Blog dedicado a cuentos, notas de interés, actividades políticas , sociales, historia, artes culinarias, fiestas patronales, astronomía, ciencia ficción, temas del Medio Ambiente ,y del acontecer Peruano y Mundial desde otro punto de vista muy personal y diferente!!!!!
********** Blog Fundado el 03 de Enero del 2008 **********
Tras los ensayos acústicos y de vibración completados en marzo, el telescopio espacial James Webb (JWST) http://sci.esa.int/jwst/ está siendo sometido a una detallada inspección ‘en oscuridad’ en una de las salas limpias del Centro de vuelo espacial Goddard de la NASA.
Se trata de un tipo especial de examen visual que permite detectar cualquier forma de contaminación. El uso de brillantes luces UV y LED blancas facilita la búsqueda de contaminantes en el interior de una sala limpia en la que se ha apagado la luz para aumentar el contraste.
Debido a la baja iluminación, la fotografía tuvo que tomarse con un tiempo de exposición más largo de lo normal. Por eso, los técnicos presentan un aspecto fantasmagórico al moverse por la sala.
La imagen muestra el espejo primario del telescopio, recubierto de oro, que tiene un diámetro de unos 6,5 m una vez desplegado. Está formado por 18 segmentos hexagonales que funcionan como un único y gigantesco espejo de tecnología punta.
Para poder entrar en el Ariane 5 que lo enviará al espacio, algunos de los segmentos tendrán que plegarse para luego abrirse en órbita.
A finales de abril, el telescopio y los instrumentos saldrán del centro Goddard de la NASA en Maryland hacia el Centro espacial Johnson de Texas, donde pasarán el verano sometiéndose a los ensayos finales a temperaturas criogénicas.
El telescopio espacial James Webb es un proyecto conjunto de la NASA, la ESA y la agencia espacial canadiense CSA, cuyo lanzamiento está previsto para octubre de 2018 desde el Puerto Espacial Europeo de Kourou, Guayana Francesa. Esta imagen fue publicada por primera vez el día 15 de marzo en la web de la NASA.
James Webb Space Telescope Mirror Seen in Full Bloom
It's springtime and the deployed primary mirror of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope looks like a spring flower in full Bloom.
In this photo, NASA technicians lifted the telescope using a crane and moved it inside a clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Once launched into space, the Webb telescope’s 18-segmented gold mirror is specially designed to capture infrared light from the first galaxies that formed in the early universe, and will help the telescope peer inside dust clouds where stars and planetary systems are forming today. A VUELO
The James Webb Space Telescope is the scientific successor to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. It will be the most powerful space telescope ever built. Webb is an international project led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.
As scientists and crew with NASA’s Operation IceBridge mission prepared for a research flight on Nov. 5, 2016, the weather in Punta Arenas, Chile, was cold, wet, and windy. But when they reached their survey site in West Antarctica, skies were clear and winds were calm—a perfect day for scientists to collect data over the Getz Ice Shelf.
IceBridge, now in its eighth year, continues to build a record of how ice is responding to changes in the polar environment. The Getz Ice Shelf in West Antarctica is one area that scientists try to examine each year. “Getz is an ice shelf that has been experiencing some of the highest basal melt rates of the Antarctic ice shelves,” said Nathan Kurtz, IceBridge project scientist and a sea ice researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
The image above shows a views of Getz as photographed on Nov. 5 from a NASA research airplane by Jeremy Harbeck, a sea ice scientist at NASA Goddard. The image shows ice in the process of calving from the front of the shelf, soon to become an iceberg.
Kurtz notes that the team has flown over the Getz Ice Shelf many times before. Flight paths are often exact repeats of those flown in previous years, which helps scientists understand how the height of the ice surface changes over time. This year, new flights over Getz were added to the existing observations. Scientists mapped the bathymetry (shape and depth of the seafloor) below the ice shelf, and they mapped the ice surface and bedrock upstream of the grounding line.
The flight over Getz is just one of a number of key areas flown during the IceBridge campaign. Each flight plan is prioritized in order of importance: baseline (the highest priority), high, medium, and low. The flight on Nov. 5 over Getz, for example, was categorized as “high” priority. Since the start of 2016 science flights on Oct.14, the team has flown six out of eight baseline missions, eight out of 15 high priority lines, and one medium and low priority mission each. Research flights for the season continue through Nov. 18.
“We are in pretty good shape so far, having flown so many missions due to a combination of favorable weather, no major airplane issues, and all instruments operating well,” Kurtz said. “We’re about four weeks into the campaign, and it’s possible we could tie the record of most flights flown with Operation IceBridge if things continue to go well.”
The instrument, called the CO2 Sounder Lidar, is a strong contender for a potential next-generation carbon-monitoring mission, the Active Sensing of CO2 Emissions over Nights, Days and Seasons, or ASCENDS. Engineers and scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,
Maryland, believe they can make the case for the technology — especially now that they’ve analyzed data gathered during the instrument’s most recent aircraft campaign over California and Nevada earlier this year. Developers of the CO2 Sounder Lidar snapped this photo during the field campaign.
Hola amigos: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., hemos recibido una noticia de la Agencia Espacial NASA, y nos dice: "EloperativoLand Imager(OLI)del Landsat8por satélitede la NASAtomó estaimagen de gran tamañode color naturalque muestra una vistadel mar Caspioen todo elArchipiélagoTyuleniyel 16 deabril de 2016.científicodel océanoNormanKuringdel Centro de VueloEspacialGoddard de laNASA encontróuna característicadesconcertanteen la imagen-las líneasque cruzan el norte del Mar Caspio.Por sí sola,la imagen erasorprendente y hermosa.aguaspoco profundas que rodeanel archipiélagoTyuleniyle permiten verla vegetaciónverde oscuro enel fondo del mar.Pero la preguntasigue siendo: ¿quécausóesas líneas?
The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on NASA's Landsat 8 satellite acquired this large natural-color image showing a view of the Caspian Sea around the Tyuleniy Archipelago on April 16, 2016. Ocean scientist Norman Kuring of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center found a puzzling feature in the image -- lines crisscrossing the North Caspian Sea. On its own, the image was strikingly beautiful. Shallow waters surrounding the Tyuleniy Archipelago allow you to see the dark green vegetation on the sea bottom. But the question remained: what caused those lines?
The dark green areas—possibly sea grass or benthic algae—and the lines are features of the sea bottom. “You can tell this by the fact that marks laid down in January have not moved by April,” Kuring said. “If those were water features, they would not persist through one tidal cycle.”
It’s possible that some of the marks have a human origin. Similar lines show up in the world’s oceans because of trawling. But the scientific literature and a January satellite image suggest that a majority of the marks in the images were gouged by ice. In January, blocks of ice stand at the leading end of many lines, most notably in the northeast corner of the image. By April, ice has melted and only the scour marks persist.
Stanislav Ogorodov, a scientist at Lomonosov Moscow State University who has published research on the phenomenon, agrees: “Undoubtedly, most of these tracks are the result of ice gouging.” Ogorodov notes that this part of the Caspian is very shallow—about 3 meters deep. Ice that forms here in wintertime is usually about 0.5 meters thick, so most of it never touches the seafloor. But the ice tends to be “warm” and thin, which gives rise to relatively weak ice cover that is easily deformed by wind and currents. When pieces of ice are pushed together, some ice is forced upward and downward into so-called “hummocks.” The keels of hummocks, frozen into the ice fields, can reach the seafloor and scour the bed as the ice moves.
Scientists from NASA Goddard explain the experiment they will perform in Indonesia during the March 2016 total solar eclipse. During the brief period of totality, the team will use a new instrument to measure polarized light from the sun’s faint atmosphere, the corona, in order to study the temperature and speed of electrons.
Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Duberstein
As the moon slowly covers the face of the sun on the morning of March 9, 2016, in Indonesia, a team of NASA scientists will be anxiously awaiting the start of totality – because at that moment, their countdown clock begins. They plan to take 59 several-second exposures of the sun in just over three minutes, capturing data on the innermost parts of the sun’s volatile, superhot atmosphere – a region we can only observe during total solar eclipses when the sun’s overwhelmingly bright face is completely blocked by the moon.
“The sun’s atmosphere is where the interesting physics is,” said Nelson Reginald, one of several space scientists from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who will conduct an experiment in Indonesia during March 2016’s total solar eclipse. “A total solar eclipse gives us the opportunity to see very close to the solar limb.”
The lower part of the sun’s atmosphere, the corona, is one of the most scientifically interesting areas of the sun. It’s thought to hold the keys to several solar mysteries, from the acceleration of the solar wind, to the birth of explosive clouds of solar material called coronal mass ejections, to the mysterious heating of the corona as a whole. Using a new instrument, the NASA science team will observe aspects of polarized light that carry information about the temperature and velocity of electrons in the lower corona.
Though it’s about as bright as the full moon, the corona is ordinarily drowned out by the sun’s much brighter face, except during total solar eclipses. To study the corona outside of total solar eclipses, scientists use instruments called coronagraphs, which create artificial eclipses by using solid disks to block sun’s bright face and reveal the comparatively faint corona. But because light bends around sharp edges – a phenomenon known as diffraction – coronagraph disks obscure the inner corona, as well as the solar surface, to combat this effect.
“You can’t see the corona that close to the surface with a coronagraph. You cut off a large portion of the innermost corona,” said Nat Gopalswamy, principal investigator of the eclipse experiment at Goddard. “The main advantage of the total solar eclipse is seeing much closer to the sun’s surface.”
Outside of total solar eclipses, scientists use an instrument called a coronagraph to see the sun’s tenuous atmosphere. Because of how light bends around sharp edges coronagraphs block this extra light by blocking part of the inner corona. In this coronagraph image, the white circle outlines the extent of the solar surface, showing how much of the sun's atmosphere is blocked by the coronagraph’s disk.
Credits: NASA/SOHO
The team will use their three minutes of totality to examine the polarized light coming from the sun’s inner corona, light that contains information about the temperature and velocity of the electrons there. Light is polarized when its electric field oscillates along one axis, for instance, up-and-down or side-to-side. Unlike dust, electrons mainly scatter polarized light, meaning that isolating the polarized light can give information about the temperature and flow speed of coronal electrons. Polarized light scattered by these electrons dominates in the regions of the corona closest to the solar surface – so total solar eclipses are our best chance to gather this information.
“We first used this instrument during the 1999 total solar eclipse in Turkey,” said Reginald.
The minutes-long timeframe of total solar eclipses limits the amount of data we can collect during our occasional glimpses at the inner corona, so the team rebuilt their instrument over the last year to make it even faster.
“Before, we would have had use a polarizer that would turn through three angles for each wavelength filter,” said Reginald. “The new polarization camera eliminates the need for a polarization wheel.”
Rather than using a hand-turned polarization wheel to take three separate images in each polarized direction, the new camera uses thousands of tiny polarization filters to read light polarized in different directions simultaneously. Each pixel in the new camera is made of four subpixels with differently-oriented polarization filters, which provides the team with four separate but simultaneous images of the corona and cuts out the need to change polarization filters between exposures.
“We’ve cut down the length of time required for our experiment by more than 50 percent,” said Gopalswamy. “The polarization camera is faster and less risky, because it’s one less moving part.”
Though the team will be performing the experiment for the first time in the province of North Maluku, Indonesia – chosen for its accessibility and high chances of clear skies during the eclipse – they’ve already given their updated instrument a test run.
“The brightness of the full moon is about equal to the brightness of the total solar eclipse,” said Reginald. “So we set up our telescope in the parking lot for practice.”
In partnership with Exploratorium, NASA TV will be showing a live stream of the eclipse on March 8, 2016, from 8-9 pm ET.
During the afternoon of March 9, 2016, a total solar eclipse was visible in parts of southeast Asia and a partial eclipse was visible in parts of Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, and America Samoa. An eclipse occurs when the moon passes directly between Earth and the sun. When the moon's shadow falls on Earth, observers within that shadow see the moon block a portion of the sun's light.
The MODIS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite captured this image of the total solar eclipse moving across the south Pacific Ocean at 03:05 UTC on March 9, 2016.
This photo shows the March 2016 solar eclipse as seen from South Tangerang, Indonesia.
Credit: Photo copyright Ridwan Arifiandi; Creative Commons license CC BY-NC 2.0
NASA’s IBEX Observations Pin Down Interstellar Magnetic Field
Immediately after its 2008 launch, NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, spotted a curiosity in a thin slice of space: More particles streamed in through a long, skinny swath in the sky than anywhere else. The origin of the so-called IBEX ribbon was unknown – but its very existence opened doors to observing what lies outside our solar system, the way drops of rain on a window tell you more about the weather outside.
Now, a new study uses IBEX data and simulations of the interstellar boundary – which lies at the very edge of the giant magnetic bubble surrounding our solar system called the heliosphere – to better describe space in our galactic neighborhood. The paper, published Feb. 8, 2016, in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, precisely determines the strength and direction of the magnetic field outside the heliosphere. Such information gives us a peek into the magnetic forces that dominate the galaxy beyond, teaching us more about our home in space.
(Artist concept) Far beyond the orbit of Neptune, the solar wind and the interstellar medium interact to create a region known as the inner heliosheath, bounded on the inside by the termination shock, and on the outside by the heliopause.
Credits: NASA/IBEX/Adler Planetarium
The new paper is based on one particular theory of the origin of the IBEX ribbon, in which the particles streaming in from the ribbon are actually solar material reflected back at us after a long journey to the edges of the sun’s magnetic boundaries. A giant bubble, known as the heliosphere, exists around the sun and is filled with what’s called solar wind, the sun’s constant outflow of ionized gas, known as plasma. When these particles reach the edges of the heliosphere, their motion becomes more complicated.
This simulation shows the origin of ribbon particles of different energies or speeds outside the heliopause (labeled HP). The IBEX ribbon particles interact with the interstellar magnetic field (labeled ISMF) and travel inwards toward Earth, collectively giving the impression of a ribbon spanning across the sky.
Credits: SwRI/Zirnstein
“The theory says that some solar wind protons are sent flying back towards the sun as neutral atoms after a complex series of charge exchanges, creating the IBEX ribbon,” said Eric Zirnstein, a space scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, and lead author on the study. “Simulations and IBEX observations pinpoint this process – which takes anywhere from three to six years on average – as the most likely origin of the IBEX ribbon.”
Outside the heliosphere lies the interstellar medium, with plasma that has different speed, density, and temperature than solar wind plasma, as well as neutral gases. These materials interact at the heliosphere’s edge to create a region known as the inner heliosheath, bounded on the inside by the termination shock – which is more than twice as far from us as the orbit of Pluto – and on the outside by the heliopause, the boundary between the solar wind and the comparatively dense interstellar medium.
Some solar wind protons that flow out from the sun to this boundary region will gain an electron, making them neutral and allowing them to cross the heliopause. Once in the interstellar medium, they can lose that electron again, making them gyrate around the interstellar magnetic field. If those particles pick up another electron at the right place and time, they can be fired back into the heliosphere, travel all the way back toward Earth, and collide with IBEX’s detector. The particles carry information about all that interaction with the interstellar magnetic field, and as they hit the detector they can give us unprecedented insight into the characteristics of that region of space.
“Only Voyager 1 has ever made direct observations of the interstellar magnetic field, and those are close to the heliopause, where it’s distorted,” said Zirnstein. “But this analysis provides a nice determination of its strength and direction farther out.”
The directions of different ribbon particles shooting back toward Earth are determined by the characteristics of the interstellar magnetic field. For instance, simulations show that the most energetic particles come from a different region of space than the least energetic particles, which gives clues as to how the interstellar magnetic field interacts with the heliosphere.
For the recent study, such observations were used to seed simulations of the ribbon’s origin. Not only do these simulations correctly predict the locations of neutral ribbon particles at different energies, but the deduced interstellar magnetic field agrees with Voyager 1 measurements, the deflection of interstellar neutral gases, and observations of distant polarized starlight.
However, some early simulations of the interstellar magnetic field don’t quite line up. Those pre-IBEX estimates were based largely on two data points – the distances at which Voyagers 1 and 2 crossed the termination shock.
“Voyager 1 crossed the termination shock at 94 astronomical units, or AU, from the sun, and Voyager 2 at 84 AU,” said Zirnstein. One AU is equal to about 93 million miles, the average distance between Earth and the sun. “That difference of almost 930 million miles was mostly explained by a strong, very tilted interstellar magnetic field pushing on the heliosphere.”
But that difference may be accounted for by considering a stronger influence from the solar cycle, which can lead to changes in the strength of the solar wind and thus change the distance to the termination shock in the directions of Voyager 1 and 2. The two Voyager spacecraft made their measurements almost three years apart, giving plenty of time for the variable solar wind to change the distance of the termination shock.
“Scientists in the field are developing more sophisticated models of the time-dependent solar wind,” said Zirnstein.
The simulations generally jibe well with the Voyager data.
The IBEX ribbon is a relatively narrow strip of particles flying in towards the sun from outside the heliosphere. A new study corroborates the idea that particles from outside the heliosphere that form the IBEX ribbon actually originate at the sun – and reveals information about the distant interstellar magnetic field.
Credits: SwRI
“The new findings can be used to better understand how our space environment interacts with the interstellar environment beyond the heliopause,” said Eric Christian, IBEX program scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who was not involved in this study. “In turn, understanding that interaction could help explain the mystery of what causes the IBEX ribbon once and for all.”
The Southwest Research Institute leads IBEX with teams of national and international partners. NASA Goddard manages the Explorers Program for the agency’s Heliophysics Division within the Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
El 8 de Marzo se Producirá un Eclipse Total de Sol
06.03.16.- La gente de parte del sudeste asiático verá el Sol en una nueva luz el 8 de Marzo de 2016, (9 de Marzo, hora local) durante un eclipse total de Sol que va a durar más de un minuto en todos los puntos de su trayectoria.
A medida que la Luna pase exactamente entre el Sol y la Tierra - una ocurrencia relativamente rara que ocurre sólo una vez al año a causa del hecho de que la Luna y el Sol no orbitan en el mismo plano exacto - bloqueará la cara brillante del Sol, revelando la atmósfera solar tenue y relativamente débil, la corona.
"Se nota algo fuera de la luz del Sol cuando llega a la totalidad," dijo Sarah Jaeggli, científico espacial en el Centro de Vuelo Espacial Goddard de la NASA en Greenbelt, Maryland, que ha visto dos eclipses solares totales. "Su entorno adquieren un elenco de crepúsculo, a pesar de que es de día y el cielo sigue siendo azul."
El fenómeno durará entre uno y medio a poco más de cuatro minutos en cada lugar, aunque pasarán más de tres horas entre el momento en el que el lugar más occidental comience a ver el eclipse y hasta que la ubicación más oriental vea el final del eclipse. La gente a lo largo de la trayectoria de la totalidad - que abarca más de 14.162 kilómetros de largo, pero sólo 156 kilómetros de ancho en su punto más ancho - tendrá la oportunidad de ver la corona solar solamente mientras la cara del Sol está totalmente cubierta por la Luna.
Los eclipses totales de este tipo son posibles debido a que la geometría planetaria es muy precisa: El Sol es 400 veces más ancho que la Luna, pero también está un poco más de 400 veces más lejos de la Tierra que la Luna durante los eclipses solares totales, por lo que nuestros ojos apreciarán el mismo tamaño en el cielo. Esto significa que la Luna puede bloquear la totalidad de la cara del Sol, mientras que oscurece solamente una pequeña porción de la corona interior.
Aunque sólo las personas a lo largo del camino estrecho de la totalidad verán el eclipse total, millones de personas más verán el eclipse solar de manera parcial en Asia y el Pacífico, incluyendo Hawai, Guam y partes de Alaska. También se verá el eclipse de manera parcial a lo largo de la trayectoria de la totalidad durante más de una hora antes y después del eclipse total.
Si tienes la suerte de poder observar este acontecimiento, debes tener mucho cuidado: nunca se debe mirar directamente al Sol, ya que si no se utiliza una protección adecuada, se pueden causar graves daños oculares. Existen varias maneras de observar el evento, bien a través de gafas especiales, o telescopios con filtros adecuados. Pero recuerde, NUNCA se debe de mirar directamente al Sol.
Description ESA astronaut Tim Peake took this image circling Earth 400 km up in the International Space Station. He commented: “Sometimes looking down on Earth at night can be kinda spooky.”
The image shows lightning strikes illuminating clouds over Western Australia during a thunderstorm. The Space Station travels at 28 800 km/h so it takes only 90 minutes to complete an orbit of Earth. Astronauts often spot thunderstorms and are impressed by how much lightning they observe.
Although this picture was taken in Tim’s free time, the Station is used for research into elusive phenomena in the upper atmosphere during thunderstorms – red sprites, blue jets and elves. Some of the most violent electric discharges are very difficult to capture from the ground because of the atmosphere’s blocking effect. From space, astronauts can judge for themselves where to aim the camera, where to zoom in and follow interesting regions for researchers.
This animation shows the evolution of the Arctic sea ice cover from its wintertime maximum extent, which was reached on Feb. 25, 2015, and was the lowest on record, to its apparent yearly minimum, which occurred on Sept. 11, 2015, and is the fourth lowest in the satellite era.
Credits: NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio
Esta animaciónmuestra la evolución dela cubierta de hielomarino en el Árticodesde supuntomáximoel invierno, al que se llegóel 25 de febrerode 2015,y fue elmás bajode la historia,a su mínimoanualaparente, que ocurrió el 11 de septiembrede 2015,yes elcuartomás bajo de laera de los satélites.
Arctic Sea Ice Summertime Minimum Is Fourth Lowest on Record
Hielo marino del ÁrticoSummertimemínimoes el cuartomás bajo registrado .
The 2015 Arctic sea ice summertime minimum is 699,000 square miles below the 1981-2010 average, shown here as a gold line.
Credits: NASA/Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio
According to a NASA analysis of satellite data, the 2015 Arctic sea ice minimum extent is the fourth lowest on record since observations from space began.
The analysis by NASA and the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado at Boulder showed the annual minimum extent was 1.70 million square miles (4.41 million square kilometers) on Sept. 11. This year’s minimum is 699,000 square miles (1.81 million square kilometers) lower than the 1981-2010 average.
Arctic sea ice cover, made of frozen seawater that floats on top of the ocean, helps regulate the planet’s temperature by reflecting solar energy back to space. The sea ice cap grows and shrinks cyclically with the seasons. Its minimum summertime extent, which occurs at the end of the melt season, has been decreasing since the late 1970s in response to warming temperatures.
In some recent years, low sea-ice minimum extent has been at least in part exacerbated by meteorological factors, but that was not the case this year.
“This year is the fourth lowest, and yet we haven’t seen any major weather event or persistent weather pattern in the Arctic this summer that helped push the extent lower as often happens,” said Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It was a bit warmer in some areas than last year, but it was cooler in other places, too.”
In contrast, the lowest year on record, 2012, saw a powerful August cyclone that fractured the ice cover, accelerating its decline.
The sea ice decline has accelerated since 1996. The 10 lowest minimum extents in the satellite record have occurred in the last 11 years. The 2014 minimum was 1.94 million square miles (5.03 million square kilometers), the seventh lowest on record. Although the 2015 minimum appears to have been reached, there is a chance that changing winds or late-season melt could reduce the Arctic extent even further in the next few days.
“The ice cover becomes less and less resilient, and it doesn’t take as much to melt it as it used to,” Meier said. “The sea ice cap, which used to be a solid sheet of ice, now is fragmented into smaller floes that are more exposed to warm ocean waters. In the past, Arctic sea ice was like a fortress. The ocean could only attack it from the sides. Now it’s like the invaders have tunneled in from underneath and the ice pack melts from within.”
Some analyses have hinted the Arctic’s multiyear sea ice, the oldest and thickest ice that survives the summer melt season, appeared to have recuperated partially after the 2012 record low. But according to Joey Comiso, a sea ice scientist at Goddard, the recovery flattened last winter and will likely reverse after this melt season.
“The thicker ice will likely continue to decline,” Comiso said. “There might be some recoveries during some years, especially when the winter is unusually cold, but it is expected to go down again because the surface temperature in the region continues to increase.”
This year, the Arctic sea ice cover experienced relatively slow rates of melt in June, which is the month the Arctic receives the most solar energy. However, the rate of ice loss picked up during July, when the sun is still strong. Faster than normal ice loss rates continued through August, a transition month when ice loss typically begins to slow. A big “hole” appeared in August in the ice pack in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, north of Alaska, when thinner seasonal ice surrounded by thicker, older ice melted. The huge opening allowed for the ocean to absorb more solar energy, accelerating the melt.
It’s unclear whether this year’s strong El Niño event, which is a naturally occurring phenomenon that typically occurs every two to seven years where the surface water of the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean warms, has had any impact on the Arctic sea ice minimum extent.
No está claro sifuerteevento de El Niñode este año, que esun fenómenonatural quese produce normalmentecada dos a sieteaños, dondeelagua de la superficiedelOcéano Pacífico ecuatorial estese calienta,ha tenidoalgún impacto enla extensión mínimadel hielo marinodel Ártico.
“Historically, the Arctic had a thicker, more rigid sea ice that covered more of the Arctic basin, so it was difficult to tell whether El Niño had any effect on it,” said Richard Cullather, a climate modeler at Goddard. “Although we haven’t been able to detect a strong El Niño impact on Arctic sea ice yet, now that the ice is thinner and more mobile, we should begin to see a larger response to atmospheric events from lower latitudes.”
"Históricamente, el Árticotuvo unamás gruesa,más rígidadel hielo marinoquecubremásde la cuenca delÁrtico, así que eradifícil decir siEl Niñoha tenido algún efectoen él", dijoRichardCullather,un modeladorclimáticoen Goddard."Aunque no hemossido capaces de detectarun fuerte impactode El Niñoen elhielo marino del Ártico, sin embargo,ahora queel hieloes más fina ymás móvil, deberíamosempezar a veruna mayor respuestaa los eventosatmosféricosdelatitudes más bajas."
In comparison, research has found a strong link between El Niño and the behavior of the sea ice cover around Antarctica. El Niño causes higher sea level pressure, warmer air temperature and warmer sea surface temperature in west Antarctica that affect sea ice distribution. This could explain why this year the growth of the Antarctic sea ice cover, which currently is headed toward its yearly maximum extent and was at much higher than normal levels throughout much of the first half of 2015, dipped below normal levels in mid-August.
Starting next week, NASA’s Operation IceBridge, an airborne survey of polar ice, will be carrying science flights over sea ice in the Arctic, to help validate satellite readings and provide insight into the impact of the summer melt season on land and sea ice.
NASA uses the vantage point of space to increase our understanding of our home planet, improve lives, and safeguard our future. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems with long-term data records. The agency freely shares this unique knowledge and works with institutions around the world to gain new insights into how our planet is changing.
For more information about NASA’s Earth science activities, visit:
Hola amigos: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., La primera misión de Estados Unidos para volver muestras de un asteroide a la Tierra es un paso más hacia su caída 2,016 lanzamiento, con la entrega de tres cámaras que imagen y mapa de la roca espacial gigante.Un conjunto de cámara que permitirá: NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx)misión; para ver un asteroide cercano a la Tierra, mapas, y escoja un lugar seguro e interesante para tocar la superficie y recoger un muestra, ha llegado a Lockheed Martin Space Systems en Denver para la instalación de la nave espacial."Este es otro paso importante en la preparación para nuestra misión", dijo Mike Donnelly, director del proyecto OSIRIS-Rex en el Centro de Vuelo Espacial Goddard de la NASA en Greenbelt, Maryland. "Con la entrega de la suite de la cámara al contratista nave espacial, tendremos nuestra gama completa de cámaras y espectrómetros."La misión OSIRIS-Rex tiene previsto su lanzamiento en septiembre de 2016 para estudiar Bennu, un asteroide cercano a la Tierra, que es alrededor de un tercio de milla (unos 500 metros) de ancho. Después rendezvousing con Bennu en 2018, la nave espacial estudiará el asteroide, obtener una muestra, y devolverlo a la Tierra en 2023.
The first U.S. mission to return samples of an asteroid to Earth is another step closer to its fall 2016 launch, with the delivery of three cameras that will image and map the giant space rock.
A camera suite that will allow NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission to see a near-Earth asteroid, map it, and pick a safe and interesting place to touch the surface and collect a sample, has arrived at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver for installation to the spacecraft.
“This is another major step in preparing for our mission,” said Mike Donnelly, OSIRIS-REx project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “With the delivery of the camera suite to the spacecraft contractor, we will have our full complement of cameras and spectrometers.”
The OSIRIS-REx mission is scheduled to launch in September 2016 to study Bennu, a near-Earth asteroid that’s about one-third of a mile (approximately 500 meters) across. After rendezvousing with Bennu in 2018, the spacecraft will survey the asteroid, obtain a sample, and return it to Earth in 2023.
The University of Arizona’s camera suite, OCAMS, sits on a test bench that mimics its arrangement on the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. The three cameras that compose the instrument – MapCam (left), PolyCam and SamCam – are the eyes of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission. They will map the asteroid Bennu, help choose a sample site, and ensure that the sample is correctly stowed on the spacecraft.
Credits: University of Arizona/Symeon Platts
The three camera instrument suite, known as OCAMS (OSIRIS-REx Camera Suite), was designed and built by the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. The largest of the three cameras, PolyCam, is a small telescope that will acquire the first images of Bennu from a distance of 1.2 million miles (2 million kilometers) and provide high resolution imaging of the sample site. MapCam will search for satellites and dust plumes around Bennu, map the asteroid in color, and provide images to construct topographic maps. SamCam will document the sample acquisition event and the collected sample.
“PolyCam, MapCam and SamCam will be our mission’s eyes at Bennu,” said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona, Tucson. “OCAMS will provide the imagery we need to complete our mission while the spacecraft is at the asteroid.”
OSIRIS-REx is the first U.S. mission to sample an asteroid, and will return the largest sample from space since the Apollo lunar missions. Scientists expect that Bennu may hold clues to the origin of the solar system and the source of water and organic molecules that may have seeded life on Earth. OSIRIS-REx’s investigation will inform future efforts to develop a mission to mitigate an impact, should one be required.
"The most important goal of these cameras is to maximize our ability to successfully return a sample,” said OCAMS instrument scientist Bashar Rizk from the University of Arizona, Tucson. “Our mission requires a lot of activities during one trip – navigation, mapping, reconnaissance, sample site selection, and sampling. While we are there, we need the ability to continuously see what is happening around the asteroid in order to make real-time decisions."
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering and safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta is the mission's principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver is building the spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA's New Frontiers Program. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages New Frontiers for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
Utilizandoel telescopioHubble de la NASA, los científicosdetectaron unaestratosferadel planetaWASP-33b.Unestratosferase producecuando las moléculasen la atmósferaabsorbenluz ultravioleta y visiblede la estrella.Esta absorciónse calientala estratosferay actúacomo una especie decapa deprotector solarpara el planetaa continuación.Este videoes de dominio públicoy se puede descargaren:http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?11898
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has detected a stratosphere, one of the primary layers of Earth’s atmosphere, on a massive and blazing-hot exoplanet known as WASP-33b.
The presence of a stratosphere can provide clues about the composition of a planet and how it formed. This atmospheric layer includes molecules that absorb ultraviolet and visible light, acting as a kind of “sunscreen” for the planet it surrounds. Until now, scientists were uncertain whether these molecules would be found in the atmospheres of large, extremely hot planets in other star systems.
These findings will appear in the June 12 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
“Some of these planets are so hot in their upper atmospheres, they’re essentially boiling off into space,” said Avi Mandell, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and a co-author of the study. “At these temperatures, we don’t necessarily expect to find an atmosphere that has molecules that can lead to these multilayered structures.”
WASP-33b’s stratosphere was detected by measuring the drop in light as the planet passed behind its star (top). Temperatures in the low stratosphere rise because of molecules absorbing radiation from the star (right). Without a stratosphere, temperatures would cool down at higher altitudes (left).
Credits: NASA/Goddard
In Earth’s atmosphere, the stratosphere sits above the troposphere -- the turbulent, active-weather region that reaches from the ground to the altitude where nearly all clouds top out. In the troposphere, the temperature is warmer at the bottom – ground level – and cools down at higher altitudes.
The stratosphere is just the opposite. In this layer, the temperature increases with altitude, a phenomenon called temperature inversion. On Earth, temperature inversion occurs because ozone in the stratosphere absorbs much of the sun’s ultraviolet radiation, preventing it from reaching the surface, protecting the biosphere, and therefore warming the stratosphere instead.
Similar temperature inversions occur in the stratospheres of other planets in our solar system, such as Jupiter and Saturn. In these cases, the culprit is a different group of molecules called hydrocarbons. Neither ozone nor hydrocarbons, however, could survive at the high temperatures of most known exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system. This leads to a debate as to whether stratospheres would exist on them at all.
Using Hubble, the researchers have settled this debate by identifying a temperature inversion in the atmosphere of WASP-33b, which has about four-and-a-half times the mass of Jupiter. Team members also think they know which molecule in WASP-33b’s atmosphere caused the inversion -- titanium oxide.
“These two lines of evidence together make a very convincing case that we have detected a stratosphere on an exoplanet,” said Korey Haynes, lead author of the study. Haynes was a graduate student at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, and was working at Goddard with Mandell when the research was conducted.
The researchers analyzed observations made with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 by co-author Drake Deming at the University of Maryland in College Park. Wide Field Camera 3 can capture a spectrum of the near-infrared region where the signature for water appears. Scientists can use the spectrum to identify water and other gases in a distant planet’s atmosphere and determine its temperature.
Haynes and her colleagues used the Hubble observations, and data from previous studies, to measure emission from water and compare it to emission from gas deeper in the atmosphere. The team determined that emission from water was produced in the stratosphere at about 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The rest of the emission came from gas lower in the atmosphere that was at a temperature about 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
The team also presented the first observational evidence that WASP-33b’s atmosphere contains titanium oxide, one of only a few compounds that is a strong absorber of visible and ultraviolet radiation and capable of remaining in gaseous form in an atmosphere as hot as this one.
“Understanding the links between stratospheres and chemical compositions is critical to studying atmospheric processes in exoplanets,” said co-author Nikku Madhusudhan of the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. “Our finding marks a key breakthrough in this direction.”
For images and more information about Hubble, visit:
Hola amigos: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., la Agencia Espacial NASA, nos hace llegar la información de la vista captada al Satélite Titán del Planeta Saturno, y para poder explicar la visión captada nos dice: ..."En lo alto dela atmósferade Titán,grandes manchas dedosgases trazabrillancerca del polo norte,en el lado dela oscuridadde la luna,ycerca del polo sur,en el ladodel amanecer.Colores más brillantesindicanseñales más fuertesdelos dos gases,HNC(izquierda) yHC3N(derecha);tonos rojosindicanlas señalesmenos pronunciadas......
Los nuevosmapas del satélite Titán de Saturnorevelangrandes manchas degases trazaque brillanintensamentecerca delos polos norte ysur.Estas regiones sedesplazancuriosamentefuera delos polos, al esteo al oeste, por loqueel amanecerse está rompiendoa través dela región del sur, mientras quela oscuridadestá cayendosobreelnorte........
Elpar de lo que se podría llamar : "parches"fue descubierto por unequipo internacional dirigidopor los investigadores de la NASA para estudiar lacomposición químicadela atmósfera de Titán......"
High in the atmosphere of Titan, large patches of
two trace gases glow near the north pole, on the dusk side of the moon, and near
the south pole, on the dawn side. Brighter colors indicate stronger signals from
the two gases, HNC (left) and HC3N (right); red hues indicate less pronounced
signals.
Image Credit:
NRAO/AUI/NSF
New
maps of Saturn’s moon Titan reveal large patches of trace gases shining brightly
near the north and south poles. These regions are curiously shifted off the
poles, to the east or west, so that dawn is breaking over the southern region
while dusk is falling over the northern one.
The pair of patches was spotted by a NASA-led international team of
researchers investigating the chemical make-up of Titan’s atmosphere.
“This is an unexpected and potentially groundbreaking discovery,” said Martin
Cordiner, an astrochemist working at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in
Greenbelt, Maryland, and the lead author of the study. “These kinds of
east-to-west variations have never been seen before in Titan’s atmospheric
gases. Explaining their origin presents us with a fascinating new problem.”
The mapping comes from observations made by the Atacama Large
Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a network of high-precision antennas in
Chile. At the wavelengths used by these antennas, the gas-rich areas in Titan’s
atmosphere glowed brightly. And because of ALMA’s sensitivity, the researchers
were able to obtain spatial maps of chemicals in Titan’s atmosphere from a
“snapshot” observation that lasted less than three minutes.
Titan’s atmosphere has long been of interest because it acts as a chemical
factory, using energy from the sun and Saturn’s magnetic field to produce a wide
range of organic, or carbon-based, molecules. Studying this complex chemistry
may provide insights into the properties of Earth’s very early atmosphere, which
may have shared many chemical characteristics with present-day Titan.
In this study, the researchers focused on two organic molecules, hydrogen
isocyanide (HNC) and cyanoacetylene (HC3N), that are formed in
Titan’s atmosphere. At lower altitudes, the HC3N appears concentrated
above Titan’s north and south poles. These findings are consistent with
observations made by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which has found a cloud cap and
high concentrations of some gases over whichever pole is experiencing winter on
Titan.
The surprise came when the researchers compared the gas concentrations at
different levels in the atmosphere. At the highest altitudes, the gas pockets
appeared to be shifted away from the poles. These off-pole locations are
unexpected because the fast-moving winds in Titan’s middle atmosphere move in an
east–west direction, forming zones similar to Jupiter’s bands, though much less
pronounced. Within each zone, the atmospheric gases should, for the most part,
be thoroughly mixed.
The researchers do not have an obvious explanation for these findings
yet.
“It seems incredible that chemical mechanisms could be operating on rapid
enough timescales to cause enhanced 'pockets' in the observed molecules,” said
Conor Nixon, a planetary scientist at Goddard and a coauthor of the paper,
published online today in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. “We would expect
the molecules to be quickly mixed around the globe by Titan’s winds.”
At the moment, the scientists are considering a number of potential
explanations, including thermal effects, previously unknown patterns of
atmospheric circulation, or the influence of Saturn’s powerful magnetic field,
which extends far enough to engulf Titan.
Further observations are expected to improve the understanding of the
atmosphere and ongoing processes on Titan and other objects throughout the solar
system.
NASA’s Astrobiology Program supported this work through a grant to the
Goddard Center for Astrobiology, a part of the NASA Astrobiology Institute.
Additional funding came from NASA’s Planetary Atmospheres and Planetary
Astronomy programs. ALMA, an international astronomy facility, is funded in
Europe by the European Southern Observatory, in North America by the U.S.
National Science Foundation in cooperation with the National Research Council of
Canada and the National Science Council of Taiwan, and in East Asia by the
National Institutes of Natural Sciences of Japan in cooperation with the
Academia Sinica in Taiwan.
Semana Mundial del Ahorro en Perú
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Semana Mundial del Ahorro en Perú “No ahorres lo que te queda después de
gastar, gasta lo que te queda después de ahorrar”, éstas son palabras
sabias del g...
EL CUERPO DE CRISTO
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#lamentedeCristoelprimerdia
Ef 2: 19 Así que ya no sois extranjeros ni advenedizos, sino conciudadanos
de los santos, y miembros de la familia de Dios.
Fo...
