15 June 2011
On the evening of Wednesday, 15 June 2011, a total eclipse of the Moon will be visible in the skies of Egypt. The eclipse begins at 07:24:34 p.m. (Egypt Standard Time), when the Moon enters Earth’s extensive shadow. The partial phase of the eclipse begins at 08:22:56 p.m., when the Moon enters the central dark portion of Earth’s shadow, while totality occurs at 09:22:30 p.m., and lasts 100 minutes. The eclipse ends at 01:00:45 a.m., on 16 June, when the Moon exits Earth’s shadow. The eclipse will also be visible in Africa, Australia, South America, and most of Europe and Asia.
12 June 2011
On 2 June 2011, a dense dust storm blew over Iraq, stopping near Iranian and Kuwaiti borders. The same day, NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image of the storm.
08 June 2011
NASA recently published satellite images of the Wallow Fire, the second largest fire in the history of US State Arizona. By early afternoon, on 8 June 2011, the fire had destroyed 389,000 acres, largely in the Apache National Forest, and continued uncontrolled.
04 June 2011
NASA recently published a satellite image of Super Typhoon Songda, swirling off the coast of Luzon, at the northern end of the Philippine Islands, on the afternoon of 27 May 2011. Wind speeds reached up to around 240 km/h, at 06:00 Universal Time (2 p.m. local time), according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC).
28 May 2011
Astronomers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) have recorded the brightest meteor seen by their network, in almost three years of operation. On the night of 20 May 2011, a 2-meter-wide fragment of an unknown comet penetrated the atmosphere, approximately 110 km above the city of Macon, Georgia, USA. It was traveling northwest, at a speed of about 38 km/s (approximately 140,000 km/h). At this velocity, the space intruder packed an energy of at least 500 tons of TNT. It eventually disintegrated, in the last few seconds of its dazzling atmospheric plunge.
24 May 2011
NASA recently published an infrared image of Saturn, the ringed wonderful planet, showing a giant storm swirling in the planet’s turbulent atmosphere. The image was acquired by the Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft. The storm occurs in the early spring of Saturn’s northern hemisphere. It is so strong that it stretches around the entire planet. In the false-color image, the storm appears as a big yellowish patch, among green-hued clouds. Scientists at Paranal Observatory, located on Paranal Mountain in Chile, also acquired images, monitoring the storm.
19 May 2011
NASA recently published an image of a beautiful small galaxy, technically designated NGC 4214. The image was acquired by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), a sophisticated space-based observatory, exploring the universe form Earth orbit. The image shows that NGC 4214 is an active galaxy, in which new stars are being born, out of vast colorful clouds of gas and cosmic dust.
16 May 2011
On 27 April 2011, a violent tornado swirled through Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA. The storm packed winds of 310 km/h, and left a path of debris extending southwest to northeast. On 2 May 2011, NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite captured this natural-color image of the tornado track through Tuscaloosa.
12 May 2011
Asteroids (minor planets) are small rocky objects that orbit the Sun. They are mainly located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, but some asteroids cross, or orbit near Earth’s orbit.
08 May 2011
On 5 May 1961, US astronaut Alan Shepard piloted the Freedom 7 spacecraft, America’s first manned space mission, and became the second person, and the first American, to travel into space. On 12 April 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to fly into space, and orbit Earth, aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft. Freedom 7 was launched from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, aboard a Redstone rocket. It reached an altitude of 187 km, then descended, and parachuted safely into the Atlantic Ocean, 15 minutes after launch. Shepard and his space vehicle were recovered by a helicopter, and flown to a nearby carrier ship.