Greetings faithful readers… Well, March is turning out to be a fine month for apocalyptica of seemingly every sort…So, as your faithful reporter of all things cataclysmic and eschatological (well, I try), I give you this friendly round-up of end-full news items for your reading pleasure, with brief commentary. To wit: Maize Can’t Take the Blaze
There is nothing better in life than a good robot story, and what’s even better is when that robot is named GROVER. GROVER stands for both Greenland Rover and Goddard Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research — which must have just really made the NASA scientists day, when they realised — and is set to
Solar flares, coronal mass ejections (CMEs), and other solar activity, will likely pick back up sometime later this year, before 2013 is over, according to researchers at NASA. The sun has been somewhat quiet lately, even though 2013 is expected to be the year of peak solar activity for Solar Cycle 24. The reason for
A sun-grazing comet and a solar eruption have been caught on film together by NASA’s twin STEREO spacecraft. The video shows comet Pan-STARRS and a massive coronal mass ejection (CME), caused by a recent solar flare, together in a striking new video. Comet Pan-STARRS is visible in the film as it’s moving through the inner
Next-generation long-distance laser communication will soon be a reality. Researchers at NASA recently completed the first demonstration of the technology by beaming an image of the Mona Lisa to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), currently orbiting the Moon. The famous image was beamed about 240,000 miles from the Next Generation Satellite Laser Ranging (NGSLR) station
Millions of black holes have now been discovered thanks to NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). The WISE mission has led to the discovery of “newfound supermassive black holes and extreme galaxies called hot DOGs, or dust-obscured galaxies.” Images taken by the telescope have uncovered “millions of dusty black hole candidates across the universe and
The slow moving weather systems that lead to massive snowfalls like the now popularly known Snowmageddon that hit the East Coast of the United States in the winter of 2009-10 are now seen to be more frequent during decades in which the North Atlantic Ocean is warmer than usual. This, from a new study released
In the midst of its third field campaign in Antarctica, NASA’s Operation IceBridge mission has provided the first ever detailed airborne measurements of the process of a massive iceberg calving from its parent glacier. Pine Island Glacier has not calved such a significant iceberg since 2001, and many scientists had suspected that it was now
I love autumn (or fall if you are that way inclined) and I love getting to see images of it spreading across a country from above, like this image below which was taken on October 9, and shows the northeastern portion of North America.
Scientists working with NASA’s Operation IceBridge airborne research campaign started their third year of survey flights and captured this image of the sea ice covering the Weddell Sea.
For those of you not living in North America or are stereotypically American and aren’t aware of the world beyond your own three metre personal space, Lake Superior is the largest of the Great Lakes of North America, and can be seen beautifully surrounded by the beginnings of autumn colour.
On September 9 scientists from NASA and the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado in Boulder showed satellite data that capped summertime sea ice coverage at the second lowest ever recorded since records were first kept. Seen below marked out in yellow is the 30 year average, while the red line represents the opening of the Northwest Passage shipping lane.
Fires throughout the northeastern Australian state of Queensland have been captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on board NASA’s Terra satellite this past Sunday, with several blazes clearly visible due to the smoke pouring into the atmosphere and being swept northeast.
As reported yesterday the University of Colorado at Boulder’s National Snow and Ice Data Center announced that the Arctic sea ice minimum extent would come in as second lowest since recording began back in 1979. Now, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has provided their own series of images and videos to back up that report, showing the extent of Arctic sea ice for September 9, 2011.
The cloud that is seen streaking away from the Minnesota Fires in the image below is a ‘pyrocumulonimbus’ cloud, formed as a result of the fires beneath it.
NASA Satellites have been watching Hurricane Irene for several days and providing the public with images of its progress.
The Thematic Mapper on the Landsat 5 satellite captured this natural-color image on June 15, 2009 of Omulyakhskaya and Khromskaya Bays which lie along the northern Siberian coast, southeast of the Lyakhov Islands while the ice still lingered on the sea surface and on some inland water bodies.
This impressive shot from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Aqua satellite was captured on August 14, 2011 and shows a massive phytoplankton bloom in the Barents Sea, located north of Norway and Russia.
NASA released this utterly breathtaking image of Earth as seen from space on October 17, 2000. You can clearly see North and South America thanks to the combined efforts two satellites.
Smoke from the Lateral West Fire burning in the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge (GDSBWR) in southeastern Virginia was caught by the GOES-13 satellite streaming out to the east.
The March 2011 earthquake and tsunami left devastation along the Japanese coast line that is still being felt to this day. But the resultant tsunami also caused havoc in Antarctica, breaking off several large icebergs from the Sulzberger Ice Shelf.
Researchers from America and Europe have combined to provide the clearest account yet of how much glacial ice flows into the sea following the collapse of an Antarctic ice shelf.
This amazing mosaic of the Arctic near the north-pole in the summer was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Terra on June 30, 2011.
China’s Qinghai Province was captured by the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite in this image on December 12, 2010.
After midnight local time on June 13, 2011, the Nabro Volcano in the Southern Red Sea Region of Eritrea erupted after a series of earthquakes hit the Eritrea-Ethiopia border region, ranging up to magnitude 5.7. The image below shows what the stratovolcano looked like before it erupted.
In early June the Chilean Volcano called Puyehue-Cordón Caulle erupted, sending a massive plume of ash around the Southern Hemisphere, stalling flights out of many airports and causing havoc for millions of passengers. NASA Satellite imagery captured the plume as it made its way around the world.
Surf’s up big time on the Sun, or just above the sun, in this case. Seems like NASA’s high resolution Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has caught conclusive evidence of classic “surfer waves” in the solar atmosphere — looking just like the kind in the opening sequence of ‘Hawaii Five-O’.
This beautiful satellite image of Japan was taken by Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard the satellite Terra as it passed over Japan on May 20, 2011.
Satellite imagery captured by the Landsat satellite by the United States Geological Survey and NASA on May 10 show just how devastating the flooding along the Mississippi River is.
The Mississippi River reached 47.87 feet (14.59 meters) in Memphis, Tennessee, on May 10, 2011, according to the Advanced Hydrological Prediction Service (AHPS) of the U.S. National Weather Service. The photos and videos below show just how far-reaching the flooding of the Mississippi River is.
Massive rainfalls towards the end of April, 2011, have increased water levels along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, bringing them to record level highs. Flood waters have inundated homes, businesses and agricultural fields throughout the region.
This image was captured on August 31, 2000 and depicts the Malaspina Glacier, the largest glacier in Alaska.
Since April 6, more than a million acres have burned throughout the state of the Texas, says the Texas Forest Service. This image, taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite, shows conditions on April 15, 2011. Wind whips both smoke and dust southeast across the state. The fires that MODIS detected are marked in red.
The image below was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite on April 8, 2011, and shows the dust which had hovered off the coast of Portugal two days earlier now moving toward the United Kingdom and Ireland.
NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Aqua satellite captured this beautiful image of New Zealand on March 30.
A massive plume of dust has swept off the Sahara desert in North Africa and in the image below hangs off the coast of Portugal in an image taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite on April 6, 2011.
“Many people said it would never get off the ground; some said it wouldn’t last a year,” notes NASA ocean scientist Gene Carl Feldman. “The mission was planned for five years. We got 13 years of incredible data out of this amazing little satellite.”
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Aqua satellite captured this true-color image on March 26 at 9:55 UTC of a massive dust storm as it ran across the Arabian Peninsula.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has produced this map and the following video representing the ozone loss over the Arctic over the beginning of 2010 and 2011. They show the concentrations of ozone over the Arctic as monitored by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) onboard NASA’s Aura satellite.
Iceland is aptly named in this image, taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Terra satellite on March 9.
St. Patrick’s Day might have been last week, but it’s never too late to showcase some beautiful imagery taken of the Emerald Isle.
astrologer has also predicted that such a close perigee would/must somehow perturb the earth’s (tectonic) integrity so much that it will trigger major earthquakes and even volcanoes (not simply severe storms). Although he is not clear on the exact lunar-geo-mechanisms that would produce these quakes, never-the-less this lunar-induced disaster scenario quickly set the Web abuzz with yet another wave of doom-and-gloom “apocalypticism.”
Timing is everything.
