Posts tagged nasa

Turrialba Volcano

With all indications that funding for space programs to the Moon and beyond is unlikely, attention on earth and near earth projects remains high. Certainly some would argue that there is a more tangible return on investment, while others simply think the benefits are more easily seen and understood by the average taxpayer.

It may be impossible to predict earthquakes (with current technology), but the activities of hurricanes, volcanoes, and terrorists should be easy to follow as this image shows.

This is an official image of the day from the NASA Earth Observatory,  part of the EOS Project Science Office located at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

I like working at NASA because the projects I support do some really amazing things.  This is supernova remnant W49B; sorry, I don’t know if it has a cool name or not. Scientists (grad students, actually) at the Suzaku observatory detect X-ray emissions created as free electrons get deflected or captured by nuclei of atoms. The thing is, it took a lot of energy to get those electons free of the nuclei in the first place. Something like 30 to 100 million degrees fahrenheit, or 10,000 times hotter than the surface of our Sun. The supernova that creates such heat also expands out into thin space so that it takes thousands of years for nuclei to find their missing electrons, and we can detect the X-rays today. More info about these “fossil fireballs” is over at the mission page for the Suzaku satellite.

This it NOT an official NASA image of the day.