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Blast from the Sun
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| This still from SDO caught the action in freeze-frame splendor when the Sun popped off two events at once (Jan. 28, 2011). A filament on the left side became unstable and erupted, while an M-1 flare (mid-sized) and a coronal mass ejection on the right blasted into space. NASA/SDO/GSFC |
The sun unleashed two powerful solar eruptions today (Jan. 28) in a spectacular double blast caught on camera by a NASA spacecraft.
The twin solar storms occurred in concert and marked an impressive start for the 2011 space weatherseason.
A video recorded by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the two sun storms erupting from opposite sides of the star. Neither of the events posed a space weather threat to Earth or its satellites, NASA officials said. Read more…
Mysterious Night-Shining Clouds Getting Brighter
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| After the sun sets on a summer evening and the sky fades to black, you may be lucky enough to see thin, wavy clouds illuminating the night, such as these seen over Billund, Denmark, on July 15, 2010. Jan Erik Paulsen/ NASA Earth Observatory. |
Clouds bright enough to see at night are not as hard to find as they once were.
These so-called night-shining clouds are still rare — rare enough that Matthew DeLand, who has been studying them for 11 years, has seen them only once. But his odds are increasing. [Related: In Images: Reading the Clouds.]
These mysterious clouds form between 50 and 53 miles (80 and 85 kilometers) up in the atmosphere, altitudes so high that they reflect light long after the sun has dropped below the horizon.
DeLand, an atmospheric scientist with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., has found that night-shining clouds — technically known as polar mesospheric or noctilucent clouds — are forming more frequently and becoming brighter. He has been observing the clouds in data from instruments that have been flown on satellites since 1978.
For reasons not fully understood, the clouds’ Read more…
Google Comes Under Fire for ‘Secret’ Relationship with NSA
Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group largely focused in recent years on Google’s privacy practices, has called on a congressional investigation into the Internet giant’s “cozy” relationship with U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration.
In a letter sent Monday, Consumer Watchdog asked Representative Darrell Issa, the new chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, to investigate the relationship between Google and several government agencies.
The group asked Issa to investigate contracts at several U.S. agencies for Google technology and services, the “secretive” relationship between Google and the U.S. National Security Agency, and the company’s use of a U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration airfield in California.
Federal agencies have also taken “insufficient” action in response to revelations last year that Google Street View cars were collecting data from open Wi-Fi connections they passed, Consumer Watchdog said in the letter.
“We believe Google has inappropriately benefited from close ties to the administration,” the letter said. “Google is most consumers’ gateway to the Internet. Nonetheless, it should not get special treatment and access because of a special relationship with the administration.” Read more…
Asteroid impact caused huge scar on Jupiter
A massive scar that appeared in Jupiter’s atmosphere last summer was caused by an asteroid ‘the size of the Titanic’, says NASA.
By examining the signatures of the gases and dark debris produced by the impact shockwaves, the team deduced that the object was more likely a rocky asteroid than an icy comet.
“Both the fact that the impact itself happened at all and the implication that it may well have been an asteroid rather than a comet shows us that the outer solar system is a complex, violent and dynamic place, and that many surprises may be out there waiting for us,” said NASA astronomer Glenn Orton. “There is still a lot to sort out in the outer solar system.”
Before this collision, scientists had thought that the only objects that hit Jupiter were icy comets whose unstable orbits took them close enough to be sucked in by gravitational attraction. It was believed that Jupiter had already cleared most other objects, such as asteroids, from its sphere of influence.
The July 19, 2009 object likely hit Jupiter between 9 am and 11 am UTC.
As it fell through Jupiter’s atmosphere, the object created a Read more…
Tectonic Plates Collapsing under Pakistan and Indonesia – 20 Foot Drop in Shoreline on Java confirmed by Google Satellite
This Picture is Soon to Come Again but this Time it will be with Volcanoes and Earthquakes!
On January 17, 2011, it was reported that the 17,500 Islands Nation of Indonesia was flooding. Here on the Islands of Java, the largest regions of the world’s fourth most populous country, and the largest population of Muslims in the world. This flooding would not seem unusual but experts there reported that there was no reason for the flooding that would account for the submergence of such a large populous area along the sea coastline.
It is true that there had been two weeks of raining in the mountainous regions of Mount Mandiri. Yet, the Chief Social Service NTT Piter Manuk admitted something was unusual. As he reported:
Piter Manuk – “Residents panic was triggered by the arrival of the flood that is considered not reasonable because there are no tributaries that pass through residential areas and for the first time this has happened in the history of Read more…
“Suicide” Comet Storm Hits Sun—Bigger Sun-Kisser Coming?
The sun-kissing comet Ikeya-Seki, as it appeared in the dawn sky in 1965.
Photograph by Victor R. Boswell, Jr., National Geographic
Andrew Fazekas
Published January 17, 2011
A recent storm of small comets that pelted the sun could herald the coming a much bigger icy visitor, astronomers say.
Since its launch in 1995, NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, orbiter has captured pictures of 2,000 comets as they’ve flown past the sun.
Most of these comets are so-called sungrazers, relatively tiny comets whose orbits bring them so near the sun that they are often vaporized within hours of discovery. (See a picture of a sungrazer spied in October.)
The sun-watching telescope usually picks up one sungrazer every few days. But between December 13 and 22, SOHO saw more than two dozen sungrazers appear and disintegrate.
Seeing “25 comets in just ten days, that’s unprecedented,” Karl Battams, of the United States Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., said in a statement. “It was crazy!”
According to Battams and colleagues, the comet swarm could be forerunner fragments from a much larger parent comet that may be headed along a similar path. And such a large icy body coming so near the sun would result in a spectacular sky show.
Sun-Kissing Comet “Granddaddy” on the Way? Read more…
Solar Wind to Reach Earth In Few Days, Spark Auroral Activity
A dark coronal hole at the Sun center was captured in extreme ultraviolet light by National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) solar dynamics observatory on Jan. 10.
NASA
A dark coronoal hole at the Sun center was captured in extreme ultraviolet light by National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) solar dynamics observatory. As the Sun continues to rotate, the high speed solar wind particles blowing from this hole will likely reach Earth in a few days and may spark some auroral activity.
Coronal holes are areas of the Sun’s surface that are the source of open magnetic field lines that head way out into space. They are also the source regions of the fast solar wind, which is characterized by a relatively steady speed of about 800 kilometers per second.
As the Sun continues to rotate, the high speed solar wind particles blowing from this hole will likely reach Earth in a few days and may spark some auroral activity, according to NASA.
Here, the solar dynamics observatory detected a giant solar filament that became unstable and erupted from the far side of the Sun. A filament is a large, bright feature extending outward from the Sun’s surface, often in a loop shape. Some filaments break apart and give rise to coronal mass ejections.
Prediction: Read more…
NASA Sold Computer Hard Drives Containing Sensitive Government Info
Julian Assange may have needed a mole inside the Army to get sensitive government documents for WikiLeaks, but thanks to the lax IT procedures at NASA, it looks like he may have only needed an eBay account.
Due to weak security measures and an agency culture that struggles with properly handling property transfer, NASA sold hard drives to the general public that contained information that could help hackers penetrate the space agency’s computers, according to a new report from the NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG).
The computers were left over from the shuttle program, which NASA sold off publicly after they had been properly sanitized of any sensitive information. However, it seems that a combination of poorly designed procedures and individual failures led NASA personnel to skip that sanitation step. Overall, 10 entires PCs that might have contained IP information and other sensitive data are known to have ended up sold to private citizens.
“During our audit, we discovered significant weaknesses in the sanitization and disposal processes for IT equipment at four NASA Centers – Kennedy and Johnson Space Centers and Ames and Langley Research Centers,” the report reads.
This is not the first time that NASA has come under fire for poor information technology and equipment management. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), NASA misplaced $94 million in equipment between 1997 and 2007, and failed to meet their goals of stopping such losses in six of those ten years.
A 2007 GAO report portrayed a NASA culture where property mismanagement and loss rarely results in punishment. In one instance, a NASA employee escaped punishment despite providing an explanation for losing a laptop consisting of the excuse “this computer, although assigned to me, was being used on board the International Space Station. I was informed that it was tossed overboard to be burned up in the atmosphere when it failed,” the 2007 GAO report said.
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