Largest and Brightest Supermoon 2014, Perigee Moon

Supermoon 2014: Giant moon lights up sky across the globe -


Stargazers around the globe have been dazzled by the biggest and brightest "supermoon" of the year. This year's Perseid meteor shower in one of the most dramatic and anticipated astronomical events of the year. According to NASA, the moon is said to be 14 per cent closer to Earth making it appear larger than usual. Report by Sarah Kerr. Published on Aug 11, 2014

Largest & Brightest Supermoon Of The Year Over South Florida « CBS Miami: "The full moon on August 10th will be the closest and largest full moon in 2014. When the moon is full as it makes its closest pass to Earth, it becomes a “Supermoon,” and will be up to 31,000 miles closer to Earth than other full moons this year. According to NASA, this weekend’s full moon will be 14-percent closer and 30-percent brighter than other full moons of the year. The scientific term for the phenomenon is “perigee moon” or the point when the moon is closest to the Earth in its monthly orbit. The moon will appear much larger than normal, especially on the horizon."

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ISEE-3, A Spacecraft for All, Chrome Experiment (video)

A Spacecraft for All: A Chrome Experiment - YouTube: "

Explore the amazing 36-year-long journey of the International Sun/Earth Explorer 3 (ISEE-3) with the ISEE-3 Reboot team in this new Chrome Experiment. Published on Aug 8, 2014.

http://spacecraftforall.com

A Google Chrome Experiment Visualizes The 36-Year Journey Of A Spacecraft | Co.Design | business + design: In 1978, NASA launched the ISEE-3, a spacecraft designed to study the Earth’s magnetic field and its interactions with solar wind. It would later become the first spacecraft visit a comet. NASA decomissioned the spacecraft in 1997, leaving it to orbit the Sun as very expensive space trash. This year, a team of engineers, programmers, and scientists launched a crowdfunding campaign that raised more than $159,000 to try to contact ISEE-3 and take control of its operations, sending it out to chase comets again, this time for citizen science. A new Chrome Experiment from Google Creative Lab called A Spacecraft for All tells the story of ISEE-3’s history and the recent revival effort through a combination and interactive graphics...

36-Year-Old NASA Probe's Engines Successfully Fired Up by Private Team - Scientific American: "An old NASA spacecraft under the control of a private team fired its thrusters yesterday (July 2) for the first time in a generation. NASA's International Sun-Earth Explorer 3 probe (ISEE-3), which the agency retired in 1997, performed the maneuver in preparation for a larger trajectory correction next week. The spacecraft hadn't fired its engines since 1987, ISEE-3 Reboot Project team members said. It took several attempts and days to perform the roll maneuver because ISEE-3 was not responding to test commands. But this time, controllers got in touch. They increased the roll rate from 19.16 revolutions per minute to 19.76 RPM, putting it within mission specifications for trajectory corrections...."

more info: http://spacecollege.org/isee3/

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Re-thinking an Alien World, 55 Cancri e (video)

ScienceCasts: Re-thinking an Alien World -  


A distant super-Earth named ""55 Cancri e"" is wetter and weirder than astronomers thought possible. The discovery has researchers re-thinking the nature of alien worlds.

Visit http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/... for more.

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A Narrow Miss of Earth, Carrington-class CME (video)

ScienceCasts: Carrington-class CME Narrowly Misses Earth - YouTube:

Two years ago, an intense solar storm narrowly missed Earth. If it had hit, researchers say, we could still be picking up the pieces.

Visit http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/... for more.

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Cool Andromeda

Space Images: Cool Andromeda - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory: "Andromeda, also known as M31, is the nearest major galaxy to our own Milky Way at a distance of 2.5 million light-years, making it an ideal natural laboratory to study star formation and galaxy evolution. Sensitive to the far-infrared light from cool dust mixed in with the gas, Herschel seeks out clouds of gas where stars are born. The new image reveals some of the very coldest dust in the galaxy -- only a few tens of degrees above absolute zero -- colored red in this image. By comparison, warmer regions such as the densely populated central bulge, home to older stars, take on a blue appearance. Intricate structure is present throughout the 200,000-light-year-wide galaxy with star-formation zones organized in spiral arms and at least five concentric rings, interspersed with dark gaps where star formation is absent. Andromeda is host to several hundred billion stars. This new image of it clearly shows that many more stars will soon to spark into existence."

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