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Image: Southwestern Kazakhstan's Mangistau Region

keithcowing — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:25:01 -0700

This Kompsat-2 image was acquired over southwestern Kazakhstan's Mangistau region east of the Caspian Sea.

Along the top of the image we can see water and wetlands, with eroded areas at the top and on the right. The majority of the image is dominated by flatland covered with low-lying vegetation.

Image: Solar-electric Propulsion Thruster Firing

keithcowing — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:23:28 -0700

This image shows a cutting-edge solar-electric propulsion thruster in development at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., that uses xenon ions for propulsion. An earlier version of this solar-electric propulsion engine has been flying on NASA's Dawn mission to the asteroid belt.

Video: Bay Area Space Fans Have Been Busy

keithcowing — Thu, 23 May 2013 20:47:29 -0700

Image: Where Two Niles Meet

keithcowing — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:38:01 -0700

Though it moves just a tiny fraction of the water carried by the Amazon, Congo, or Niger rivers, the Nile is the world's longest river. Its main tributaries--the White Nile and the Blue Nile--meet in Khartoum, Sudan, a rain-poor city of nearly 2 million residents that relies on the Nile for irrigation. Well-watered crops line the river banks, and patchworks of croplands (including center-pivot irrigated fields) dot the city's outskirts.

Satellite Video Captures a Week of Severe Weather

keithcowing — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:35:12 -0700

A new animation of satellite observations shows the clouds associated with several outbreaks of severe weather from May 15 to May 21, 2013, over the south central United States. Over the course of seven days many tornadoes touched down including two EF-4 tornadoes and one EF-5 tornado. All of the weather systems that spawned these outbreaks are shown in this video, which uses visible-light data of clouds from NOAA's GOES-13 satellite, overlaid on a U.S. map created with imagery from MODIS data, an instrument that flies aboard both the NASA Aqua and Terra satellites. This visualization was created by the NASA GOES Project at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Credit: NASA/NOAA GOES Project

ESO's Very Large Telescope celebrates 15 years of success

keithcowing — Thu, 23 May 2013 08:58:23 -0700

With this new view of a spectacular stellar nursery ESO is celebrating 15 years of the Very Large Telescope -- the world's most advanced optical instrument. This picture reveals thick clumps of dust silhouetted against the pink glowing gas cloud known to astronomers as IC 2944. These opaque blobs resemble drops of ink floating in a strawberry cocktail, their whimsical shapes sculpted by powerful radiation coming from the nearby brilliant young stars.

Video: Starship Enterprise Rides a Balloon To The Edge of Space

keithcowing — Sat, 18 May 2013 18:56:59 -0700

via io9

Video: "Expo" by Joe Sill

keithcowing — Sat, 18 May 2013 18:53:50 -0700

More info at Vimeo via io9

Stunning View Of Orion

keithcowing — Wed, 15 May 2013 09:09:51 -0700

This dramatic new image of cosmic clouds in the constellation of Orion reveals what seems to be a fiery ribbon in the sky. This orange glow represents faint light coming from grains of cold interstellar dust, at wavelengths too long for human eyes to see. It was observed by the ESO-operated Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) in Chile.

Photo: The Instant of Landing for Soyuz TMA-07M

keithcowing — Wed, 15 May 2013 08:22:36 -0700

The Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft is seen as it lands with Expedition 35 Commander Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), NASA Flight Engineer Tom Marshburn and Soyuz Commander Roman Romanenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, on May 14, 2013. Hadfield, Marshburn and Romanenko returned from five months onboard the International Space Station where they served as members of the Expedition 34 and 35 crews. Photo Credit: NASA/Carla Cioffi 201305140008hq (14 May 2013) - high res (2.3 M) low res (156 K)