On December 5, 2012, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its annual Arctic Report Card, covering late 2011 through late 2012. The report listed a number of significant events in a record-breaking and sometimes sobering year. One of the biggest stories was the record-low sea ice extent in the Arctic Ocean. Arctic sea ice […]
This morning at 6:43 AM Central Standard Time, eyewitnesses across Texas and adjacent states saw a very bright fireball streaking across the sky, moving roughly east to west. It was also recorded by a NASA meteor camera in Mayhill, New Mexico some five hundred miles to the West, which is very unusual and testifies to …
Some computer models indicate that the Earth may pass near decades old debris left behind by Comet Wirtanen in mid December, creating a new meteor shower. In the most optimistic scenario, viewers could see as many as 10-30 meteors per hour radiating from a point in the constellation Pisces in the early evenings, sometime between …
There are numerous reports of a bright fireball over northwest Alabama on Sunday, Nov. 18 at approximately 7:30 p.m. EST (6:30 p.m. CST). Southeastern cameras managed by NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office recorded the fireball, which was brighter than the moon. (Credit: NASA/MFSC/MEO) (Credit: NASA/MFSC/MEO)The image above is from the Marshall Space Flight Center camera. The moon …
This year’s Leonids meteor shower peaks on Nov. 17 at 4:30 AM Eastern Time. If forecasters are correct, the shower should produce a mild but pretty sprinkling during the night of the 16th/morning of the 17th. The moon will be a waxing crescent setting before midnight, clearing the way for some unobstructed Leonid viewing. “We’re …
Every month, NASA Earth Observatory will offer up a puzzling satellite image here on Earth Matters. The sixth puzzler is above. Your challenge is to use the comments section below to tell us what part of the world we’re looking at, when the image was acquired, and what’s happening in the scene. How to answer. […]
The November 2012 issue of National Geographic features an article, “Sailing the Dunes,” about aerial trips over sandy deserts. The author, George Steinmetz, has flown in light aircraft in high winds—a dangerous combination. Yet the same winds that make the flying so dangerous also sculpt some of the world’s most beautiful landscapes. Several of the […]
On October 25, 2012, we published a set of images that shows how the Hektoria and Green glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula have continued thinning since the Larsen-B ice shelf’s collapse in 2002. Though those two glaciers have been some of the fastest changing in recent years, they aren’t the only Larsen-B tributary glaciers that […]
The following is a cross-post of a news release written by our colleagues Rob Gutro and Laura Betz in NASA public affairs and Suomi NPP outreach… As Hurricane Sandy made a historic landfall on the New Jersey coast during the night of October 29, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on NASA/NOAA’s Suomi National […]
