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Image of the Day….Meteor Crater , Arizona …

January 13, 2016NatarajanLeave a comment

Meteor Crater, Arizona, from the air

An aerial view of Meteor Crater, Arizona, the result of an impact 50,000 years ago.

View larger. | Photo by Manish Mamtani Photography. Visit him on Facebook.

View larger. | Meteor crater, via EarthSky community member Manish Mamtani Photography. Visit him on Facebook.

Manish Mamatani posted this photo to EarthSky Facebook. It’s wonderful Meteor Crater near Winslow, Arizona, sometimes said to be the best preserved meteorite impact site in the world. It is an impressive thing to see … worth taking the kids!

The mile-wide crater is the result of a collision between Earth and an asteroid, believed to have occurred only about 50,000 years ago.

Source……Posted by Deborah Byrd

in http://www.earthsky .org

Natarajan

Image of the Day….Double rainbow !!!

January 12, 2016NatarajanLeave a comment

Double rainbow, Brooklyn Bridge, NYC

EarthSky community member Jennifer Khordi caught this spectacular double rainbow on Sunday, after storms passed over Manhattan.

View larger. | Photo taken January 10, 2016 by Jennifer Khordi of Matawan, New Jersey. Visit Jennifer’s Facebook page.

Source….www.earthsky.org

Natarajan

The Alphabets From Space…!!!

January 6, 2016NatarajanLeave a comment

In July 2012, while working on a story about wildfires, NASA’s science writer and social media manager Adam P. Voiland spotted a V-shaped plume of smoke caused by a wildfire in the Caribou Mountains in northern Alberta, Canada. That image made him wonder if there are other alphabets hidden among the millions of photos of earth’s surface taken by NASA’s satellites. It was a mammoth task, so he enlisted the internet in the ambitious project. With the help of readers and colleagues, Voiland started collecting images of ephemeral features like clouds, phytoplankton blooms, and dust clouds that formed shapes reminiscent of letters. Now, over three years later, his search is completed and the results are exceedingly beautiful and educational.

Some letters, like O and C, were easy to find,” said Voiland. “Others—A, B, and R—were maddeningly difficult.”

After he had tracked down all the letters, he wrote playful captions for each photos inspired by Dr. Seuss which he was reading to his son.

Here is a selection of alphabets from the gallery.

Bonjour B, what begins with B? Biomass and boreal forests. Beirut, Barcelona, and Brasília. A bunch of babbling birds bunched up along Holla Bend.

On August 4, 2014, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 acquired this image of the Arkansas River and the Holla Bend Wildlife Refuge. In the winter, it is common for the refuge to host 100,000 ducks and geese at once.

Big C, little C, what begins with C? This curving crescent of carbonate and quartz clinging to the coast. There is CloudSat and CALIPSO. Contrails from jets cruising over cumulus clouds. The Corolis force, chlorofluorocarbons, and crafty coccolithophores!

An astronaut captured this photograph of an artificial island at the southern end of Bahrain Island on January 23, 2011. The beach sand on tropical islands is mostly made up of calcium carbonate from the shells and skeletons of marine organisms.

What begins with E? Earth, of course. Evaporation and the exosphere. Egypt and Eyjafjallajökull. Eskers, erratics, El Niño, and EO-1. This ephemeral entourage of algae off the east coast of an island where English is spoken!

On October 25, 2009, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image of a phytoplankton bloom off the coast of New Zealand.

Big F, little f. What begins with F? Firn-filled fjords and frozen forms on folded, fossil-filled facies of rock! Fog, fossil fuels, and faults. France, Fort Collins, and don’t forget Fiji.

The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 acquired this false-color image of valleys and snow-covered mountain ranges in southeastern Tibet on August 4, 2014. Firn is a granular type of snow often found on the surface of a glacier before it has been compressed into ice

What begins with I? In situ measurements and infrared radiation. Ice sheets and isthmuses. Istanbul and Ilopango. This intriguing image of India’s Andaman Island after an intimidating incident involving an earthquake.

On February 10, 2007, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image of the Andaman Islands. The thin, bright rings surrounding several of the islands are coral reefs that were lifted up by a massive earthquake near Sumatra in 2004

What begins with J? Jason-1 and the jet stream. Jerusalem, Jakarta, and Johnson Space Center. This jade-colored coral reef juxtaposed against the jumble of the sea.

On July 17, 2015, the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8 captured this image of the Trunk Reef near Townsville, Australia

What begins with M? The meandering Mississippi. MODIS and MISR. Mumbai, Miami, and Moscow. These medial moraines merging muck and minerals for millennia!

On August 14, 2015, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured this image of glaciers in the Tian Shan mountains in northeastern Kyrgyzstan. The trail of brown sediment in the middle of the uppermost glacier is a medial moraine, a term glaciologists use to describe sediment that accumulates in the middle of merging glaciers

What begins with N? Numerous cloud condensation nuclei in the North Pacific! Nefarious nitrogen dioxide and NOx. The near infrared and NDVI and the Nimbus satellite. Nor’easters and the Nile at night.

On March 4, 2009, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite captured this image of ship tracks over the Pacific. Ship emissions contain small particles that cause the clouds to form

What begins with T? Taal and Tolbachik. Taiga, typhoons, tornadoes, and thunderstorms. The trove of trees and towns tucked into this terrain in the United Arab Emirates.

On March 9, 2015, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured this image of development along two roads in the United Arab Emirates

What begins with X? There are xenoliths, the xylem in xeric woodlands, and the cities of Xian and Xalapa. Not much else begins with X, so relaX and enjoy this eXcellent icy X!

On August 7, 2012, the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this false-color image of the northwest corner of Leidy Glacier in Greenland.

Z, what begins with Z? Zambia and Zimbabwe. Zenith and zooplankton. Zillions of smoke particles zipping, zooming, and zigzagging above Canada!

On July 11, 2012, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image of wildfire smoke over Canada.

See more of the gallery on NASA’s website.

Source…..www.amusingplanet.com

Natarajan

NASA Research Could Save Commercial Airlines Billions in New Era of Aviation….

January 5, 2016January 5, 2016NatarajanLeave a comment

Researchers with NASA’s Environmentally Responsible Aviation project coordinated wind-tunnel tests of an Active Flow Control system — tiny jets installed on a full-size aircraft vertical tail that blow air — to prove they would provide enough side force and stability that it might someday be possible to design smaller vertical tails that would reduce drag and save fuel.

Credits: NASA/Dominic Hart

The nation’s airlines could realize more than $250 billion dollars in savings in the near future thanks to green-related technologies developed and refined by NASA’s aeronautics researchers during the past six years.

These new technologies, developed under the purview of NASA’s Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) project, could cut airline fuel use in half, pollution by 75 percent and noise to nearly one-eighth of today’s levels.

“If these technologies start finding their way into the airline fleet, our computer models show the economic impact could amount to $255 billion in operational savings between 2025 and 2050,” said Jaiwon Shin, NASA’s associate administrator for aeronautics research.

Created in 2009 and completed in 2015, ERA’s mission was to explore and document the feasibility, benefits and technical risk of inventive vehicle concepts and enabling technologies that would reduce aviation’s impact on the environment. Project researchers focused on eight major integrated technology demonstrations falling into three categories – airframe technology, propulsion technology and vehicle systems integration.

By the time ERA officially concluded its six-year run, NASA had invested more than $400 million, with another $250 million in-kind resources invested by industry partners who were involved in ERA from the start.

“It was challenging because we had a fixed window, a fixed budget, and all eight demonstrations needed to finish at the same time,” said Fayette Collier, ERA project manager. “We then had to synthesize all the results and complete our analysis so we could tell the world what the impact would be. We really did quite well.”

Here is a brief summary of each of the eight integrated technology demonstrations completed by the ERA researchers:

Tiny embedded nozzles blowing air over the surface of an airplane’s vertical tail fin showed that future aircraft could safely be designed with smaller tails, reducing weight and drag. This technology was tested using Boeing’s ecoDemonstrator 757 flying laboratory. Also flown was a test of surface coatings designed to minimize drag caused by bug residue building up on the wing’s leading edge.
NASA developed a new process for stitching together large sections of lightweight composite materials to create damage-tolerant structures that could be used in building uniquely shaped future aircraft that weighed as much as 20 percent less than a similar all-metal aircraft.
Teaming with the Air Force Research Laboratory and FlexSys Inc. of Ann Arbor, Michigan, NASA successfully tested a radical new morphing wing technology that allows an aircraft to seamlessly extend its flaps, leaving no drag-inducing, noise-enhancing gaps for air to flow through. FlexSys and Aviation Partners of Seattle already have announced plans to commercialize this technology.
NASA worked with General Electric to refine the design of the compressor stage of a turbine engine to improve its aerodynamic efficiency and, after testing, realized that future engines employing this technology could save 2.5 percent in fuel burn.
The agency worked with Pratt & Whitney on the company’s geared turbofan jet engine to mature an advanced fan design to improve propulsion efficiency and reduce noise. If introduced on the next-generation engine, the technology could reduce fuel burn by 15 percent and significantly reduce noise.
NASA also worked with Pratt & Whitney on an improved design for a jet engine combustor, the chamber in which fuel is burned, in an attempt to reduce the amount of nitrogen oxides produced. While the goal was to reduce generated pollution by 75 percent, tests of the new design showed reductions closer to 80 percent.
New design tools were developed to aid engineers in reducing noise from deployed wing flaps and landing gear during takeoffs and landings. Information from a successful wind-tunnel campaign, combined with baseline flight tests, were joined together for the first time to create computer-based simulations that could help mature future designs.
Significant studies were performed on a hybrid wing body concept in which the wings join the fuselage in a continuous, seamless line and the jet engines are mounted on top of the airplane in the rear. Research included wind-tunnel runs to test how well the aircraft would operate at low speeds and to find the optimal engine placement, while also minimizing fuel burn and reducing noise.

As part of the closeout work for the ERA project, information and results regarding each of these technology demonstrations were categorized and stored for future access and use by the aerospace industry, and will be discussed at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Sci-Tech Conference in San Diego this week.

For more information about NASA aeronautics research, go to:

http://www.nasa.gov/aeronautics

Source……….www.nasa.gov

natarajan

Image of the Day….” Spectacular new image of earthrise”

January 4, 2016NatarajanLeave a comment

A new earthrise photo, as seen from the moon by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Spectacular new image of earthrise seen from the moon, from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter using cameras operated by Arizona State University. Africa, the south Atlantic Ocean and the eastern edge of South America can be seen. The large tan area on the upper right is the Sahara Desert. In the foreground on the moon, you are seeing the Compton crater. Read more about this image.

As seen from any one spot on the moon’s surface, Earth never rises or sets. Because one side of the moon always faces Earth, the Earth hangs relatively motionless in the lunar sky. But orbiting spacecraft can see earthrises and earthsets. This week, Arizona State University emailed us this amazing new image of an earthrise seen from the moon, along with Q-and-A with Mark Robinson, who is the principal investigator for the cameras aboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnissance Orbiter. In it, Robinson talked about this image, which was acquired by the orbiter’s camera (the LROC) in October.

Q: How did you know this image would be possible?

A: [The LROC has] taken pictures of the Earth more than 10 times in the past. We wanted to get a limb shot (showing the edge of the moon). What makes it really hard is getting the moon in the foreground … That was not by accident. We have software tools that allow us to visualize observations. We know where the spacecraft is going to be in the future … We determined from which orbits the Earth will be visible near the limb. Once we know the ground track where the Earth will be visible, we then find a view with a dramatic foreground.

Question: What are some of the pieces that had to come together to make this photo?

Answer: Just a few of the steps: You have to roll the spacecraft, in this case about 70 degrees, but the spacecraft is traveling at over 1,600 meters per second. We’re restricted in the length of one exposure time to something close to 0.4 milliseconds. You also move the spacecraft in the direction of flight so that you can get a wide enough field of view. When a spacecraft is in an elliptical orbit, the timing changes from image-to-image in an orbit. We have to compute all of that beforehand to get it exactly right … That timing has to be precisely carried out … We have to predict the temperature of the CCD (electronic equivalent of film). The Wide Angle Camera (WAC) is imaging an area multiple times while the Narrow Angle Cameras (NAC) takes just one picture. We blow up the WAC images and combine them to produce higher resolution, and then overlay this sharper image on the NAC image. We wanted the Earth to be on the horizon, and that only happens from certain areas of the moon. It’s only when the spacecraft is above the boundary between the nearside and farside that you can see the Earth behind the limb (edge of the moon).

Q: LRO has been in orbit for more than six years. If you picked the best shots to show your friends, what are they?

A: We’ve taken more than a million images. My answer changes every three days. The Apollo landing sites are fantastic. You can see the tracks the astronauts left on the surface of the moon. To me, as a scientist, it’s really great because it helps me visualize the photographs they took on the surface. The significance of the geologic context. ‘All right, now I know they got that soil sample there, and I can see what it looks like.’

Bottom line: NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter acquired this new image of Earthrise from the moon in October, 2015, using the orbiter’s camera (the LROC) operated by Arizona State University.

Source…..www.earthsky.org

Natarajan

Unusual Airport Runways Around the World….!!!

December 30, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

1. Gisborne
Airport, New Zealand

This North Island airport is one of the few in the
World that has a railway line running through its runway. Both the railway
And the airport are active, so let’s hope they are precise about their
Scheduling.

2. Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport, Saba Island

Blink and you might miss it. With only 400m in length, this Caribbean island has the shortest commercial

air strip on the planet. Obviously, this tiny runway is only suitable for small aircraft.

3. Courchevel Altiport, France

This airfield high in the French Alps is a convenient yet treacherous drop-off point for wealthy skiers

at the chi-chi Courchevel slopes. In fact, there are ski runs no far from the 1,762 ft (537 m) mountaintop

runway. Frequent fog, snow, ice and low clouds make it even more extreme. You’ll want to make sure your

small plane or helicopter pilot is well trained.

4. Don Mueang Airport, Thailand

There aren’t many airports in the world that have an 18 hole golf course right amongst the runways. Fore!

5. Tenzing-Hillary Airport, Nepal

If you’re planning on trekking to Mount Everest, chances are you’ll arrive via this small Nepalese airport

in Lukla. It has a short runway with a 9,334 feet (2900 meter) drop off the edge. Not for the faint of heart.

6. Agatti Aerodrome, Lakshadweep, India

This 4000 feet long island runway doesn’t leave much margin for error. A few more inches, and passengers

are going to be swimming sooner than they bargained for.

7. Barra International Airport, Scotland

Barra International Airport, on a remote northern island in Scotland, has the only beach runway for scheduled

flights in the world. At high tide, some of the runways are underwater..

8. Gibraltar International Airport

These are red lights you don’t want to run..

9. Gustaf III Airport, Saint-Barthélemy

This runway is so tiny, only planes with a maximum of 20 people can land here. That helps keep St. Barts

an exclusive upscale Caribbean haven for the rich and famous.

10. Kansai International Airport, Japan

With land at a premium in Japan, they decided to build this major airport on an artificial island offshore in

Osaka Bay. If its ocean setting doesn’t give you chills, its also regularly subjected to earthquakes, typhoons

and storm surges. Oh, and the island is also sinking. This airport’s construction and constant reinforcement

makes it the most expensive civil works project in modern history.

11. Madeira Airport, Portugal

The previous airport on this Portuguese archipelago was notoriously challenging due to its short runway

surrounded by high mountains and the ocean. So, they extended it with an impressive – yet frightening –

platform supported by 180 columns off the edge of the land.

12. Narsarsuaq Airport, Greenland

This runway is short and sweet whether you’re coming or going. It is considered one of the world’s most

challenging approaches.. Pilots have to fly up a fjord known for its turbulence and wind gusts.

13. Savannah-Hilton Head International Airport

A pair of grave makers are embedded into Runway 10 at this airport, in remembrance to the Dotson Family who

used to own the land. One of the graves dates back to 1857. The law states that next of kin need to authorize

the moving of family graves, and when they couldn’t be located, the airport engineers let them be.

14. Wellington Airport, New Zealand

This airport in New Zealand’s capital city has a short runway, so only smaller aircraft can land there.

It’s known for turbulent landings due to the channeling effect of the Cook Strait creating gusty winds.

15. Princess Juliana International Airport, Sint Maarten

This beachside airport on the Dutch side of Saint Martin is right across the street from Maho Beach. It is

known for its extremely low-altitude flyover landing approach, and tourists flock here to experience the rush

of the planes overhead. Definitely one of the craziest airport runways you got to see to believe.

16. Ice Camp Barneo, North Pole

This snowy strip not far from the North Pole is open for just 4 weeks per year. Built on a drifting ice

base, it’s a fully functional runway suitable for cargo planes like the Antonov AN-74. Perhaps Santa

Claus uses it too.

Image of the Day…”Zinnia Flowers @ International Space Station…”

December 24, 2015December 24, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

Zinnia Flowers Starting to Grow on the International Space Station

Zinnia flowers are starting to grow in the International Space Station's Veggie facility

Zinnia flowers are starting to grow in the International Space Station’s Veggie facility as part of the VEG-01 investigation. Veggie provides lighting and nutrient supply for plants in the form of a low-cost growth chamber and planting “pillows” to provide nutrients for the root system. These plants appear larger than their ground-based counterparts and scientists expect buds to form on the larger plants soon.

The Veggie facility supports a variety of plant species that can be cultivated for educational outreach, fresh food and even recreation for crew members on long-duration missions. Previously, the facility has grown lettuce — which was consumed by the crew earlier this year — and now investigators are attempting to grow Zinnia flowers. Understanding how flowering plants grow in microgravity can be applied to growing other edible flowering plants, such as tomatoes.

Image Credit: NASA

Image of the Day…” Blue Marble Earth Image …”

December 20, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) recently captured a unique view of Earth from the spacecraft’s vantage point in orbit around the moon.

“The image is simply stunning,” said Noah Petro, Deputy Project Scientist for LRO at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The image of the Earth evokes the famous ‘Blue Marble’ image taken by Astronaut Harrison Schmitt during Apollo 17, 43 years ago, which also showed Africa prominently in the picture.”

In this composite image we see Earth appear to rise over the lunar horizon from the viewpoint of the spacecraft, with the center of the Earth just off the coast of Liberia (at 4.04 degrees North, 12.44 degrees West). The large tan area in the upper right is the Sahara Desert, and just beyond is Saudi Arabia. The Atlantic and Pacific coasts of South America are visible to the left. On the moon, we get a glimpse of the crater Compton, which is located just beyond the eastern limb of the moon, on the lunar farside.

LRO was launched on June 18, 2009, and has collected a treasure trove of data with its seven powerful instruments, making an invaluable contribution to our knowledge about the moon. LRO experiences 12 earthrises every day; however the spacecraft is almost always busy imaging the lunar surface so only rarely does an opportunity arise such that its camera instrument can capture a view of Earth. Occasionally LRO points off into space to acquire observations of the extremely thin lunar atmosphere and perform instrument calibration measurements. During these movements sometimes Earth (and other planets) pass through the camera’s field of view and dramatic images such as the one shown here are acquired.

This image was composed from a series of images taken Oct. 12, when LRO was about 83 miles (134 kilometers) above the moon’s farside crater Compton. Capturing an image of the Earth and moon with LRO’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) instrument is a complicated task. First the spacecraft must be rolled to the side (in this case 67 degrees), then the spacecraft slews with the direction of travel to maximize the width of the lunar horizon in LROC’s Narrow Angle Camera image. All this takes place while LRO is traveling faster than 3,580 miles per hour (over 1,600 meters per second) relative to the lunar surface below the spacecraft!

The high-resolution Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) on LRO takes black-and-white images, while the lower resolution Wide Angle Camera (WAC) takes color images, so you might wonder how we got a high-resolution picture of the Earth in color. Since the spacecraft, Earth, and moon are all in motion, we had to do some special processing to create an image that represents the view of the Earth and moon at one particular time. The final Earth image contains both WAC and NAC information. WAC provides the color, and the NAC provides high-resolution detail.

“From the Earth, the daily moonrise and moonset are always inspiring moments,” said Mark Robinson of Arizona State University in Tempe, principal investigator for LROC. “However, lunar astronauts will see something very different: viewed from the lunar surface, the Earth never rises or sets. Since the moon is tidally locked, Earth is always in the same spot above the horizon, varying only a small amount with the slight wobble of the moon. The Earth may not move across the ‘sky’, but the view is not static. Future astronauts will see the continents rotate in and out of view and the ever-changing pattern of clouds will always catch one’s eye, at least on the nearside. The Earth is never visible from the farside; imagine a sky with no Earth or moon – what will farside explorers think with no Earth overhead?”

NASA’s first Earthrise image was taken with the Lunar Orbiter 1 spacecraft in 1966. Perhaps NASA’s most iconic Earthrise photo was taken by the crew of the Apollo 8 mission as the spacecraft entered lunar orbit on Christmas Eve Dec. 24, 1968. That evening, the astronauts — Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders — held a live broadcast from lunar orbit, in which they showed pictures of the Earth and moon as seen from their spacecraft. Said Lovell, “The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth.”

Source…….www.nasa.gov

Natarajan

Meteor Crater, Arizona, from the air

Double rainbow, Brooklyn Bridge, NYC

1. Gisborne Airport, New Zealand

This North Island airport is one of the few in the World that has a railway line running through its runway. Both the railway And the airport are active, so let’s hope they are precise about their Scheduling.

1. Gisborne
Airport, New Zealand

This North Island airport is one of the few in the
World that has a railway line running through its runway. Both the railway
And the airport are active, so let’s hope they are precise about their
Scheduling.