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This photograph taken by an astronaut on the International Space Station shows water of different colors within sub-basins of the Laguna (lake) Verde in the high Andes of northwest Argentina. The lake floor lies at 4,095 meters (13,438 feet) above sea level, whereas the peak of the local volcano (west of the lake, not shown) reaches over 3,000 meters higher (6,818 meters or 22,368 feet above sea level). <br><br> Laguna Verde (58 kilometers wide, 36 km long) often appears green, giving rise to its name. This image shows the turquoise tint in the central sub-basin (image center), with a yellow to black tinge to water in the southern sub-basin (left)—also known locally as Laguna Negro. The northernmost basin (right) appears black. The large gray zone comprising much of the rest of Laguna Verde is likely a combination of shallow water—only inches deep—and sunglint reflecting off the water surface. The reason for the color differences is that many different families of salt-loving organisms occupy hypersaline lakes such as Laguna Verde. These microscopic organisms appear as different colors, often bright, depending on the salinity and temperature of each water body or sub-basin. <br><br> The rest of the lake floor is dry and appears white from the build-up of thick salt deposits. Parallel lines around the southern subbasin (Laguna Negro) indicate prior shorelines of this shrinking water body. Evaporation removes water but leaves ephemeral shorelines marked with white salt. <br><br> Astronaut photograph ISS035-E-25019 was acquired on April 20, 2013, with a Nikon D3S digital camera using a 400 millimeter lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by the Expedition 35 crew. It has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by M. Justin Wilkinson, Jacobs/JETS at NASA-JSC.
Laguna Verde
05.17.2013
Springtime has brought a substantial and long-lasting bloom of phytoplankton in the Bay of Biscay, off the western coast of France. Swirls of green, turquoise, and cyan on the water surface show the location of these microscopic, plant-like organisms, while also tracing the currents and eddies that mix them. <br><br> Phytoplankton are always present in the water but the stronger sunlight of the season—as well as pulses of nutrient-rich sediments and fresh water flowing out from the land—promote prodigious blooms that can last for weeks to months. Blooms can be a blessing to other marine species, as these tiny floating plants often feed everything from zooplankton to fish to whales. But some algae and plankton blooms can turn dangerous, either through the production of chemical toxins or by severely depleting the oxygen supply in the ocean and creating “dead zones” that suffocate marine creatures. <br><br> NASA satellites captured these natural-color images of a phytoplankton-filled Bay of Biscay in the spring of 2013. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite captured this image on May 4. <br><br> Such blooms tend to occur every March and April in the area, diminishing in May as ocean conditions change and surface nutrients run out. The colors of the blooms are mostly derived from the pigments in the phytoplankton, which use chlorophyll to turn sunlight into fuel (photosynthesis); some of the color is also attributable to the minerals in the fine shells of these organisms. Coccolithophores, for example, produce a calcite (limestone) shell that can give the water a milky appearance. <br><br> NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response. Caption by Michael Carlowicz.
Swirls in the Waters off France
05.17.2013
NASA Project IceBridge completed the 2013 Arctic campaign on May 2 as the P3 returned to Wallops Island from Thule, Greenland. The NASA P3 aircraft flew over 200 hours on this deployment covering 96,000 km – this is almost 2.5 times around the Earth at the equator. Of the 200 hours 146 were for science data collection. The map shows the very good spatial coverage for the 26 land ice and sea ice research missions.
IceBridge 2013 Coverage
05.10.2013
NASA's new Earth-bound rover began testing on the Greenland ice sheet this week. <br /><br /> GROVER, which stands for both Greenland Rover and Goddard Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research, is an autonomous, solar-operated robot that carries a ground-penetrating radar to examine the layers of Greenland’s ice sheet. Its findings will help scientists understand how the massive ice sheet gains and loses ice. <br /><br /> The GROVER team, led by glaciologist Lora Koenig from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., arrived in Summit Camp, the highest spot in Greenland, on May 6, 2013. After loading and testing the rover’s radar and fixing a minor communications glitch, the team began the robot’s tests on the ice on May 8, defying winds of up to 23 mph (37 kph) and temperatures as low as minus 22 F (minus 30 C). <br /><br /> The GROVER tests will continue through June 8. GROVER, a prototype, was first developed in 2010 and 2011 during summer engineering boot camps at Goddard, before further refinement, with NASA funding, at Boise State University. Its trial in Greenland will also serve as a test of using rovers in harsh polar regions to gather data.
GROVER Debuts on Greenland's Ice Sheet
05.10.2013
These delicate wisps of gas make up an object known as SNR B0519-69.0, or SNR 0519 for short. The thin, blood-red shells are actually the remnants from when an unstable progenitor star exploded violently as a supernova around 600 years ago. There are several types of supernovae, but for SNR 0519 the star that exploded is known to have been a white dwarf star — a Sun-like star in the final stages of its life. <br /><br /> SNR 0519 is located over 150 000 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Dorado (The Dolphinfish), a constellation that also contains most of our neighboring galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Because of this, this region of the sky is full of intriguing and beautiful deep sky objects. <br /><br /> The LMC orbits the Milky Way galaxy as a satellite and is the fourth largest in our group of galaxies, the Local Group. SNR 0519 is not alone in the LMC; the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope also came across a similar bauble a few years ago in SNR B0509-67.5, a supernova of the same type as SNR 0519 with a strikingly similar appearance. <br /><br /> European Space Agency/NASA Hubble
Hubble Sees the Remains of a Star Gone Supernova
05.03.2013
Unlike other celestial objects there is no question how the Horsehead Nebula got its name. This iconic silhouette of a horse's head and neck pokes up mysteriously from what look like whitecaps of interstellar foam. The nebula has graced astronomy books ever since its discovery over a century ago. But Hubble's infrared vision shows the horse in a new light. The nebula, shadowy in optical light, appears transparent and ethereal when seen at infrared wavelengths. This pillar of tenuous hydrogen gas laced with dust is resisting being eroded away by the radiation from a nearby star. The nebula is a small part of a vast star-forming complex in the constellation Orion. The Horsehead will disintegrate in about 5 million years. <br /><br /> Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Horsehead Nebula
04.19.2013
IceBridge closed out the fourth week of its Arctic campaign with a flight over the striking landscape of eastern Greenland's Geikie Peninsula and a survey of a Canadian ice cap before taking two days off over the weekend. Soon the mission will return to Thule to finish up Arctic flights for 2013. <br /><br /> The morning of April 12, 2013 saw the P-3B take off for a flight to the west, across the Davis Strait to Canada's Baffin Island. This island, the largest one in Canada, is home to an ice formation known as the Penny Ice Cap. This mission was a repeat of airborne surveys by the ATM and radar teams flown in 1995, 2000 and 2005, and added new survey lines along ICESat ground tracks. Previous airborne surveys showed the ice cap thinning and glaciers retreating in the area and the April 12 mission aimed at measuring several glaciers in the area to see how much the Penny Ice Cap has melted in recent years. <br /><br /> The image captures ice covered fjord on Baffin Island with Davis Strait in the background. <br /><br /> Image Credit: NASA/Michael Studinger
IceBridge Flight Over Baffin Island
04.17.2013
An exploding star observed in 1604 by the German astronomer Johannes Kepler held a greater fraction of heavy elements than the sun, according to an analysis of X-ray observations from the Japan-led Suzaku satellite. The findings will help astronomers better understand the diversity of type Ia supernovae, an important class of stellar explosion used in probing the distant universe. <br /><br /> ”The composition of the star, its environment, and the mechanism of the explosion may vary considerably among type Ia supernovae,” said Sangwook Park, an assistant professor of physics at the University of Texas at Arlington. ”By better understanding them, we can fine-tune our knowledge of the universe beyond our galaxy and improve cosmological models that depend on those measurements.” <br /><br /> The best way to explore the star's makeup is to perform a kind of post-mortem examination on the shell of hot, rapidly expanding gas produced by the explosion. By identifying specific chemical signatures in the supernova remnant, astronomers can obtain a clearer picture of the composition of the star before it blew up. <br /><br /> This composite of images from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the remnant of Kepler's supernova in low (red), intermediate (green) and high-energy (blue) X-rays. The background is an optical star field taken from the Digitized Sky Survey. The distance to the object is uncertain, with estimates ranging from 13,000 to 23,000 light-years, but recent studies favor the maximum range. This image spans 12 arcminutes or about 80 light-years at the greatest distance. <br /><br /> Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/NCSU/M.Burkey et al.; optical: DSS
Kepler Supernaova: a post-mortem
04.08.2013
                                                                                                                                                                                         
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  • Last Updated: 05/23/2013