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landscapelifescape:“ Popocatepetl, the most active Volcano in MexicoRaging Volcano by Cristobal Garciaferro Rubioâ€
Sean bienvenidos japonítasarqueológicos a una primera noticia de geografía japonesa, espero que os guste dicho esto comenzamos. - En la isla de Kyuchu se localiza el volcán Sakurajima que está en la ciudad de Kagoshima. Entró en erupción el pasado 25 de julio, por suerte se están evacuando a la población de los alrededores. - Japón es un país que está a la orden del día en lo que respecta al tema vulcanológico. Espero que os haya gustado y nos vemos en próximas noticias de arqueología e historia japonesa. - 考古学ジャポナイトは日本の地理の最初のニュースを歓迎します、私はあなたがそれを好きであることを願っています、これを言って、始めましょう。 - 九州の桜島火山は鹿児島市にあります。 7月25日に噴火し、幸い周囲の人々は避難している。 - 日本は火山学に関して議題になっている国です。 あなたがそれを気に入って、将来の考古学と日本の歴史ニュースであなたに会えることを願っています。 - Archaeological Japonites are welcome to a first news of Japanese geography, I hope you like it, having said this, let's start. - On the island of Kyuchu, the Sakurajima volcano is located in the city of Kagoshima. It erupted on July 25, luckily the surrounding population is being evacuated. - Japan is a country that is on the agenda when it comes to volcanology. I hope you liked it and see you in future archeology and Japanese history news.
I made a comics, based on one very old meme. Morrowseer discusses their future plans. I think with rainwings being peaceful and all their laziness and passivity, nightwings can do everything much easier. And even having no troubles with rainwings.
Game Time: Final Voting for Tournament Earth
The moment has arrived- it's time to decide the NASA Earth Observatory's all-time best image. After four grueling rounds of voting, two contenders remain: Ocean Sand, Bahamas (#5 seed) versus Raikoke Erupts (#6 seed).
The road to the finals has been full of surprises. All top seeds have been knocked out. In one semifinal, Ocean Sand garnered 50.6 percent of the votes to squeak out a win over the overall favorite, Twin Blue Marbles. In the other matchup, Raikoke Erupts trounced Where the Dunes End, 66.5 to 33.5 percent.
Now you have to pick a champion. Will it be a gorgeous, artistic image from the very early years of Earth Observatory or stunning natural-color views of an explosive event from 2019? Which image will you crown as the best in the EO archives: Ocean Sand, Bahamas or Raikoke Erupts? Voting ends on April 28 at 9 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time.
Thank you for helping us celebrate Earth Observatory’s 20th anniversary and the 50th anniversary of Earth Day!
Vote here: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/tournament-earth
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Greatest Hits — Craters We Love
Our solar system was built on impacts — some big, some small — some fast, some slow. This week, in honor of a possible newly-discovered large crater here on Earth, here’s a quick run through of some of the more intriguing impacts across our solar system.
1. Mercury: A Basin Bigger Than Texas
Mercury does not have a thick atmosphere to protect it from space debris. The small planet is riddled with craters, but none as spectacular as the Caloris Basin. “Basin” is what geologists call craters larger than about 186 miles (300 kilometers) in diameter. Caloris is about 950 miles (1,525 kilometers) across and is ringed by mile-high mountains.
For scale, the state of Texas is 773 miles (1,244 kilometers) wide from east to west.
2. Venus: Tough on Space Rocks
Venus’ ultra-thick atmosphere finishes off most meteors before they reach the surface. The planet’s volcanic history has erased many of its craters, but like almost any place with solid ground in our solar system, there are still impact scars to be found. Most of what we know of Venus’ craters comes from radar images provided by orbiting spacecraft, such as NASA’s Magellan.
Mead Crater is the largest known impact site on Venus. It is about 170 miles (275 kilometers) in diameter. The relatively-flat, brighter inner floor of the crater indicates it was filled with impact melt and/or lava.
3. Earth: Still Craters After All These Years
Evidence of really big impacts — such as Arizona’s Meteor Crater — are harder to find on Earth. The impact history of our home world has largely been erased by weather and water or buried under lava, rock or ice. Nonetheless, we still find new giant craters occasionally.
A NASA glaciologist has discovered a possible impact crater buried under more than a mile of ice in northwest Greenland.
This follows the finding, announced in November 2018, of a 19-mile (31-kilometer) wide crater beneath Hiawatha Glacier – the first meteorite impact crater ever discovered under Earth’s ice sheets.
If the second crater, which has a width of over 22 miles (35 kilometers), is ultimately confirmed as the result of a meteorite impact, it will be the 22nd largest impact crater found on Earth.
4. Moon: Our Cratered Companion
Want to imagine what Earth might look like without its protective atmosphere, weather, water and other crater-erasing features? Look up at the Moon. The Moon’s pockmarked face offers what may be humanity’s most familiar view of impact craters.
One of the easiest to spot is Tycho, the tight circle and bright, radiating splat are easy slightly off center on the lower-left side of the full moon. Closer views of the 53-mile (85 kilometer)-wide crater from orbiting spacecraft reveal a beautiful central peak, topped with an intriguing boulder that would fill about half of a typical city block.
5. Mars: Still Taking Hits
Mars has just enough atmosphere to ensure nail-biting spacecraft landings, but not enough to prevent regular hits from falling space rocks. This dark splat on the Martian south pole is less than a year old, having formed between July and September 2018. The two-toned blast pattern tells a geologic story. The larger, lighter-colored blast pattern could be the result of scouring by winds from the impact shockwave on ice. The darker-colored inner blast pattern is because the impactor penetrated the thin ice layer, blasting the dark sand underneath in all directions.
6. Ceres: What Lies Beneath
The bright spots in Ceres’ Occator crater intrigued the world from the moment the approaching Dawn spacecraft first photographed it in 2015. Closer inspection from orbit revealed the spots to be the most visible example of hundreds of bright, salty deposits that decorate the dwarf planet like a smattering of diamonds. The science behind these bright spots is even more compelling: they are mainly sodium carbonate and ammonium chloride that somehow made their way to the surface in a slushy brine from within or below the crust. Thanks to Dawn, scientists have a better sense of how these reflective areas formed and changed over time — processes indicative of an active, evolving world.
7. Comet Tempel 1: We Did It!
Scientists have long known we can learn a lot from impact craters — so, in 2005, they made one themselves and watched it happen.
On July 4, 2005, NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft trained its instruments on an 816-pound (370-kilogram) copper impactor as it smashed into comet Tempel 1.
One of the more surprising findings: The comet has a loose, “fluffy” structure, held together by gravity and contains a surprising amount of organic compounds that are part of the basic building blocks of life.
8. Mimas: May the 4th Be With You
Few Star Wars fans — us included — can resist Obi Wan Kenobi's memorable line “That’s no moon…” when images of Saturn’s moon Mimas pop up on a screen. Despite its Death Star-like appearance, Mimas is most definitely a moon. Our Cassini spacecraft checked, a lot — and the superlaser-looking depression is simply an 81-mile (130-kilometer) wide crater named for the moon’s discoverer, William Herschel.
9. Europa: Say What?
The Welsh name of this crater on Jupiter’s ocean moon Europa looks like a tongue-twister, but it is easiest pronounced as “pool.” Pwyll is thought to be one of the youngest features we know of on Europa. The bright splat from the impact extends more than 600 miles (about 1,000 kilometers) around the crater, a fresh blanket over rugged, older terrain. “Fresh,” or young, is a relative term in geology; the crater and its rays are likely millions of years old.
10. Show Us Your Greatest Hits
Got a passion for Stickney, the dominant bowl-shaped crater on one end of Mars’ moon Phobos? Or a fondness for the sponge-like abundance of impacts on Saturn’s battered moon Hyperion (pictured)? There are countless craters to choose from. Share your favorites with us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
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10 Ground-breaking Earth Satellite Images from 2018
In 2018, our satellites captured beautiful imagery from throughout the solar system and beyond. However, some of our favorite visualizations are of this very planet. While this list is by no means exhaustive, it does capture some Earth satellite images from this year that are both visually striking as well as scientifically informative. This list also represents a broad variety of Earth’s features, as well as satellite instrumentation. Take a journey with our eyes in the sky!
10. Hurricane Florence
Before making landfall, Hurricane Florence churned in the Atlantic for a full two weeks — making it among the longest-lived cyclones of the 2018 season. When it finally did hit land on Sep. 14, the storm devastated the southeastern U.S. coast with intense winds, torrential rains and severe flooding.
This natural-color image was acquired by MODIS on the Terra Satellite on Sep. 12, 2018.
Images like this, as well as other satellite information, were used to anticipate the impact of the storm. Our Disasters Program created flood proxy maps that were shared with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Guard to estimate how many and which communities would be most affected by the storm, in order to help prepare recovery efforts ahead of time.
9. Australia’s Lake Eyre Basin
The Lake Eyre Basin covers one-sixth of Australia and is one of the world’s largest internally draining river systems. However, the rivers supported by this system are ephemeral, meaning that they only run for short periods of time following unpredictable rain — the rest of the time, the Basin is a dry, arid desert.
However, when the heavy rain comes, the basin erupts in an explosion of green. In this false-color image captured by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 on Apr. 25, 2018, you can see how the vegetation completely envelops the spaces where the water has receded. (Flood water is indicated by light blue, and vegetation is indicated by light green.)
Satellites are an excellent tool for tracking greening events that are followed by flooding. These events offer opportunities for predictive tools as well as recreation.
8. Alaska’s Chukchi Sea
A Monet painting comes to life as the Chukchi Sea swirls with microscopic marine algae.
This image was captured off the Alaskan coast by OLI on Landsat 8 on Jun. 18, 2018. After the Arctic sea ice breaks up each spring, the nutrient-rich Bering Sea water mixes with the nutrient-poor Alaskan coastal water. Each type of water brings with it a different type of phytoplankton and the surface waters have just enough light for the algae to populate and flourish. The result is these mesmerizing patterns of turquoise and green.
This image represents one piece of much larger, incredibly complex ecosystem. While one would not normally associate the breaking up of sea ice with phytoplankton blooms, it is an intricate process of the phytoplankton life cycle. The size of the blooms have varied greatly from year to year, and experts are unsure why. Images like these can help scientists track the development of these blooms and link it to other environmental changes.
7. Hawaii’s Kilauea
Sometimes fresh lava is best viewed in infrared.
This false-color image of Kilauea, captured by OLI on Landsat 8 on May 23, 2018, shows the infrared signal emitted by lava flowing toward the sea. The purple areas surrounding the glowing lava are clouds lit from below, indicating that this image was taken through a break in the clouds.
The Puʻu ʻŌʻō Kupaianaha eruption has been continuously spewing red-hot lava since 1983, making it the longest eruption at Kilauea in recorded history. However, new fissures opened up this year that forced many to evacuate the area. Hawaii’s largest lake evaporated in hours and hundreds of homes were destroyed in Vacationland and Kapoho.
Imagery, seismometers and ground-based instruments were used to track the underground movement of magma. Infrared imagery can be incredibly helpful in disasters like this when you to view data that cannot be observed with the naked eye.
6. California’s Woolsey Burn Scar
Nothing quite encapsulates the destruction of a wildfire like a photo from outer space.
This image of the Woolsey Fire aftermath in Southern California was captured on Nov. 18, 2018 by the Advanced Spaceborned Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on the Terra satellite. This false-color infrared image has been enhanced to clearly show the burned vegetation (indicated by brown) and the vegetation that survived unscathed (indicated by green).
The Woolsey Fire clearly left its mark, with almost 152 square miles (394 square km) and 88% of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area badly burned. Images like this one can assist fire managers in the area plan for recovery.
5. Bangladesh’s Padma River
As the years go by, the Padma River grows and shrinks, twists and turns. It never has a fixed shape, and as a result, thousands of people must regularly adapt to the constant changes in the river’s 75-mile (130-km) shoreline.
This image captured on Jan. 20, 2018 by OLI on Landsat 8 depicts one of the major rivers of Bangladesh. For thirty years, scientists have been tracking the erosion of the river with satellite imagery. Combinations of shortwave infrared, near infrared, and visible light are used to detect differences year-to-year in width, depth, and shape of the river. Sometimes the river splits off, but then rejoins again later. These patterns are created by the river carrying and depositing sediment, shaping the curves of the path of water.
Monitoring the Padma River is going to become especially important as a new bridge development project advances in the Char Janajat area. Although the bridge will most certainly help shorten travel times for citizens, nobody is quite sure how the river erosion might affect the construction and vice versa.
4. Alaska’s Yakutat Glacier
It’s hard to believe that Harlequin Lake was once all dry land — but it only started to form once Yakutat Glacier started melting. The lake appeared at the beginning of the twentieth century, and has been growing rapidly ever since.
In this hauntingly beautiful image, captured on Sep. 21 2018 by OLI on Landsat 8, the effect of climate change is apparent — especially when compared to earlier images of the region.
Unless the climate warming starts to reverse very soon — which scientists consider very unlikely — Yakutat could be gone as soon as 2070.
3. South Africa’s Theewaterskloof
Cape Town is a seaside city planted on the tip of South Africa. It’s a city known for its beaches and biodiversity — it also almost became known as the first major city to officially run out of water.
This image of Cape Town’s largest reservoir — Theewaterskloof — was acquired on Jul. 9th, 2018 by OLI on Landsat 8. By the time this photo was taken, the city’s main reservoirs stood at 55%. This was a huge increase from where it stood just six months earlier: just 13%.
The severe water shortage in the region started in 2015, only to become more threatening after three successive and unusually dry years. The entire city was preparing for Day Zero — the day the tap water would be shut off.
Despite forecasts that Day Zero would arrive in April, a combination of heavier rains and local conservation efforts restored the majority of the reservoir.
2. Aerosol Earth
Aerosols are all around us. From the smoke from a fire, to the dust in the wind to the salt in sea spray — these solid particles and liquid droplets are always swirling in our atmosphere, oftentimes unseen.
The Goddard Earth Observing System Forward Processing (GEOS FP) model uses mathematical equations to model what is happening in our atmosphere. The inputs for its equations — temperature, moisture, wind, etc. — come from our satellites and ground sensors.
This visualization was compiled on Aug. 24, 2018 — obviously a busy day for aerosols in our atmosphere. Swirls of sea salt (indicated by blue) reveal typhoons Soulik and Cimaron heading straight towards South Korea and Japan. A haze of black carbon (indicated by red) suffuse from agricultural burning in Africa and large wildfires in North America. And clouds of dust (indicated by purple) float off the Sahara desert.
1. Camp Fire
With nearly a hundred fatalities, hundreds of thousands of acres burned and billions of dollars of damage, the world watched in horror as Camp Fire grew to become the most destructive California wildfire in recorded history.
This image was captured on Nov. 8, 2018 by OLI on Landsat 8 on the same day Camp Fire ignited. It consolidates both visible light and shortwave-infrared light in order to highlight the active fire. Strong winds and dry conditions literally fanned the flames and spread this wildfire like a rash.
This image has not only become the iconic portrait for Camp Fire, it is also sobering representation of how quickly a fire can grow out of control in a short amount of time. Even from space, you can almost smell the massive plumes of smoke and feel the heat of the fires.
Whether you realize it or not, our Earth satellite missions are collecting data everyday in order to monitor environmental changes and prepare for natural disasters. If your interest is piqued by this list, head over to the Earth Observatory. The Earth Observatory updates daily with fresh, new content — brought to you by none other than our eyes in the sky.
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The Birth of a New Island
In late December 2014, an underwater volcano in the South Pacific Kingdom of Tonga erupted and sent a violent stream of steam, ash and rock into the air. The ash plumes rose as high as 30,000 feet (9 kilometers) into the sky and diverted airline flights.
Most new oceanic islands often wash away quickly within a few months. The island doesn't have an official name, and is referred to as Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai after two older islands to either side.
But this island was different. One of our satellites that detects volcanic eruptions alerted our scientists who were very excited because this type of explosive, undersea eruption is rare. In fact, the new Tongan island is one of only three of this kind of volcanic islands in the past 150 years to emerge and survive. It's now three years old.
Zooming in from Space
The baby island is also the first of its kind to emerge in the modern satellite era. This is really important since it's difficult to send our researchers the South Pacific every month to see how the island has changed – which it did very rapidly, especially in the first six months. But satellites in space delivered monthly views which we used to make these high resolution, 3-D topographic maps. With these maps, we tracked the early life and evolution of the island in unprecedented detail.
In April 2015, we watched an isthmus bridge begin forming from the new island to the older island neighboring it to the east. Soft volcanic material, especially on the island's southern side, was eroded by the ocean and deposited on the tail end, which grew and grew till it reached the other island. It's about 1600 feet (500 meters) across, or the length of 5 football fields.
The erosive forces of the ocean broke down the southern wall of the crater lake in May 2015. We thought this might mean that the island wouldn't last much longer because the ocean could now attack the interior of the island's tuff cone. But in June, a sandbar formed, closing off the lake again and protecting the interior. The sandbar has been in place ever since.
Monitoring these changes of both erosion and growth, we now believe that the island will last from between 6 to 30 years!
Terranauts!
Why has the island survived for three years? What makes eroding it away harder than for other blink-and-you-miss-it oceanic islands that disappear into the sea after a few months? To answer these questions, we need rock samples.
Working with the Tongan government, we recruited two French citizens sailing around the world who were in Tongan waters in June, 2017, to go to the new island on our behalf. We treated them like astronauts and gave them instructions to take pictures and samples of the volcanic rocks at locations we could see from space along the coasts, the interior of the crater lake, and from the top of the tuff cone.
They did a fantastic job documenting each sample and where it came from, and then mailed the box of rocks back to our team at our Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, where they are currently being analyzed. We believe that after the eruption, warm seawater mixed with volcanic ash to chemically alter it so that when it hardened into rock it was a tougher material. We're excited to see if the rock samples confirm this.
From Earth to Mars
Link: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11372
Did these Martian volcanoes form in an ocean or lake? If they did, wet environments such as these combined with heat from volcanic processes may be prime locations to search for evidence of past life. We may not know until we arrive on the red planet, but by studying Earth's landforms, we'll be better prepared when we do.
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Solar System: 5 Things To Know This Week
Our solar system is huge, so let us break it down for you. Here are 5 things to know this week:
1. Make a Wish
The annual Leonids meteor shower is not known for a high number of "shooting stars" (expect as many as 15 an hour), but they're usually bright and colorful. They're fast, too: Leonids travel at speeds of 71 km (44 miles) per second, which makes them some of the fastest. This year the Leonids shower will peak around midnight on Nov. 17-18. The crescent moon will set before midnight, leaving dark skies for watching. Get more viewing tips HERE.
2. Back to the Beginning
Our Dawn mission to the dwarf planet Ceres is really a journey to the beginning of the solar system, since Ceres acts as a kind of time capsule from the formation of the asteroid belt. If you'll be in the Washington DC area on Nov. 19, you can catch a presentation by Lucy McFadden, a co-investigator on the Dawn mission, who will discuss what we've discovered so far at this tiny but captivating world. Find out how to attend HERE.
3. Keep Your Eye on This Spot
The Juno spacecraft is on target for a July 2016 arrival at the giant planet Jupiter. But right now, your help is needed. Members of the Juno team are calling all amateur astronomers to upload their telescopic images and data of Jupiter. This will help the team plan their observations. Join in HERE.
4. The Ice Volcanoes of Pluto
The more data from July's Pluto flyby that comes down from the New Horizons spacecraft, the more interesting Pluto becomes. The latest finding? Possible ice volcanoes. Using images of Pluto's surface to make 3-D topographic maps, scientists discovered that some mountains on Pluto, such as the informally named Piccard Mons and Wright Mons, had structures that suggested they could be cryovolcanoes that may have been active in the recent geological past.
5. Hidden Storm
Cameras aboard the Cassini spacecraft have been tracking an impressive cloud hovering over the south pole of Saturn's moon Titan. But that cloud has turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg. A much more massive ice cloud system has been found lower in the stratosphere, peaking at an altitude of about 124 miles (200 kilometers).
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