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Europlanet Telescope Network issues 1st Alert – A new north polar spot in Saturn

RAT rover by night.

After several months of commissioning, the HARP CubeSat sent back a first light capture on April 16, 2020. The coastlines of Italy, Sardinia and southeastern Europe can be seen in the image.

Swirling iron.

Scientists have used NASA's ICESat-2 to measure the thickness of Arctic sea ice, as well as the depth of snow on the ice. Here, ridges and cracks have formed in sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.

On March 19, California was one of the first states to set mandatory stay-at-home restrictions in an attempt to slow the spread of COVID-19. Arizona and Nevada followed suit around April 1. The Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on board NASA's Aura Satellite provide data that indicate that these restrictions have led to about a 31% decrease in NO2 levels in the Los Angeles basin relative to previous years. NO2, or nitrogen dioxide, is an air pollutant measured by OMI. The estimated reductions for other cities in the Southwest U.S. before and after the quarantine restrictions are 22% for the San Francisco Bay Area, 25% for San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico, 16% for Phoenix, and 10% for Las Vegas.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/nasa-satellite-data-show-air-p...

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The slider above shows satellite estimates of NO2 from Aura’s Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) as an average of March 25 through April 25. The image on the left shows the mean of the 150-day period from 2015 through 2019, while the image on the right shows the mean of the 30-day period for 2020.

The Delta Scuti-star beta Pictoris.

New Comet Discovered by ESA and NASA Solar Observatory

Sound waves bouncing around inside a star cause it to expand and contract, which results in detectable brightness changes. This animation depicts one type of Delta Scuti pulsation — called a radial mode — that is driven by waves (blue arrows) traveling between the star’s core and surface. In reality, a star may pulsate in many different modes, creating complicated patterns that enable scientists to learn about its interior.

Understanding Earth’s winds