uniformitarianism:

Sundarbans, Bangladesh

Stretching across part of southwestern Bangladesh and southeastern India, the Sundarbans is the largest remaining tract of mangrove forest in the world. The Sundarbans is a tapestry of waterways, mudflats, and forested islands at the edge of the Bay of Bengal. Home to the endangered Bengal tiger, sharks, crocodiles, and freshwater dolphins, as well as nearly two hundred bird species, this low-lying plain is part of the Mouths of the Ganges. The area has been protected for decades by the two countries as a National Park, despite the large human populations concentrated to the north.

This satellite image shows the forest in the protected area. The Sundarbans appears deep green, surrounded to the north by a landscape of agricultural lands, which appear lighter green, towns, which appear tan, and streams, which are blue. Ponds for shrimp aquaculture, especially in Bangladesh, sit right at the edge of the protected area, a potential problem for the water quality and biodiversity of the area. The forest may also be under stress from environmental disturbance occurring thousands of kilometers away, such as deforestation in the Himalaya Mountains far to the north. (Click through for more. Courtesy of NASA.)

sentiostudio:

The Fairy of Eagle Nebula

Image Credit: The Hubble Heritage Team, (STScI/AURA), ESA, NASA

The dust sculptures of the Eagle Nebula are evaporating. As powerful starlight whittles away these cool cosmic mountains, the statuesque pillars that remain might be imagined as mythical beasts. Pictured above is one of several striking dust pillars of the Eagle Nebula that might be described as a gigantic alien fairy. This fairy, however, is ten light years tall and spews radiation much hotter than common fire. The greater Eagle Nebula, M16, is actually a giant evaporating shell of gas and dust inside of which is a growing cavity filled with a spectacular stellar nursery currently forming an open cluster of stars. The above image in scientifically re-assigned colors was released in 2005 as part of the fifteenth anniversary celebration of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.

ramblingfellowship:

iss028e033315 (by NASA: 2Explore)

City lights illuminate this night time view of southern California, Mexico’s Baja California and the Gulf of Cortez, as photographed by one the Expedition 28 crew members onboard the International Space Station flying at altitude of approximately 220 miles. A 15-mm focal length was used to capture the time lapse image. The thin line of Earth’s atmosphere is visible above the horizon. 

jtotheizzoe:

James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, was arrested yesterday as part of the ongoing protests against the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.

That’s what I call putting your money where your scientific mouth is.

(via Discovery News)

Pulsars

Ever look up at a clear night sky and notice some of the stars blink a bit more than others? They dwindle and fade in and out at different rates, almost making the skies look like sparkling water. What you are looking at most of the time is actual stars that are making their way to the end of their life. The moment prior to their eventual death

But to understand what a Pulsar is you need to Understand what Neutron stars are as well. Neutron stars are one of the possible ends for a star. They result from massive stars which have mass greater than 4 to 8 times that of our Sun. After these stars have finished burning their nuclear fuel, they undergo a supernova explosion. This explosion blows off the outer layers of a star into a beautiful supernova remnant. The central region of the star collapses under gravity. It collapses so much that protons and electrons combine to form neutrons. Hence the name “neutron star”.

Simply put, pulsars are rotating neutron stars. And pulsars appear to pulse because they rotate, Like shown in the figures below & above.

Pulsars are spinning neutron stars that have jets of particles moving almost at the speed of light streaming out above their magnetic poles. These jets produce very powerful beams of light. In addition, since stars variate in energy output, every single pulsar in the night sky is unique and has it’s own “pulsating” beacon. Kind of the same way species here on Earth have variations of the beating heart.

Information Via: NASA

cwnl:

Rivers of Melting Ice Mapped in Antarctica

The first-ever map of how Antarctica’s ice is moving across that continent has been created by researchers at the University of California, Irvine.

The map, along with an associated animation developed by NASA, reveals that ice is flowing fastest in coastal ice shelves and their tributaries, shown in this illustration in bright purple and blue. Though it’s ice that’s moving, not water, “you can imagine it like a river system,” says Bernd Scheuchl, one of the map’s creators. The fastest ice flows out to sea at a rate of a few kilometers a year. Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers on the west coast are the most active.

The team was surprised by how far inland they found fast-moving ice, Scheuchl says. So, if Antarctica loses a great deal of its coastal ice to climate change in the coming decades, large quantities of interior ice could follow. “That’s critical knowledge for predicting future sea level rise,” NASA polar scientist Thomas Wagner said in a prepared statement.

To create this view of Antarctic ice flow, the UC Irvine researchers relied on data from satellites operated by Canada, Japan and the European Space Agency. Flow was tracked from 2007 to 2009 during a period of intense scientific monitoring of Earth’s poles that researchers all over the world had agreed to do. A report on the map was published online August 18 in Science.

Journal Reference: Science

matthen:

Liquid water on the surface of Mars! NASA has just announced news that it has observed the phenomenon shown above. These dark surface flows in the Southern hemispheres seem to be a volatile substance, and the leading hypothesis is that it is heavily salty liquid water. [full video] [NASA TV] [more]

mothernaturenetwork:

Dark alien planet discovered by NASA
Scientists are unsure why the planet is blacker than coal, but believe it could be a chemical they ‘haven’t even thought of yet.’

photojojo:

Clouds off the Chilean coast as seen from the Landsat 7…and NASA makes us swoon again.

Satellite Photos from NASA’s Landsat 7