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Early Wednesday morning (Jan. 1, 2014), while New Year's 2014 celebrations were still underway in the United States, the Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Ariz., collected a single track of observations with an immediate follow-up on what was possibly a very small asteroid -- 7 to 10 feet (2 to 3 meters) in size -- on a potential impact trajectory with Earth. Designated 2014 AA, which would make it the first asteroid discovery of 2014, the track of observations on the object allowed only an uncertain orbit to be calculated. However, if this was a very small asteroid on an Earth-impacting trajectory, it most likely entered Earth's atmosphere sometime between 11 a.m. PST (2 p.m. EST) Wednesday and 6 a.m. PST (9 a.m. EST) Thursday. Using the only available observations, three independent projections of the possible orbit by the independent orbit analyst Bill Gray, of the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass., and Steve Chesley, of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., are in agreement that 2014 AA would hit Earth's atmosphere. According to Chesley, the potential impact locations are widely distributed because of the orbit uncertainty, falling along an arc extending from Central America to East Africa. The most likely impact location of the object was just off the coast of West Africa at about 6 p.m. PST (9 p.m. EST) Jan. 1. It is unlikely asteroid 2014 AA would have survived atmospheric entry intact, as it was comparable in size to asteroid 2008 TC3, which was about 7 to 10 feet (2 to 3 meters) in size. 2008 TC3 completely broke up over northern Sudan in October 2008. Asteroid 2008 TC3 is the only other example of an object discovered just prior to hitting Earth. So far, there have been a few weak signals collected from infrasound stations in that region of the world that are being analyzed to see if they could be correlated to the atmospheric entry of 2014 AA. Image Credit: CSS/LPL/UA #asteroid #neo #nasa #space #2014; -
Fourteen mountain peaks on Earth stand taller than 8,000 meters (26,247 feet). Pictured here is the tallest of these “eight-thousanders” -- Mount Everest, the standard to which all other mountains are compared. The Nepalese name for the mountain is Sagarmatha: “mother of the universe.” When climbers reach the top of Mount Everest, they are perched on softer sedimentary rock formed by the skeletons of creatures that lived in a warm ocean off the northern coast of India tens of millions of years ago. Meanwhile, glaciers have chiseled Mount Everest’s summit into a huge, triangular pyramid, defined by three faces and three ridges that extend to the northeast, southeast, and northwest. The southeastern ridge is the most widely used climbing route. It is the one that Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay followed in May 1953 when they became the first climbers to reach the summit and return safely. Despite its reputation as an extremely dangerous mountain, commercial guiding has done much to tame Everest in the last few decades. As of March 2012, there had been 5,656 successful ascents of Everest, while 223 people had died—a fatality rate of 4 percent. Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using EO-1 ALI data from the NASA EO-1 team, archived on the USGS Earth Explorer. Caption: Adam Voiland #everest #mteverest #mountain #earth #nasa #eo1 #earthobs #earthobservations #satellitepics #space #remotesensing; -
The sun ushered out 2013 and welcomed 2014 with two mid-level flares on Dec. 31, 2013 and Jan. 1, 2014. 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. This disrupts the radio signals for as long as the flare is ongoing, anywhere from minutes to hours. Pictured here are several wavelengths of light combined in this New Year's Day solar flare image, categorized as an M9.9 and peaking at 1:52 p.m. EST on Jan. 1, 2014. Each wavelength represents material at a different temperatures, helping scientists understand how it is moved and heated through these events. The first flare was categorized as an M6.4 and it peaked at 4:58 p.m EST on Dec. 31. The second was categorized as an M9.9 and peaked at 1:52 p.m. EST on Jan. 1. Both flares emerged from the same active region on the sun, AR1936. Imagery of the flares was captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which keeps a constant watch on the sun, collecting new data every 12 seconds. Image Credit: NASA/SDO #sdo #sun #solarflare #spaceweather #nasa #solar #flare #star #solarsystem; -
Happy New Year! This image shows the Earth today, January 1, 2014, a few hours into the new year, as seen by the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) satellite. Geostationary describes an orbit in which a satellite is always in the same position with respect to the rotating Earth. This allows GOES to hover continuously over one position on the Earth's surface, appearing stationary. As a result, GOES provide a constant vigil for the atmospheric "triggers" for severe weather conditions such as tornadoes, flash floods, hail storms, and hurricanes. Image Credit: NASA/NOAA GOES Project #nasa #earth #space #goes #irl #today #happynewyear #planets #solarsystem #newyear #2014 #nye #home; -
Quiet Corona and Upper Transition Region of the Sun: This image, taken on Dec. 31, 2013 by the AIA instrument on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) at 171 Angstrom, shows the current conditions of the quiet corona and upper transition region of the Sun on the last day of 2013. SDO was launched in 2010, and is currently studying solar activity and how it causes space weather. Space weather affects our lives on Earth, and even satellites and astronauts out in space! SDO is helping us understand where the sun's energy comes from, what happens inside of the sun, and how energy is stored and released in the sun's atmosphere. By better understanding the sun and how it works, we will be able to better predict space weather events. Credit: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory #sun #solarsystem #sdo #star #plasma#nasa #space #sunshine;
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New York City at Night! An astronaut aboard the International Space Station exposed this 400 millimeter night image of the greater New York City metropolitan area on March 23, 2013. For orientation purposes, note that Manhattan runs horizontal through the frame from left to the midpoint. Central Park is just a little to the left of frame center. NASA astronauts will help ring in 2014 by sending greetings from space and from Earth to the crowd gathered in New York's Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Astronaut Mike Massimino will participate in the New Year’s Eve Countdown event on Tuesday evening, Dec. 31. He also will introduce a video greeting from Expedition 36 flight engineer Karen Nyberg, who returned from the International Space Station in November, and from three of the astronauts currently on board the space station: NASA's Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins, and Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. The New Year’s countdown will be shown from 6 p.m. to 12:15 a.m. EST on the Toshiba Vision screen atop One Times Square, right below the New Year countdown ball. Prominently positioned below the world-famous Times Square New Year's Eve Ball, the dual LED screens will allow revelers in Times Square to see this special greeting from space. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #space #spacestation #iss #newyear #timessquare #newyork #nycity #astronauts #earth #toshiba #newyearseve #party #celebrate #jaxa #nye; -
The vortex at Saturn's north pole -- seen here in the infrared -- takes on the menacing look of something from the imagination of Edgar Allen Poe. But really, of course, it's just another example of the amazing, mesmerizing meteorology on Saturn. The eye of the immense cyclone is about 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) wide, 20 times larger than most on Earth. For another view of the vortex, see Vortex in Psychedelic Color. This view is centered on clouds at 89 degrees north latitude, 109 degrees west longitude. North is up and rotated 33 degrees to the left. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 14, 2013 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 750 nanometers. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 476,000 miles (766,000 kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 45 degrees. Image scale is 3 miles (5 kilometers) per pixel. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute #saturn #cassini #space #nasa #solarsystem #planets #planet #nofilter; -
Flat as a Pancake -Located some 25 million light-years away, this new Hubble image shows spiral galaxy ESO 373-8. Together with at least seven of its galactic neighbors, this galaxy is a member of the NGC 2997 group. We see it side-on as a thin, glittering streak across the sky, with all its contents neatly aligned in the same plane. We see so many galaxies like this — flat, stretched-out pancakes — that our brains barely process their shape. But let us stop and ask: Why are galaxies stretched out and aligned like this? Try spinning around in your chair with your legs and arms out. Slowly pull your legs and arms inwards, and tuck them in against your body. Notice anything? You should have started spinning faster. This effect is due to conservation of angular momentum, and it’s true for galaxies, too. This galaxy began life as a humongous ball of slowly rotating gas. Collapsing in upon itself, it spun faster and faster until, like pizza dough spinning and stretching in the air, a disc started to form. Anything that bobbed up and down through this disk was pulled back in line with this motion, creating a streamlined shape. CREDIT: NASA #nasa #space #hubble #galaxy #hst #universe #esa #nebula #earth #light #science #astronomy; -
What is the coldest place in the world? It is a high ridge in Antarctica on the East Antarctic Plateau where temperatures in several hollows can dip below minus 133.6° Fahrenheit (minus 92° Celsius) on a clear winter night - colder than the previous recorded low temperature. Scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center made the discovery while analyzing the most detailed global surface temperature maps to date, developed with data from remote sensing satellites including the MODIS sensor on NASA's Aqua satellite, and the TIRS sensor on Landsat 8, a joint project of NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The researchers analyzed 32 years of data from several satellite instruments that have mapped Antarctica's surface temperature. Near a high ridge that runs from Dome Arugs to Dome Fuji, the scientists found clusters of pockets that have plummeted to record low temperatures dozens of times. The lowest temperature the satellites detected - minus 136° F (minus 93.2° C), on Aug. 10, 2010. The new record is several degrees colder than the previous low of minus 128.6° F (minus 89.2° C), set in 1983 at the Russian Vostok Research Station in East Antarctica. The coldest permanently inhabited place on Earth is northeastern Siberia, where temperatures dropped to a bone-chilling 90 degrees below zero F (minus 67.8° C) in the towns of Verkhoyansk (in 1892) and Oimekon (in 1933). Image Credit: Ted Scambos, National Snow and Ice Data Center #landsat #cold #winter #earthscience #earth #nasa #earthobservations #earthobs #landsat8 #nsidc #antarctica; -
Winter is approaching in the southern hemisphere of Saturn and with this cold season has come the familiar blue hue that was present in the northern winter hemisphere at the start of NASA's Cassini mission. The changing blue hue that we have learned marks winter at Saturn is likely due to reduction of ultraviolet sunlight and the haze it produces, making the atmosphere clearer and increasing the opportunity for Rayleigh scattering (scattering by molecules and smaller particles) and methane absorption: both processes make the atmosphere blue. The small black dot seen to the right and up from image center, within the ring shadows of the A and F rings, is the shadow of the moon, Prometheus. This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 44 degrees below the ring plane. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on July 29, 2013. This view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.003 million miles (1.615 million kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale is 58 miles (93 kilometers) per pixel. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute #saturn #cassini #space #nasa #solarsystem #planets #winter #planet #nofilter;
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On Dec. 24, 2013, NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins, Expedition 38 Flight Engineer, participates in the second of two U.S. spacewalks, spread over a four-day period, which were designed to allow the crew to change out a faulty water pump on the exterior of the Earth-orbiting International Space Station. He was joined on both spacewalks by NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio, whose image shows up in Hopkins' helmet visor. Today, Dec. 27, 2013, Expedition 38 Commander Oleg Kotov and Flight Engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) have ventured outside the orbiting outpost to install a pair of high fidelity cameras on a platform attached to the Zvezda Service Module as part of a commercial arrangement between Roscosmos and a Canadian company to downlink Earth observation imagery. This is the last of six Russian spacewalks planned for this year. Image Credit: NASA #spacewalk #astronauts #astropix #earth #nasa #iss #spacestation #exp38 #nofilter; -
OCO-2 Observatory Conducts Environmental Tests NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO)-2 spacecraft is moved into a thermal vacuum chamber at Orbital Sciences Corporation's Satellite Manufacturing Facility in Gilbert, Ariz., for a series of environmental tests. The tests confirmed the integrity of the observatory's electrical connections and subjected the OCO-2 instrument and spacecraft to the extreme hot, cold and airless environment they will encounter once in orbit. The observatory's solar array panels were removed prior to the test. OCO-2 is NASA's first mission dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide and is the latest mission in NASA's study of the global carbon cycle. Carbon dioxide is the most significant human-produced greenhouse gas and the principal human-produced driver of climate change. The mission will uniformly sample the atmosphere above Earth's land and ocean, collecting between 100,000 and 200,000 measurements of carbon dioxide concentration over Earth's sunlit hemisphere every day for at least two years. It will do so with the accuracy, resolution and coverage needed to provide the first complete picture of the regional-scale geographic distribution and seasonal variations of both human and natural sources of carbon dioxide emissions as well as the places where carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere and stored. Image Credit: Orbital Sciences Corporation/NASA/JPL-Caltech #oco2 #carbon #satellite #testing #nasa #space #earthscience #spacecraft; -
NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission presents the "Wreath nebula." Though this isn't the nebula's official name (it's actually called Barnard 3, or IRAS Ring G159.6-18.5), one might picture a wreath in these bright green and red dust clouds -- a ring of evergreens donned with a festive red bow, a jaunty sprig of holly, and silver bells throughout. Interstellar clouds like these are stellar nurseries, places where baby stars are being born. The green ring (evergreen) is made of tiny particles of warm dust whose composition is very similar to smog found here on Earth. The red cloud (bow) in the middle is probably made of dust that is more metallic and cooler than the surrounding regions. The bright star in the middle of the red cloud, called HD 278942, is so luminous that it is likely what is causing most of the surrounding ring to glow. In fact its powerful stellar winds are what cleared out the surrounding warm dust and created the ring-shaped feature in the first place. The bright greenish-yellow region left of center (holly) is similar to the ring, though more dense. The bluish-white stars (silver bells) scattered throughout are stars located both in front of, and behind, the nebula. Regions similar to this nebula are found near the band of the Milky Way galaxy in the night sky. The "wreath" is slightly off this band, near the boundary between the constellations of Perseus and Taurus, but at a relatively close distance of only about 1,000 light-years, the cloud is a still part of our Milky Way. The colors used in this image represent specific wavelengths of infrared light. Blue and cyan (blue-green) represent light emitted at wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6 microns, which is predominantly from stars. Green and red represent light from 12 and 22 microns, respectively, which is mostly emitted by dust. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA #christmas #nasa #space #wise #wreath #red #green #holiday #nebula #universe; -
Listening to Space: For 50 years, NASA's Deep Space Network has served as the lifeline to explorers of deep space and the pipeline for all of the stunning images and data those spacecraft send back to us. A network of dishes, like this one at the complex in Goldstone, Calif., send signals or listen to signals 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The network provides radio communications for all of NASA's interplanetary spacecraft and is also utilized for radio astronomy and radar observations of the solar system and the universe. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech #DSN50 #deepspace #universe #nasa #goldstone #radiodish #50thanniversary #space #wifi #internet #communications #satellitedish; -
45th Anniversary of 'Earthrise' Image: Forty-five years ago, in December of 1968, the Apollo 8 crew flew from the Earth to the Moon and back again. Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders were launched atop a Saturn V rocket on Dec. 21, circled the Moon ten times in their command module, and returned to Earth on Dec. 27. The Apollo 8 mission's impressive list of firsts includes: the first humans to journey to the Earth's Moon, the first to fly using the Saturn V rocket, and the first to photograph the Earth from deep space. As the Apollo 8 command module rounded the far side of the Moon on Dec. 24, the crew could look toward the lunar horizon and see the Earth appear to rise, due to their spacecraft's orbital motion. Their famous picture of a distant blue Earth above the Moon's limb was a marvelous gift to the world. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #space #apollo #apollo8 #earthrise #earthpic #earth #moon;
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