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Science Pics of the Week: See a stunning sunrise from space


Scott Sutherland
Meteorologist/Science Writer

Sunday, May 3, 2015, 3:23 PM - Space station commander Terry Virts gives us a sunrise from space, a satellite returns its first map of global moisture and a massive earthquake also shakes up the Earth's ionosphere.

Space Sunrise

Watching a sunrise can be an exceptional start to your day, seeing the dark sky slowly fill with colour until the Sun bursts above the horizon.

Imaging watching that 16 times a day, like those on the International Space Station! 

Commander Terry Virts, the NASA astronaut currently in charge up there, posted this Space Vine Saturday morning:

Even seeing that every 90 minutes, it would be hard to get jaded to it, wouldn't you say?

A Global Look at Moisture

SpaceX launched NASA's SMAP mission - Soil Moisture Active Passive - back in January, and after taking the time to deploy the satellite's sensor dish and test out its systems, scientists on the ground now have their first complete map of moisture, on and just under, the surface of our planet.


Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC

According to the NASA JPL website:

In this composite radar image, global land, ocean and ice conditions are readily apparent. The weaker strength radar signals measured over the Sahara and Gobi Deserts, depicted in blue shades, reflect their very low soil moisture content and lack of vegetation cover. In contrast, the densely vegetated Amazon and Congo rain forests have very strong radar signals, depicted in reds. In North America, the boreal forests and tree canopies in the Rockies, Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges, and areas east of the Mississippi River, also have strong radar echoes. Grasslands and prairies in the U.S. Great Plains, a great expanse of flat land, exhibit relatively lower-strength radar echoes.
SMAP's radar also takes data over Earth's ocean and sea ice. Variations in radar data over the open ocean reflect variations in surface wind conditions, with relatively low winds in the tropics and high winds at high latitudes. Arctic sea ice, which contains air bubbles and pockets of brine, produces radar echo strengths similar to those seen over grassland or tundra terrain.

The data from this incredible mission will help forecasters on the ground improve weather and climate models, and will help predict the occurrence and the intensity of future floods and droughts.

An Earthquake Excites the Ionosphere

The devastating earthquake that struck Nepal a week ago shook the Himalayan Mountains, destroying homes, buildings and monuments, causing rock-slides and avalanches, and tragically cutting short many lives. The quake also had an unseen effect that took place high up in the Earth's atmosphere.


Credit: NASA/JPL/Ionosphere Natural Hazards Team

According to NASA:

The April 25, 2015, magnitude 7.8 Gorkha earthquake in Nepal created waves of energy that penetrated into Earth's upper atmosphere in the vicinity of Nepal, disturbing the distribution of electrons in the ionosphere. The ionosphere is a region of Earth's upper atmosphere located from about 60 kilometers 1,000 kilometers above Earth’s surface. These disturbances were monitored using signals transmitted by the Global Positioning System (GPS) that were received by a science-quality GPS receiver located in a neighboring region to Nepal.
The disturbance measurements, known as vertical total electron content (VTEC) (depicted in blue in the upper panel), have been filtered using processing software developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, to show wave-like disturbances (circled in red) in the distribution of electrons in the ionosphere. The waves have periods of between two and eight minutes in length. The disturbance measurements following the earthquake rupture are circled in black in the lower panel. The colors represent the relative strengths of the earthquake-induced ionospheric disturbances as captured by the GPS signals, with red being high and blue being low.

As the graphics plotted above show, it took a little over 20 minutes for the disturbance to propagate through the ionosphere, and reach the GPS station at Lhasa, Tibet, over 600 kilometres away.

Scientists studying these effects - which can be caused by any large release of energy into the atmosphere (volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis) - may be able to use them as an early warning system for natural hazards that are difficult to detect.

Sources: NASA/Terry Virts | NASA SMAP | NASA

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