the poles. A mild (Kp=5) geomagnetic storm is underway. It looks like it subsiding now. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras. The source of this activity is a high-speed solar wind
