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16 August 2011
Is it A Cloud or A Shadow
A viewer (Eric Atkins) sent me this pic a few weeks back, and it has stumped quite a few meteorologists including me! At first it looks like the cloud in the foreground is casting a shadow on the cirrocumulus deck above and behind it, but this cannot be so! The sun is behind the cloud and not opposite the view from the camera. I have some fellow meteorologists looking into …
28 July 2011
Chandra-The Other Space Telescope
The public know all about the Hubble Space Telescope but most have just heard the name Chandra a few times if at all. The images from Chandra have led to as many if not more amazing discoveries and this post is about just one of them. A friend of mine (and neighbor) works on the Chandra project, so I’m always keen to hear about new images and research. The Hubble …
24 July 2011
Pool Fun & Supernovas
My wife grabbed a video of some students having fun at a nearby pool today, and it immediately struck me as a good illustration of what happens in a supernova. You might remember that I have several times HIGHLY recommended the online lectures from Alex Filippenko’s Introduction to Astronomy course at U.C. Berkeley (sadly no longer available online*). I think learned more astronomy from those lectures than the two college …
7 June 2011
Spectacular Coronal Mass Ejection on Sun. NASA Scientist Calls it “An Amazing Event!”
The flare was one of the most dramatic ever recorded by the solar dynamics observatory but thankfully it was not directed toward Earth. This will have little or no effect on Earth but it is a powerful reminder of how dynamic our nearest star is! The entire history of human evolution is but a slow yawn in the lifetime of the sun. Here is a video with commentary by a …
14 March 2011
Your Chance to See Mercury
Most people have never seen the planet Mercury. It’s so close to the sun, that it’s always near the horizon at sunset or sunrise. This week is a really great viewing opportunity. Here’s where to look from the folks at Sky and Telescope Mag. If you have students in the house, you should grab a subscr. and leave it around 😉 Little is known about Mercury and later this week …
6 March 2011
NASA Scientist (Here in Huntsville!) Says He Sees Alien Fossils in Meteorite
Dr. Richard Hoover has submitted a paper to the Journal of Cosmology that is about to get the whole world talking! He looked at slices of three very rare meteorites using Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESM–a type of electron microscope) and saw what look like micro-fossils of Cyanobacteria. If these are indeed micro-fossils of bacteria, (as Hoover believes) they almost certainly didn’t come from Earth. (That will be the …
1 March 2011
BBC News – Brian Cox: Science is not ‘dominated by old men’
BBC News – Brian Cox: Science is not ‘dominated by old men’.
17 February 2011
“Wow” Video of X-Class Flare From NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory
Take a look at this! The X class flare was caught by the SDO and it’s expected to kick off a nice geomagnetic storm starting tonight. I am betting on some great pics of the Aurora by tomorrow morning! The incredible video, of the flash below, is from two spacecraft. The sun itself is from the Solar Dynamics Observatory and the red region around it is from the SOHO spacecraft. …
6 February 2011
5 Awesome Things About The James Webb Telescope by Hank Green
I think Hank Green is pretty awesome himself. He has a great on-camera presence, and people like him are sorely needed by science right now!
28 January 2011
Far off Galaxies and Hockey Sticks of Arctic Plankton-Lots of wild science this week.
It’s Friday, and there has been some really fascinating science news this week. So here is a quick summary of what caught my eye (and links to find out more about it). In A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY First, is the announcement in NATURE that the most distant galaxy known has been detected. It’s 13.2 billion light years away, and since the Universe itself is 13.7 billion years old, we …
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.