Science

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NASA Sounding Rocket Finds Helium Structures in Sun's Atmosphere

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A composite image of the Sun showing the hydrogen (left) and helium (center and right) in the low corona. The helium at depletion near the equatorial regions is evident.

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Satellites provide crucial data on crops during COVID-19

Millions of people around the world face hunger every day, and unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to make the issue of food security even worse. Satellites are helping to alleviate the situation by providing crucial information to monitor crop growth and harvesting from space.

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Satellites provide data on crops

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Hubble Makes the First Observation of a Total Lunar Eclipse By a Space Telescope

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Hubble Observes the Total Lunar Eclipse (Artist’s Impression)

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NASA’s MAVEN Observes Martian Night Sky Pulsing in Ultraviolet Light

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This is an image of the ultraviolet “nightglow” in the Martian atmosphere. Green and white false colors represent the intensity of ultraviolet light, with white being the brightest. The nightglow was measured at about 70 kilometers (approximately 40 miles) altitude by the Imaging UltraViolet Spectrograph instrument on NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft. A simulated view of the Mars globe is added digitally for context. The image shows an intense brightening in Mars’ nightside atmosphere. The brightenings occur regularly after sunset on Martian evenings during fall and winter seasons, and fade by midnight. The brightening is caused by increased downwards winds which enhance the chemical reaction creating nitric oxide which causes the glow.

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A Closer Look at Water-Splitting’s Solar Fuel Potential

Scientists at Berkeley Lab and the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis zero in on bismuth vanadate’s role in renewable energy at the nanoscale

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Francesca Toma (right) and Johanna Eichhorn shown at the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) laboratory at Berkeley Lab on July 2, 2018. They developed a special technique using an atomic force microscope at JCAP to capture images of thin-film bismuth vanadate at the nanoscale to understand how a material’s properties can affect its performance in an artificial photosynthesis device.

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Uncovering Our Solar System’s Shape

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An updated model suggests the shape of the Sun’s bubble of influence, the heliosphere (seen in yellow), may be a deflated croissant shape, rather than the long-tailed comet shape suggested by other research.

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Astronomers Sink Their Teeth Into Special Supernova

— Calcium-rich supernovae, a unique type of exploding stars, produce up to half of the calcium in the Universe

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noirlab2019 – Artist’s interpretation of the calcium-rich supernova 2019ehk
Artist’s interpretation (without labels) of the calcium-rich supernova 2019ehk. Shown in orange is the calcium-rich material created in the explosion. Purple coloring represents gas shed by the star right before the explosion, which then produced bright X-ray emission when the material collided with the supernova shockwave.

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Ammonia-Rich Hail Sheds New Light on Jupiter's Weather

New Juno results suggest that the violent thunderstorms taking place in Jupiter’s atmosphere may form ammonia-rich hail, or ‘mushballs’, that play a key role in the planet’s atmospheric dynamics. This theory, developed using data from Juno’s microwave radiometer by the Juno team, is described in two publications led by a researcher at the Laboratoire Lagrange (CNRS/Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur/Université Côte d’Azur) with support from the CNES. The theory sheds light on some puzzling aspects of the meteorology of Jupiter and has implications for how giant planet atmospheres work in general. This, and related findings, are presented in a series of three articles published in the journals Nature and JGR Planets.

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Cyclone observed in Jupiter’s northern hemisphere by JunoCam in July 2018. The central part covers an area of 3200 x 3800 km. White clouds of ammonia can be seen, rotating anticlockwise. Clouds rising as much as 15 km above the others (based on the shadow they cast) are visible in several places, especially in the upper central part of the cyclone. These storms are thought to contain a kind of water-ammonia hail (‘mushballs’) specific to Jupiter’s atmosphere, which drags the ammonia down into the deep atmosphere and may explain the presence of shallow lightning flashes.

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First radio detection of an extrasolar planetary system around a main-sequence star

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Illustration of the planetary system TVLM 513–46546; the newly discovered Saturn-like planet is seen in front of its host star, a small and cool brown dwarf.

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Exoplanet Mismatch

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Exoplanet Mismatch