SPACE: WHERE ARE WE GOING? : TROPICAL DEPRESSION 11

Sunday, October 6, 2013

A HOT TOWER FORMS IN TROPICAL DEPRESSION 11

FROM: NASA

Tropical Depression 11 formed in the central Atlantic Ocean and NASA's TRMM satellite passed overhead and gathered information and identified a "hot tower" that indicated it would strengthen. The depression became Tropical Storm Jerry on Sept. 30 at 10:30 a.m. EDT. A "hot tower" is a tall cumulonimbus cloud that reaches at least to the top of the troposphere, the lowest layer of the atmosphere. It extends approximately nine miles (14.5 km) high in the tropics. The hot towers in Tropical Depression 11 were reaching heights of 16 km/9.9 miles high around the depression's center. These towers are called "hot" because they rise to such altitude due to the large amount of latent heat. Water vapor releases this latent heat as it condenses into liquid. NASA research shows that a tropical cyclone with a hot tower in its eye wall was twice as likely to intensify within six or more hours, than a cyclone that lacked a hot tower. Those hot towers also drop heavy rainfall. mage Credit: NASA/SSAI, Hal Pierce.

STAR FLASH

What caused this outburst of V838 Mon? For reasons unknown, star V838 Mon's outer surface suddenly greatly expanded with the result that it became the brightest star in the entire Milky Way Galaxy in January 2002. Then, just as suddenly, it faded. A stellar flash like this had never been seen before -- supernovas and novas expel matter out into space. Although the V838 Mon flash appears to expel material into space, what is seen in the above image from the Hubble Space Telescope is actually an outwardly moving light echo of the bright flash. In a light echo, light from the flash is reflected by successively more distant rings in the complex array of ambient interstellar dust that already surrounded the star. V838 Mon lies about 20,000 light years away toward the constellation of the unicorn (Monoceros), while the light echo above spans about six light years in diameter. Image Credit: NASA, ESA

THE SPIDERWEB GALAXY

Looking like a spider's web swirled into a spiral, Galaxy IC 342 presents its delicate pattern of dust in this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Seen in infrared light, faint starlight gives way to the glowing bright patterns of dust found throughout the galaxy's disk. At a distance of about 10 million light-years, IC 342 is relatively close by galactic standards, however our vantage point places it directly behind the disk of our own Milky Way. The intervening dust makes it difficult to see in visible light, but infrared light penetrates this veil easily. IC 342 belongs to the same group as its even more obscured galactic neighbor, Maffei 2. IC 342 is nearly face-on to our view, giving a clear, top-down view of the structure of its disk. It has a low surface brightness compared to other spirals, indicating a lower density of stars (seen here as a blue haze). Its dust structures show up much more vividly (red). Blue dots are stars closer to us, in our own Milky Way. New stars are forming in the disk at a healthy rate. The very center glows especially brightly in the infrared, highlighting an enormous burst of star formation occurring in this tiny region. To either side of the center, a small bar of dust and gas is helping to fuel this central star formation. Data from Spitzer's infrared array camera are shown in blue (3.6 microns), green (4.5 microns) and red (5.8 and 8.0 microns). Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

JUMPING TO WARP SPEED

This cockpit view of a hypothetical spacecraft traveling at eight-tenths the speed of light shows the visual distortions that would be experienced at such high speeds. The star field is actually being wrapped toward the front of the craft in addition to being significantly blue-shifted. NASA Glenn leads the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project, NASA's primary effort to produce near-term, credible, and measurable progress toward the technology breakthroughs needed to revolutionize space travel and enable interstellar voyages. NASA Lewis (now Glenn) Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio.

OBSERVATION FROM THE SPACE STATION