An H-IIA rocket carrying a South Korean satellite launched from southern Japan Friday. Msnbc.com's Craig Melvin reports.
Jiji Press / AFP - Getty Images
This trace of a moving light is made by Japan's H-IIA, launched from the Tanegashima space center in Kagoshima prefecture on Friday.
NHK reports: Japan's space agency, JAXA, successfully launched an H2A rocket carrying a foreign satellite early Friday.
It was the first commercial launch of a Japanese rocket based on a commission from overseas.
NASA reports:
Leaders of Congress honored astronauts John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins with congressional gold medals in a ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda on Nov. 16, 2011. The Gold Medal, Congress' highest expression of national appreciation for distinguished achievements and contributions, was first given to George Washington in 1776.
Mandel Ngan / AFP - Getty Images
Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin and John Glenn attend a ceremony to receive the Congressional Gold Medal, on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., Nov. 16, 2011.
The legendary crew of the first moon landing received the Congressional Gold Medal in a ceremony on Capitol Hill.
Ralph Morse / Getty Images
1969: Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins and Neil Armstrong,
Central Press / Getty Images
Apollo 11 astronauts Mike Collins (left), Neil Armstrong (centre), and Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin, in front of the Lunar Landing Module Simulator at the Kennedy Space Centre, USA, prior to their landing on the moon.
Science & Society Picture Library / Getty Images Contributor
Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins during training.
Time Life Pictures / Getty Images Contributor
1969: Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong are honored by a ticker tape parade in New York.
NASA via AP
This image provided by NASA shows giant sunspot activity Thursday, Nov. 3, from a region on the sun that scientists are calling a "benevolent monster."
You have to hand it to the NASA scientist who came up with the name "benevolent monster."
No doubt conservation groups and recreation enthusiasts are celebrating the removal of these antiquated dams.
AP and KGW report:
VANCOUVER, Wash. -- Crews on Wednesday blasted a hole in a nearly century-old hydropower dam in Washington's south Cascades, marking another step in efforts to restore habitat for threatened and endangered fish in the Pacific Northwest.
The more than 12-story Condit Dam on the White Salmon River is the second-tallest dam to be demolished in U.S. history. Its two turbines produce about 14 megawatts of power, enough for 7,000 homes, but its owner, Portland-based utility PacifiCorp, elected to remove the dam rather than install cost-prohibitive fish passage structures that would have been required for relicensing.
PacifiCorp via AP
A hole is breached in the century-old Condit Dam on the White Salmon River near White Salmon, Wash. Wednesday, Oct. 26. The 12-story dam is the second-tallest dam in U.S. history to be breached for fish passage, according to the advocacy group American Rivers.
Troy Wayrynen / The Columbian via AP
Attendees rejoice while watching a live video feed of the breaching of Condit Dam at Freeing the White Salmon River Celebration Wednesday October 26 in Husum, Washington. The celebration was part of events scheduled for the breaching of Condit Dam.
Steven Lane / The Columbian via AP
Davis Washines, Inter Tribal Fisheries Enforcement, is overcome by emotion as he watches a live video feed of the breaching of Condit Dam at an invite only event near the dam, Wednesday, Oct. 26 in White Salmon, Wash.
Steven Lane / The Columbian via AP
The White Salmon River cuts its new course through the sediment of Northwestern Lake after the breaching of Condit Dam, Wednesday, Oct. 26 near White Salmon, Wash.
Troy Wayrynen / The Columbian via AP
From left, Giani Benevento, Jonathan Blum, both Wet Planet river guides, and Temira Wagonfeld, dress up as salmon at the Freeing the White Salmon River Celebration Wednesday Oct. 26 in Husum, Wash. The celebration was part of events scheduled for the breaching of Condit Dam.
B&W Pantex via Reuters
Workers examine a B53 nuclear bomb at the B&W Pantex nuclear weapons storage facility outside Amarillo, Texas, in this handout photograph taken and released on October 25, 2011. The United States dismantled the oldest nuclear bomb in its Cold War arsenal -- and one of the most powerful it ever built -- on Tuesday as part of President Barack Obama's nuclear security policy. Built at the height of the Cold War in 1962, the bomb was designed to be dropped onto a target by a massive B-52 Stratofortress strategic bomber.
M. Postman / STScI / CLASH / NASA / ESA
A picture from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the galaxy cluster MACS 1206, which is 4.5 billion light-years from Earth. The cluster's gravity is powerful enough to visibly bend the path of light, somewhat like a magnifying glass.
Scientists are using funhouse images of faraway galaxies to learn how dark matter shaped the cosmos we see today. This picture from the Hubble Space Telescope, with the monster galaxy cluster MACS J1206.2-0847 (or MACS 1206 for short) at the center, illustrates how gravitational lenses can focus on phenomena that would otherwise go unseen.
Notice how a lot of the galaxies surrounding the central smudge of light have been distorted into thin arcs of light. That's due to the light-bending effect of the massive MACS 1206, as dictated by Einstein's general theory of relativity. Astronomers can do a careful analysis of those distortion effects to figure out just how massive the galaxy cluster is, and even where the mass is most concentrated.
Scientists have known for a long time that such galaxy clusters are much more massive than they thought they'd be, based on how much light they're giving out. The motions of galaxies suggest that visible matter makes up 15 percent or less of the universe's total mass. The rest of the stuff is the dark matter. It's not yet clear exactly what dark matter is, but scientists suspect it consists of exotic particles that don't interact much with the "ordinary" matter we all know and love.
MACS 1206, which lies 4.5 billion light-years from Earth, is one of 25 galaxy clusters that have been targeted by an effort known as the Cluster Lensing and Supernova Survey Using Hubble, or CLASH. So far, the effort has completed its observations for six of the clusters. By analyzing variations in the gravitational effects, the CLASH team hopes to map out how dark matter's effect has shaped galaxy clusters over time.
"These maps are being used to test previous, but surprising, results that suggest that dark matter is more densely packed inside clusters than some models predict," Hubble's handlers say in an image advisory issued today. "This might mean that galaxy cluster assembly began earlier than commonly thought."
To learn more about Hubble's dark-matter hunt, check in with Hubblesite.org and the European Space Agency's Hubble website — and check out these links as well:
apple.com via Reuters
Apple Inc co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs picture is featured on the front page of the Apple website after his passing in this screen grab October 5, 2011.
The Photo District News blog PDNPulse has a fascinating post about the experience of several photographers shooting Steve Jobs over the years.
The piece tells the story of the iconic photo on Apple's website (above), shot in 2006 by fashion and commercial photographer Albert Watson. Watson shot the picture with film on a 4x5 camera.
“If you look at that shot, you can see the intensity. It was my intention that by looking at him, that you knew this guy was smart,” Watson says, adding, “I heard later that it was his favorite photograph of all time.”
Photojournalist Ed Kashi writes:
“He was one of the most difficult subjects I ever dealt with during my Silicon Valley years but I appreciated his awareness of identity, setting and message of the images. There was one time I had to get a picture with him and Ross Perot and when Jobs acted up Perot turned to him and like a stern parent said ‘Steve, Grow up!!’
Related: More Kashi images of Steve Jobs
Capturing Steve Jobs On Camera: Photographer Peter Stember Remembers
In a Private Light: Diana Walker’s Photos of Steve Jobs
Ed Kashi/VII
Left: Steve Paul Jobs, founder of NeXT Inc. at the company headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif. in 1988. Right: Steve Jobs and John Sculley at the Apple Annual Meeting in Hawaii in 1984.
Michael Theusner / Applied Optics
A third-order and fourth-order rainbow can be seen at the center of this photograph, taken from the countryside in northern Germany. The tertiary and quaternary rainbows appear on the sunward side of the sky, rather than the opposite side of the sky, as is the case for primary and secondary rainbows. This is the first picture of a quaternary rainbow in nature, and the second picture ever of a tertiary rainbow.
Look out, Double Rainbow Guy: You just might have a double-double freakout over this first-ever picture documenting a quadruple rainbow, which is the subject of a scientific paper in the journal Applied Optics.
Seeing two rainbows in the sky is a visual treat, leading a YouTube user named Paul Vasquez to rhapsodize to the point of tears. But three or four rainbows at the same time? That's the stuff of legend. Triple-rainbow reports have been bubbling up since the days of Aristotle, but only five reports from scientifically knowledgeable observers have been recorded during the past 250 years.
Not until this year has a triple rainbow or a quadruple rainbow been photographed and published in the scientific literature.
Such rainbows are more technically referred to as tertiary or quaternary rainbows. Like the better-known primary or secondary rainbows that Vasquez gushed over, these rare rainbows appear when sunlight bounces around the inside of a raindrop, is refracted and spread through a range of visible-light wavelengths and shines out to the observer as a multicolored arc in the sky.
The light beams that creates single or double rainbows take one or two bounces inside the raindrop, as shown in this diagram, and they're always visible in the part of the sky opposite the sun. In contrast, third-order and fourth-order rainbows require a triple or quadruple bounce, and appear on the sunward side of the sky, at angles of 40 and 45 degrees with respect to the sun.
That makes it well nigh impossible to capture all four rainbows in the same picture — and because some light is lost with each bounce, the third and fourth rainbows are incredibly faint. Even if there are raindrops in the right place, the effect is easily overwhelmed by the sun's glare.
Last year, U.S. Naval Academy meteorologist Raymond Lee and a colleague, Philip Laven, laid out a prediction for the conditions that would produce third-order rainbows, and they challenged rainbow-chasers to go out and find one. Among the requirements: dark thunderclouds, and either a heavy downpour or a rainstorm with nearly uniform rain droplets. If the sun broke through the clouds under these conditions, it could project a dim tertiary rainbow against the dark clouds nearby, they said.
Michael Grossmann / Applied Optics
Michael Grossmann's photograph of the skies over Kampfelbach during an evening rain shower is at left, with two points marked A and B as a reference for image orientation. A processed version of the image is at right, revealing a faint tertiary rainbow between the white arrows.
Some experts thought it'd be impossible to make out the rainbow, but amateur rainbow-chasers rose to the challenge. On the evening of May 15, the required conditions came together for Michael Grossman, an observer in Kampfelbach in southwestern Germany. He turned toward the sun and started snapping pictures where the tertiary rainbow should have shown up.
"It is really exaggerated to say that I saw it, but there seemed to be something," he said in an Optical Society news release.
When the pictures were put through contrast expansion and unsharp masking, the faint arc of the tertiary rainbow came through.
Grossmann's feat made an impression on another German rainbow-chaser, Michael Theusner, and he had his camera at the ready on the evening of June 11 when a rainstorm came toward his home in Schiffdorf in northern Germany. Here's how he described the event to me in an email:
"Actually, the chasing started as a normal storm-chasing effort. I was on my way home when the storm front approached from the southwest. A nice shelf cloud had formed at the base of the storm, and I hurried home to fetch my camera (Canon 40D + Canon EF-S 17-55 mm lens) to take some photos. Then I went to a nearby field road, where you have an unobstructed view of the sky. However, when I finally reached that location, the shelf cloud had largely disappeared. So I was disappointed at first, but hoped for the rear of the storm to show some interesting cloud features. So I waited while heavy rain was falling.
"When the sun started to come out, I realized that the situation was just like the one Michael Grossmann had had when he took the first photo of the third-order rainbow. I had read about his observation on June 3 in a German Internet discussion forum for atmospheric phenomena — only about a week earlier. Thus, I tried to catch that rare rainbow, too.
"I had asked Michael Grossmann in the forum whether or not he had taken several images so as to stack them to increase the signal-to-noise ratio — a technique well known to amateur astronomers like me. Using that technique, it is possible to increase the visibility of faint signals in images. Unfortunately, he had not. I decided to use that technique to increase the chances to record the third-order rainbow. I took several image series until the rain stopped at my location. I did not see that rainbow visually.
"Back home I started processing, and already the first image series that I took when the sun brightly lit the raindrops showed the third-order rainbow! I was excited and started converting and stacking the order image series. One of them looked strange, however. Another rainbow was visible just to the third-order bow's right. Fainter, but still visible. I checked the Internet for higher order bows and quickly realized that that image series likely showed the fourth-order rainbow. I roughly calculated the radius of that bow and it matched the predicted location of the quaternary bow.
"I was stunned, as I discovered that this was very likely the very first image in the world to show this rainbow."
Theoretically, it's possible to have a quintuple or a sextuple rainbow, but the optical geometry of the bounces within the raindrop is such that the fifth- and sixth-order rainbows would be overwhelmed by the light from the first- and the second-order rainbows. "So it may never be possible to image those," Theusner said.
The research papers describing the observations, and providing guidance for future rainbow-chasers, appear in a special issue of Applied Optics. The bottom line is that the phenomenon is too dim to see with the naked eye, "with the possible exception of very rarely combined circumstances of favorable illumination, background and the strength of rain," Grossmann said. You'd have to point your camera in the right direction without actually seeing the bow, and then do some heavy-duty image processing. But Grossmann and Theusner have proven that it can be done. And for Lee, the meteorologist who issued the original challenge, that's like a ray of sunshine.
"It was as exciting as finding a new species," he said.
More about atmospheric phenomena:
Here are the three papers published this week in the Applied Optics, the journal of the Optical Society:
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also add me to your Google+ circle, and check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Amazing video of beautiful Aurora Borealis shot in Finnish Lapland in the winter of 2011.
It's been a banner year for auroral displays, as seen from Earth as well as from space. This time-lapse view of the northern lights in Finnish Lapland has to rank as one of the year's more stellar compilations. The video was produced by Flatlight Films as a travel come-on for Visit Finland. The views were captured from several locations, using DSLR cameras with remote pan/tilt heads. For the full effect, go full-screen HD on the YouTube video (or the Vimeo version).
If this puts you in the mood to visit Finland, check out Travel+Leisure's recommendation for a romantic hotel in Lapland (which also made Concierge.com's list of off-the-grid resorts. But if you'd rather watch the northern lights from your computer chair, check out SpaceWeather.com's aurora gallery or the Canadian Space Agency's AuroraMAX webcam. Come to think of it, you can check out these links as well:
The music for the video is by the Finnish group CC33. Tip o' the Log to Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait and Universe Today's Nancy Atkinson.
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding me to your Google+ circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
It is fascinating to see what the army is doing with this technology in Afghanistan. No doubt American citizens would never go along with the government doing this at home. Wired reports:
Scanning prisoners’ irises is just Step 1. In Afghanistan, local and NATO forces are amassing biometric dossiers on hundreds of thousands of cops, crooks, soldiers, insurgents and ordinary citizens. And now, with NATO’s backing, the Kabul government is putting together a plan to issue biometrically backed identification cards to 1.65 million Afghans by next May.
Tauseef Mustafa / AFP - Getty Images
Spc/ Brandon Tolbert from US army HHB 3-7 Field Artillery Regiment 3rd Bct 25th ID scans eyes of an Afghan man with Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) during a mission in Turkham Nangarhar bordering with Pakistan on September 28, 2011. Turkham is a border crossing town in the Nangarhar province of Afghanistan and the Khyber Agency of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas. A decade of fighting in Afghanistan has since snowballed into a huge effort involving around 130,000 foreign troops from dozens of countries, with the resilient Taliban using homemade bombs and guerrilla tactics in a bid to undermine the Afghan government and the NATO mission.
Tauseef Mustafa / AFP - Getty Images
Spc. Jeremiah Holbrook from US army HHB 3-7 Field Artillery Regiment 3rd Bct 25th ID smokes as he scans eyes of an Afghan man with an Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) during a mission in Turkham Nangarhar bordering with Pakistan on September 28.
Tauseef Mustafa / AFP - Getty Images
Pfc. Jarod Lee (L), Pfc. Russell Wheeler (C) and Robert Charleston from US army HHB 3-7 Field Artillery Regiment 3rd Bct 25th ID scann Afghans as part of Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) during a mission in Turkham Nangarhar bordering with Pakistan on September 27. Turkham is a border crossing town in the Nangarhar province of Afghanistan and the Khyber Agency of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas.A decade of fighting in Afghanistan has since snowballed into a huge effort involving around 130,000 foreign troops from dozens of countries, with the resilient Taliban using homemade bombs and guerrilla tactics in a bid to undermine the Afghan government and the NATO mission.
Tauseef Mustafa / AFP - Getty Images
Pfc. Jarod Lee from US army HHB 3-7 Field Artillery Regiment 3rd Bct 25th ID scans finger prints of an Afghan man as part of Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) during a mission in Turkham Nangarhar bordering with Pakistan on September 27.
NASA
Many auroral displays appear green, but sometimes, as in this Sept. 26 image from the International Space Station, other colors such as red can appear.
"Red sky at night, sailor's delight": That's one of the oldest sayings in the book when it comes to weather prediction, but this picture adds a new twist. The red sky is an aurora, seen from above by astronauts on the International Space Station. And the weather that's causing this phenomenon is space weather from the sun.
Auroras arise when electrically charged particles from the sun interact with atoms in the upper atmosphere, sparking emissions of light at various wavelengths. The displays are most likely to be visible around Earth's magnetic poles, where the interaction is strongest. The sun has been going through an upswing of activity over the past couple of months, which has generated a colorful series of northern and southern lights.
North or south, the most common shade of auroral light is green. That's the wavelength that's typically emitted when solar particles mix it up with oxygen atoms. But if there are lower-energy collisions with oxygen atoms or nitrogen atoms, the emissions edge toward the reddish end of the spectrum. That's what's happening in this picture, captured on Monday. You should be able to make out the space station's solar panels toward the upper left corner of the photo.
Space weather can create disruptions for satellite communication systems as well as electric grids on Earth, but so far the most noticeable effect from this year's solar storms has been a string of glorious auroras. We weathered the latest geomagnetic storm overnight, and SpaceWeather.com is offering up a selection of snapshots — including this red-and-green stunner from Russia's Kola Peninsula.
To learn more about the colors of the aurora, check out this "Causes of Color" explanation. And if you live in northern or southern climes, there's always a chance of seeing the lights for yourself. Last night, the aurora was visible from Minnesota, Germany and Poland in the north, as well as New Zealand in the south. The University of Alaska at Fairbanks provides this handy-dandy online guide to aurora-watching.
More auroral glories:
A time-lapse video from the International Space Station features a flyover of the southern lights.
It's been a great summer for auroral displays, and especially from space. Here's a time-lapse video showing the International Space Station's passage over the southern lights on Sept. 11. The tour begins with the station arcing southeast over eastern Australia, passing over New Zealand and then heading northeast in its inclined orbit. There's a dense cloud cover over Earth's surface, but that just makes the ripples of green light stand out even more.
The 26-second video was compiled from about 16 minutes' worth of photo-snapping by the space station's crew, from their vantage point in the orbiting outpost's Cupola observation deck. (Make sure you're watching the PhotoBlog wide-screen version.)
North or south, auroral lights are sparked when electrically charged ions from the solar wind interact with atoms in the upper atmosphere. In an advisory about the video, NASA notes that green is the most common auroral shade, coming from the light emitted from emitted oxygen atoms. Flashes of red show up here and there. You can also see a golden glow visible along the rim of the atmosphere, just above the curving horizon. That airglow is caused by the excitation of atoms by ultraviolet radiation.
For a big assortment of Earth views from NASA, check out the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth, and for auroral views feast your eyes on SpaceWeather.com's Aurora Gallery. Here are a few more must-see examples of our Earth at night, as seen from the International Space Station:
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding me to your Google+ circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
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