Cody Simpson

Cody Simpson (lahir di Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, 11 Januari 1997; umur 16 tahun) adalah penyanyi dan penulis lagu asal Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, yang saat ini menandatangani kontrak dengan label rekaman Amerika Serikat, Atlantic Records.

Cody Simpson lahir dari pasangan Brad dan Angie Simpson. Dia memiliki dua saudara kandung yang lebih muda, Tom dan Alli. Ia juga seorang perenang berbakat dan memenangkan dua medali emas di Kejuaraan Renang Queensland. Simpson dilatih di Klub Renang Miami di bawah pelatih Ken Nixon. Angie ibunya Cody Simpson bekerja sebagai sukarelawan di klub ini.

Cody Simpson mulai merekam lagu di kamar tidurnya selama musim panas tahun 2009 di YouTube, menampilkan "I'm Yours" oleh Jason Mraz, "Cry Me a River" dan "Senorita" oleh Justin Timberlake, "I Want You Back" oleh Jackson 5 dan lagunya sendiri, "One" dan "Perfect".

Dia kemudian ditemukan di YouTube oleh Shawn Campbell, seorang produser rekaman yang telah beberapa kali masuk nominasi Grammy yang telah menjadi produser untuk Jay-Z dan artis lainnya.

Pak Deva Keren

Siapa Sih One Direction Itu ?

One Direction

Siapa sih one direction itu ? kalau kamu belum tau yang namanya one direction berarti kamu kurang gaul hehe. One direction itu adalah grup penyanyi pria asal Inggris yang terbentuk di London pada tahun 2010. Grup ini beranggotakan Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles dan Louis Tomlinson. One Direction dikontrak oleh Syco Records, label rekaman milik Simon Cowell, setelah menjadi juara ketiga dalam ajang pencarian bakat The X Factor musim ke-7 pada tahun 2010. Setelah sukses di Inggris, One Direction kemudian dikontrak oleh label rekaman asal Amerika Utara, Columbia Records pada tahun 2011.

Pada bulan November 2011, One Direction merilis album pertama mereka yang bertajuk “Up All Night“. Album tersebut menjadi album dengan penjualan tercepat pada tahun 2011 di Inggris. Pada tahun yang sama, di Amerika Serikat, album mereka juga sukses bertengger di posisi  puncak Billboard 200. “Up All Night” menguasai sepuluh besar UK Singles  Chart dengan singel perdana “What Makes You Beautiful“. Lewat singel ini, One Direction berhasil memenangkan Best British Single (singel Britania Raya terbaik) di ajang BRIT Awards tahun 2012. 

One Direction juga sukses menjual singel tersebut secara digital dengan total unduhan sebanyak 2.060.303. Album kedua mereka yang bertajuk “Take Me Home” akan dirilis pada tanggal 12 November 2012. Sementara itu, tur dunia One Direction dijadwalkan akan berlangsung pada tahun 2013. Tur ini akan dimulai dari kota-kota di Inggris dan Irlandia kemudian dilanjutkan ke negara-negara di Amerika Utara dan Australia.

Atas kesuksesannya ini, One Direction dikatakan sebagai pemicu kebangkitan kembali era boy band Eropa yang sebelumnya pernah berjaya pada tahun 1990-an. One Direction juga dilabeli sebagai gelombang baru “Invasi Britania” (British Invasion) yang melanda Amerika Serikat, mengikuti jejak The Beatles pada tahun 1960-an. 

Di Indonesia, meskipun sedang dilanda histeria terhadap boy band asal Korea Selatan, kehebohan boy band ini juga sangat kencang terdengar. Antara bulan Februari sampai April 2012, tercatat “Indonesia Wants One Direction” sempat beberapa kali menjadi topik hangat di salah satu situs jejaring sosial. Nah sekarang kamu udah tau kan siapa sih one direction itu :)

Pak Deva Keren

Google Glass: what you need to know

Back in early 2012, before the world had heard of Google Glass, the tech world was ablaze with rumours that the search giant was beavering away on augmented reality goggles.
As the days went by, it was clear that not only was this true, but that Google's dream of wearable technology was far, far closer to release than anyone would have guessed.
Roll forward just over a year and the first versions are in the hands of developers who went into a lottery to fork out $1,500 for their own pair of spectacles.
TechRadar has had time with the Google Glass Explorer so you can find plenty more information right there.
But what exactly is Google Glass? Why is it attracting all this attention and what are the implications - both good and bad - of having a Google-eye view of the world?

Some wrong ideas about SEO

 

Search engine optimization is one of the main factors of making your blog profitable. For years, millions of people tried to make their site optimized for search engines and hope for the best. But sadly, only a very few of these people really succeeded on making their site seo worth it.
You might be wondering why and how right? Well, the main reason for a lot of people to fail in making their site productive is that they have fallen into SEO misconceptions and myths, and that's what I'll talk about in this post.

-Being on the first page of Google means I was successful on search engine optimizing my site.
Absolutely no! For some it could be yes, but if you hit first page on Google on a keyword that people don't even used to search your site for, then it is totally useless.

-My site is losing traffic, Google must be penalizing it.
Nope. Well, Google do penalize site for some heavy and valid reasons (like scam sites, pornography, etc.). But most of the time, your site is losing traffic because of your misled in constantly optimizing and updating your site's content.

-If a lot of traffic flow into my site, It would mean that I will make huge profit.
Well, think again! Having a lot of traffic flow on your site does not guarantee any profit especially if the traffic you get was un-targeted or you don't have a call to action on your site for the potential customer to take to. Remember, it's the amount of targeted traffic that counts!

-Any incoming links are productive and beneficial.
Not really! Search engine only accounts valid and not fraudulent incoming links. They only record incoming links from reputed sites (sites with pagerank) that has no record of penalty before.

-Parked domains that have been inactive for years have greater value than new ones.
Could be true, but it does not help you with search engines. It's a long myth that most people thought inactive domain names are profitable or easy to rank, but the fact is that search engine gives no credit at all to "inactive or parked" domain names, they only give credit to those with real contents.

And that's it folks! some wrong ideas that was previously thought on search engine optimization. Try not to fall into one of these and make your way to the search engine's first page.


Source: Blog Tips

50 Super Awesome Quotes

The following are 50 awesome quotes that will hopefully inspire and motivate you to take action and make a positive change in your life. Let’s do this!

The Story of the Butterfly

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared.He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to squeeze its body through the tiny hole. Then it stopped, as if it couldn’t go further. So the man decided to help the butterfly. He took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bits of cocoon. The butterfly emerged easily but it had a swollen body and shriveled wings. The man continued to watch it, expecting that any minute the wings would enlarge and expand enough to support the body, Neither happened! In fact the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around. It was never able to fly. What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand: The restricting cocoon and the struggle required by the butterfly to get through the opening was a way of forcing the fluid from the body into the wings so that it would be ready for flight once that was achieved. Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our lives. Going through life with no obstacles would cripple us. We will not be as strong as we could have been and we would never fly.

8 Negara Dengan Durasi Puasa Dari Yang Terpanjang Hingga Terpendek Di DUNIA !!

Bumi Berotasi dan Berevolusi membuat beberapa daerah di beberapa bagian bumi mengalami perbedaan waktu, Sumbu Bumi ketika berputar juga tidak selalu tetap arahnya, tetapi memiliki kemiringan yang berubah-ubah dari tegak (kemiringan nol), sampai kemiringan 23,45o. Perubahan kemiringan sumbu putar Bumi inilah yang menyebabkan adanya perubahan musim di permu­kaan Bumi. Berikut Negara Dengan Durasi Puasa Terpanjang Hingga Terpendek di DUNIA !!

15 Lessons Penguins Taught Me About Love

 

Our flightless friends have love all figured out. Several weeks ago, we returned from the expedition of our lifetime together — all 47 years of it. We spent ten days on the continent of Antarctica. While we learned much from the couples we interviewed that live and work in Antarctica, the most important lessons we learned about love and relationships came from the penguins of Antarctica — particularly the gentoo, the adelie, the emperor, and the chinstrap. And, as it turns out, penguins and humans have a whole lot in common. With that in mind, here are the top 15 lessons about love and life we learned from the penguins of Antarctica:

1. Look out for each other. 

Like humans, penguins live in towns and villages called rookeries because it's easier to protect each other from predators and from the cold weather in groups. And what's really nice is most have a short commute to work finding food!

2. Have fun and play a lot. 

Penguins, like humans, love to gather with friends and family to have fun and play. Hanging around with their family gives them particular joy.

3. Communicate effectively. 

Penguins talk and chatter a lot to each other, just like humans! Communication is at the heart of their relationships with each other, just as it is with us.
4. Be a responsible adult.  
As they grow older, penguins learn to spread their wings, and even though they will never fly, they grow up for the most part to be responsible and productive adults. Almost all become parents at some point in their life. Sounds like a familiar human story to us.

5. Build your support network. 

 Sometimes penguins take trips together with their extended family. Like us, penguins know that friends and family are an integral part of their support network.
6. Smile often.  
Penguins are certainly a happy lot! They rarely get discouraged and almost never give up on their goals. We humans are like that as well.

7. Show love to your children.

Like us, penguins kiss their babies a lot! Their love and affection for their young is always in evidence.

8. Watch out for danger. 

They almost always look left and right before crossing the path! They know the world is full of danger, but you can always count on them to be prudent and careful for their safety and for the safety of their family and friends. We humans teach our children to look left and right before they cross the street, and we do so at a very early age.

9. Shout your love to the heavens!  

Penguins shout their love for each other by screaming it out loud. They are not shy about expressing their love for their mate. Saying "I love you" is just a normal part of their day, and they are willing to express their sentiments often. We humans could learn to do a better job of this by observing the penguins!

10. Keep your body clean. 

Penguins love to bathe a lot, especially with each other. They will race to get to the water first. Sometimes a refreshing swim makes them jump for joy!

11. Be faithful to the one you love. 

Penguins are monogamous, often having one mate for a lifetime. Death of their life's partner is about the only circumstance that causes them to search for a new mate. Maybe younger humans should pay attention to the penguin's model!

12. Stop and smell the roses. 

Frequently, penguins just stop and admire the view, what we humans would call, "stopping to smell the roses." They often stand together to admire the view from where they live and travel. We humans should do more of this.

13. Share the parenting responsibilities. 

Like humans, penguins share in the nurturing, feeding, and parenting of their children. It is remarkable how penguins demonstrate that birthing, protecting and raising a child is a shared responsibility of both the mother and the father. You can count on them to work together to build a comfortable nest for their children.

10 Reasons Why I Love Penguins

1. Penguins are so remarkable and wonderful birds!
2. Penguins are in my heart!
3. Penguins are VERY VERY important to me!
4. They have the capacity to love, to reason, to communicate and to reach out to human beings.
5. Penguins feel like kindred spirits and for years we've wondered, Who is that in the mirror?
6. Penguins are supremely intelligent birds. They can solve problems and figure things out quickly. They can't play with the same toy for very long.
7. I compare Penguins to cats because if they feel like doing something, they'll immediately do it! They have a mind of their own and are stubborn. They play in the same way cats do, by pawing things. They also are very loyal like dogs and they come straight to you when their names are called. They tend to be great friends with people and often stick by your side.
8. They have their own language called "Penguinese".
9. Penguins NEED our help. There are 18 species or kinds of penguins today and 14 out of the world's 18 species of penguins are on the risk of extinction. We NEED to do our share and protect nature. Including penguins. If penguins are to survive, We, the humans must work together and save them before it's too late.
10. Penguins are very friendly, cute and lovable animals and most people love them a whole heck of a lot. It's practically impossible to look at a penguin and feel angry. It's hard yet impossible even to not love penguins. I mean, one look at them and you imeditly fall in love with these fun loving sea birds. They also stand upright because their knees are bent at a 90 degrees angle.

What can I say about penguins? The Penguin is simply one beautiful bird with a kind heart!

NASA Hubble Finds a True Blue Planet

Astronomers making visible-light observations with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have deduced the actual color of a planet orbiting another star 63 light-years away.
The planet is HD 189733b, one of the closest exoplanets that can be seen crossing the face of its star.
Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph measured changes in the color of light from the planet before, during and after a pass behind its star. There was a small drop in light and a slight change in the color of the light. "We saw the light becoming less bright in the blue but not in the green or red. Light was missing in the blue but not in the red when it was hidden," said research team member Frederic Pont of the University of Exeter in South West England. "This means that the object that disappeared was blue."

Earlier observations have reported evidence for scattering of blue light on the planet. The latest Hubble observation confirms the evidence.
If seen directly, this planet would look like a deep blue dot, reminiscent of Earth's color as seen from space. That is where the comparison ends.
On this turbulent alien world, the daytime temperature is nearly 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and it possibly rains glass -- sideways -- in howling, 4,500-mph winds. The cobalt blue color comes not from the reflection of a tropical ocean as it does on Earth, but rather a hazy, blow-torched atmosphere containing high clouds laced with silicate particles. Silicates condensing in the heat could form very small drops of glass that scatter blue light more than red light.
Hubble and other observatories have made intensive studies of HD 189733b and found its atmosphere to be changeable and exotic.
HD 189733b is among a bizarre class of planets called hot Jupiters, which orbit precariously close to their parent stars. The observations yield new insights into the chemical composition and cloud structure of the entire class.

Image Credit:  NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)

This plot compares the colors of planets in our solar system to exoplanet HD 189733b. The exoplanet's deep blue color is produced by silicate droplets, which scatter blue light in its atmosphere.
Clouds often play key roles in planetary atmospheres. Detecting the presence and importance of clouds in hot Jupiters is crucial to astronomers' understanding of the physics and climatology of other planets.
HD 189733b was discovered in 2005. It is only 2.9 million miles from its parent star, so close that it is gravitationally locked. One side always faces the star and the other side is always dark.
In 2007, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope measured the infrared light, or heat, from the planet, leading to one of the first temperature maps for an exoplanet. The map shows day side and night side temperatures on HD 189733b differ by about 500 degrees Fahrenheit. This should cause fierce winds to roar from the day side to the night side.

Source : NASA :)

Green Campus a.k.a BOGOR EDUCARE :)

Hello Kitty, upss i mean Hello Guys :p Pertama kali saya tau kampus ini tuh dari kaka saya yang bernama Aditya Pratama Putra, dia juga alumni BEC angkatan' 13. Waktu itu saya kesini sama temen smp siang hari, jamnya berapa, jangan tanya ya soalnya waktu itu saya lagi ga pake jam jadi gatau jam berapanya :p dan pas diperjalanan, waktu itu saya naik angkot dan takut nyasar, sampe-sampe diperjalanan ga berhenti-henti liat kanan kiri, ya maklum lah, ini kan pertama kali saya kesini. Setelah sampai disana, saya masuk ke pintu gerbang dan gedung yang berwarna hijau, awalnya saya ragu, takut, dan malu, gatau kenapa nervous gimana gitu, sebenernya sih ga ada yang perlu ditakutin juga, tapi masalahnya, saya gatau dimana saya harus daftarnya dimana :( haha, tapi akhirnya dengan memberanikan diri saya bertanya ke pak satpam yang sedang berjaga di pos, kemudian dia memberitahu kalo mau daftar itu di lobi. Sambil mengucapkan terima kasih, saya dan teman saya pun berjalan ke lobi dengan perasaan yang saya juga ga ngerti itu perasaan apa. Pada akhirnya, kami disambut oleh kaka kelas yang sedang duduk di pos penerimaan mahasiswa baru yang berada di lobi, dan karena kami belum mendapatkan ijazah pada waktu itu, jadi kami membawa formulir itu dan mengisinya di rumah. Berapa minggu kemudian, saya pun mengikuti test yang diadakan oleh pihak BEC, setelah test selesai, saya pulang dengan perasaan yang campur aduk, dan saya ga yakin kalo saya akan diterima di BEC, tapi bismillah, saya harus yakin dan menyerahkan ini semua kepada Allah SWT. Hari demi hari, minggu demi minggu sayapun menunggu hasil testnya keluar, dan ternyata.......

to be continued...

Untuk informasi dan keterangan lanjut tentang kampus saya, bisa KLIK DISINI!! :)

The Sun Emits an M5.9 Solar Flare

› View larger,   › Full solar disk view
An M-class flare appears on the lower right of the sun on June 7, 2013. This image was captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory in the 131 Angstrom wavelength, a wavelength of UV light that is particularly good for seeing flares and that is typically colorized in teal. Caption: NASA/SDO

The sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, peaking at 6:49 p.m. on June 7, 2013. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however -- when intense enough -- they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where communications signals travel. This disrupts the radio signals for as long as the flare is ongoing, anywhere from minutes to hours.

This flare is classified as an M5.9 flare. M-class flares are the weakest flares that can still cause some space weather effects near Earth. This flare caused a moderate radio blackout, rated an R2 on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s space weather scales, which range from R1 to R5. It has since subsided.

Increased numbers of flares are quite common at the moment, since the sun's normal 11-year activity cycle is ramping up toward solar maximum, which is expected in late 2013. Humans have tracked this solar cycle continuously since it was discovered in 1843, and it is normal for there to be many flares a day during the sun's peak activity. NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center (http://swpc.noaa.gov) is the U.S. government's official source for space weather forecasts, alerts, watches and warnings.

Source: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/News060813-m5.9flare.html

Noctilucent Clouds Get an Early Start

Every summer, something strange and wonderful happens high above the north pole. Ice crystals begin to cling to the smoky remains of meteors, forming electric-blue clouds with tendrils that ripple hypnotically against the sunset sky. Noctilucent clouds—a.k.a. "NLCs"--are a delight for high-latitude sky watchers, and around the Arctic Circle their season of visibility is always eagerly anticipated.

News flash: This year, NLCs are getting an early start. NASA's AIM spacecraft, which is orbiting Earth on a mission to study noctilucent clouds, started seeing them on May 13th.

"The 2013 season is remarkable because it started in the northern hemisphere a week earlier than any other season that AIM has observed," reports Cora Randall of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado. "This is quite possibly earlier than ever before."

The early start is extra-puzzling because of the solar cycle. Researchers have long known that NLCs tend to peak during solar minimum and bottom-out during solar maximum—a fairly strong anti-correlation. "If anything, we would have expected a later start this year because the solar cycle is near its maximum," Randall says. "So much for expectations."

For sky watchers, this means it's time to pay attention to the sunset sky, where NLCs are most often seen. An early start could herald brighter clouds and wider visibility than ever before.

Noctilucent clouds were first noticed in the mid-19th century after the eruption of super-volcano Krakatoa. Volcanic ash spread through the atmosphere, painting vivid sunsets that mesmerized observers all around the world. That was when the NLCs appeared. At first people thought they must be some side-effect of the volcano, but long after Krakatoa's ash settled the noctilucent clouds remained.

"They've been with us ever since," says Randall. "Not only that, they are spreading."

When AIM was launched in 2007, the underlying cause of NLCs was still unknown. Researchers knew they formed 83 km above Earth's surface where the atmosphere meets the vacuum of space--but that's about all. AIM quickly filled in the gaps.

"It turns out that meteoroids play an important role in the formation of NLCs," explains Hampton University Professor James Russell, the principal investigator of AIM. "Specks of debris from disintegrating meteors act as nucleating points where water molecules can gather and crystallize."

Early NLCs (geometry, med) › View larger
This diagram shows why NLCs are best seen at sunset or sunrise. NLCs appear during summer because that is when water molecules are wafted up from the lower atmosphere to mix with the "meteor smoke." That is also the time when the upper atmosphere is ironically coldest.

Back in the 19th century, NLCs were confined to high latitudes. You had to go to Alaska or Scandinavia to see them. In recent years, however, they have been sighted as far south as Utah, Colorado, and Nebraska. Some researchers believe that the spread of NLCs is a sign of climate change.

One of the greenhouse gases that has become more abundant in Earth's atmosphere since the 19th century is methane. "When methane makes its way into the upper atmosphere, it is oxidized by a complex series of reactions to form water vapor," says Russell. "This extra water vapor is then available to grow ice crystals for NLCs."

The early start of the 2013 season appears to be caused by a change in atmospheric “teleconnections.”

“Half-a-world away from where the northern NLCs are forming, strong winds in the southern stratosphere are altering global circulation patterns,” explains Randall. "This year more water vapor is being pushed into the high atmosphere where NLCs love to form, and the air there is getting colder."

"All of this has come as an interesting surprise for us," notes Russell. "When we launched AIM, our interest was in the clouds themselves. But now NLCs are teaching us about connections between different layers of the atmosphere that operate over great distances. Our ability to study these connections will surely lead to new understanding about how our atmosphere works."

For more information about NASA’s AIM mission, visit:

www.nasa.gov/aim

Source: http://www.nasa.gov/

“Albert Einstein” Delivers Gear to Expedition 36 Crew

Europe’s Automated Transfer Vehicle-4 (ATV-4) automatically docked Saturday at 10:07 a.m. EDT to the aft-end port of the Zvezda service module. The ATV-4, nicknamed the “Albert Einstein,” launched June 5 atop an Ariane 5 rocket delivering cargo, experiment hardware and supplies. Also aboard the ATV-4 are propellant, water and oxygen and air.

› Read more about the launch of the ATV-4

The ATV-4, which launched from a European Space Agency (ESA) launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana, is ESA’s heaviest spacecraft ever. The 13-ton spacecraft delivered 5,465 pounds of dry cargo, experiment hardware and supplies. It is also carrying 1,896 pounds of propellant for transfer to the Zvezda service module, 5,688 pounds of propellant for reboost and debris avoidance maneuver capability, 1,257 pounds of water and 220 pounds of oxygen and air.

Zvezda’s docking port was opened four days earlier when a trash-filled ISS Progress 51 resupply craft undocked. As it was backing away, external cameras on the Progress took photographs of the port for ground controllers to inspect for possible damage on sensors that could have prevented Saturday’s ATV-4 docking.

When the Progress 51 launched in April a Kurs antenna failed to deploy after it reached orbit. Controllers were concerned this could have potentially damaged sensors when it docked to the Zvezda port. The Russian cargo craft is now orbiting Earth for engineering tests before re-entering Earth’s atmosphere Tuesday for a fiery disposal over the Pacific Ocean.

The “Albert Einstein” is scheduled to end its mission at the International Space Station in late October. The trash-filled vehicle will re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up over the Pacific Ocean. While there, the ATV-4 will provide extra storage space and more habitable volume for the crew.

› Read more about Expedition 36

Source: http://www.nasa.gov

NASA's 2013 HS3 Hurricane Mission to Delve into Saharan Dust

NASA's 2013 Hurricane and Severe Storms Sentinel or HS3 mission will investigate whether Saharan dust and its associated warm and dry air, known as the Saharan Air Layer or SAL, favors or suppresses the development of tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Ocean. The effects of Saharan dust on tropical cyclones is a controversial area of science. During the 2012 campaign, NASA's Global Hawk unmanned aircraft gathered valuable data on the dust layer that swirled around Tropical Storm Nadine for several days.

The Saharan dust layer is composed of sand and other mineral particles that are swept up in air currents and whisked westward over the Atlantic Ocean. The extreme daytime heating of the Sahara creates instability in the lowest layer of the atmosphere, warming and drying the air near the surface and cooling and moistening the air near the top of the dust layer near 5 kilometers (16,500 feet). Once it exits the African coast, the dust-laden air moves over air that is cooler, and moister, and it's the temperature inversion of warm air over cold that prevents deep cloud development. This suppression of deep cloud formation along with the dry air within the dust layer is reasons why this Saharan air layer is sometimes thought to suppress tropical cyclone development. On the other hand, the southern boundary of this hot desert air essentially acts like a front whose attendant wind patterns are a major source of the African waves that are precursors to storm formation.

› View larger
NASA's Global Hawk flew five science missions into Tropical Storm/Hurricane Nadine, plus the transit flight circling around the east side of Hurricane Leslie. This is a composite of the ground tracks of the transit flight to NASA Wallops plus the five science flights. TD means Tropical Depression; TS means Tropical Storm. Credit: NASA Some Saharan dust has been known to make the journey across the Atlantic and to the U.S. east coast. But Saharan dust doesn't just cause sunrises to appear more reddish, the dust also impacts the development of clouds and precipitation. The dust particles can provide a surface for small cloud droplets and ice crystals to form within clouds. More dust particles means that a given amount of available water is spread onto more particles, creating large numbers of small drops and delaying the formation of larger raindrops. Those effects, coupled with the warm and dry air, have presented challenges to meteorologists who have been trying to understand the effect of Saharan dust on tropical cyclones.

HS3 addresses the controversial role of the Saharan Air Layer, or SAL, in tropical storm formation and intensification by taking measurements from three instruments on board the Global Hawk. These instruments include a cloud physics lidar which uses a laser to measure vertical profiles of dust; a dropsonde system that releases small instrumented packages from the aircraft that fall to the surface while measuring profiles of temperature, humidity, and winds; and an infrared sounder that measures temperature and humidity in clear-sky regions.

On Sept. 11 and 12, during the 2012 HS3 mission, the NASA Global Hawk aircraft covered more than one million square kilometers (386,100 square miles) going back and forth over the storm in a gridded fashion in what's called a "lawnmower pattern."

The SAL was present primarily during that first flight, and again on the flight from Sept. 14 to 15. "The SAL did not act to suppress development on Sept. 11 and 12, at least not in the sense of a direct intrusion into the storm circulation, but it is too early to say what role it might have played in other ways and in other flights," said Scott Braun, HS3 Principal Investigator, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "There is some evidence that it (the SAL) was getting into the storm circulation on Sept. 14 and 15, but the extent to which it impacted development is unclear."

The dust data collected by the Global Hawk is important for scientific studies on the SAL. Other data was useful operationally to the National Hurricane Center (NHC), the entity that issues forecasts for tropical cyclones. The forecasters at the NHC used data from dropsondes released from the Global Hawk in the discussion of Nadine at 11 a.m. EDT on Sept. 20, "The current intensity is kept at 45 knots (51.7 mph/83.3 kmh)…is in good agreement with dropsonde data from the NASA global hawk aircraft and AMSU [satellite instrument] estimates."

› View larger
The Global Hawk unmanned aircraft coming in for a landing at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va on Sept. 7, 2012. Credit: NASA Wallops

Valuable data from the Global Hawk dropsondes on September 22-23 provided the National Hurricane Center with information that contributed to their reclassifying the storm as a tropical storm after one day of being called a post-tropical low. Shortly after HS3’s last flight into Nadine on September 26-27, Nadine actually strengthened back into a hurricane and reached its maximum intensity.

Dropsonde data from HS3’s flight on September 26-27 showed that temperature and humidity conditions in the storm were becoming more favorable for the occurrence of deep thunderstorms. Infrared data from NASA's Aqua satellite on Sept. 28, 2012, revealed that strong convection and thunderstorms did build up again and strengthened Nadine back into a hurricane.

HS3 is a five-year mission specifically targeted to investigate the processes that underlie hurricane formation and intensity change in the Atlantic Ocean basin.

Source: http://www.nasa.gov/

Black Hole Naps Amidst Stellar Chaos

Nearly a decade ago, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory caught signs of what appeared to be a black hole snacking on gas at the middle of the nearby Sculptor galaxy. Now, NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), which sees higher-energy X-ray light, has taken a peek and found the black hole asleep.

"Our results imply that the black hole went dormant in the past 10 years," said Bret Lehmer of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "Periodic observations with both Chandra and NuSTAR should tell us unambiguously if the black hole wakes up again. If this happens in the next few years, we hope to be watching." Lehmer is lead author of a new study detailing the findings in the Astrophysical Journal.

The slumbering black hole is about 5 million times the mass of our sun. It lies at the center of the Sculptor galaxy, also known as NGC 253, a so-called starburst galaxy actively giving birth to new stars. At 13 million light-years away, this is one of the closest starbursts to our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

The Milky Way is all around more quiet than the Sculptor galaxy. It makes far fewer new stars, and its behemoth black hole, about 4 million times the mass of our sun, is also snoozing.

"Black holes feed off surrounding accretion disks of material. When they run out of this fuel, they go dormant," said co-author Ann Hornschemeier of Goddard. "NGC 253 is somewhat unusual because the giant black hole is asleep in the midst of tremendous star-forming activity all around it."

The findings are teaching astronomers how galaxies grow over time. Nearly all galaxies are suspected to harbor supermassive black holes at their hearts. In the most massive of these, the black holes are thought to grow at the same rate that new stars form, until blasting radiation from the black holes ultimately shuts down star formation. In the case of the Sculptor galaxy, astronomers do not know if star formation is winding down or ramping up.

"Black hole growth and star formation often go hand-in-hand in distant galaxies," said Daniel Stern, a co-author and NuSTAR project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "It's a bit surprising as to what's going on here, but we've got two powerful complementary X-ray telescopes on the case."

Chandra first observed signs of what appeared to be a feeding supermassive black hole at the heart of the Sculptor galaxy in 2003. As material spirals into a black hole, it heats up to tens of millions of degrees and glows in X-ray light that telescopes like Chandra and NuSTAR can see.

Then, in September and November of 2012, Chandra and NuSTAR observed the same region simultaneously. The NuSTAR observations -- the first-ever to detect focused, high-energy X-ray light from the region -- allowed the researchers to say conclusively that the black hole is not accreting material. NuSTAR launched into space in June of 2012.

In other words, the black hole seems to have fallen asleep. Another possibility is that the black hole was not actually awake 10 years ago, and Chandra observed a different source of X-rays. Future observations with both telescopes may solve the puzzle.

"The combination of coordinated Chandra and NuSTAR observations is extremely powerful for answering questions like this," said Lou Kaluzienski, NuSTAR Program Scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Now, we can get all sides of the story."

The observations also revealed a smaller, flaring object that the researchers were able to identify as an "ultraluminous X-ray source," or ULX. ULXs are black holes feeding off material from a partner star. They shine more brightly than typical stellar-mass black holes generated from dying stars, but are fainter and more randomly distributed than the supermassive black holes at the centers of massive galaxies. Astronomers are still working to understand the size, origins and physics of ULXs.

"These stellar-mass black holes are bumping along near the center of this galaxy," said Hornschemeier. "They tend to be more numerous in areas where there is more star-formation activity."

If and when the Sculptor's slumbering giant does wake up in the next few years amidst all the commotion, NuSTAR and Chandra will monitor the situation. The team plans to check back on the system periodically.

NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corporation, Dulles, Va. Its instrument was built by a consortium including Caltech; JPL; the University of California, Berkeley; Columbia University, New York; NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; the Danish Technical University in Denmark; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif.; ATK Aerospace Systems, Goleta, Calif., and with support from the Italian Space Agency (ASI) Science Data Center.

NuSTAR's mission operations center is at UC Berkeley, with the ASI providing its equatorial ground station located at Malindi, Kenya. The mission's outreach program is based at Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, Calif. NASA's Explorer Program is managed by Goddard. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com

Alien-Planet Mappers Tackle 'Ninja' Worlds, Other Challenges

Mapping the surface features of farflung alien planets is a tough task, as a simple example illustrates.

Rapidly spin a globe with black and white regions painted evenly on its surface. These distinct sections fade to a mottled grey when seen in certain orientations.

"You don’t see it in the light curve from the planet, so I call it a stealth map or a ninja map," said Nicolas Cowan, a researcher at Northwestern University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics. "No one would be the wiser if they were far away. They have no sensitivity to that particular map." [The Strangest Alien Planets (Images)]

Cowan and his colleagues investigate that problem and several others in a recently completed study that, they say, could aid scientists' efforts to map out the surfaces of exoplanets in the coming years.
Mapping oceans and continents
Alien planets appear very tiny, even in the most powerful telescopes astronomers use. Many worlds are only visible through their effects on their host stars — either by changing these stars' spin slightly, or altering their brightness when passing in front of them.
As a result, few pictures of alien planets exist. Although astronomers first spotted a world beyond our solar system in 1992, it wasn’t until 2010 that the first direct image of an alien planet was confirmed. Even then, it was only a small dot.
As our understanding of extrasolar planetary systems increases, however, Cowan’s team is developing techniques to learn more about alien worlds by studying their reflected light, as well as their heat signatures.
From a distance, light coming from a planet can reveal dark oceans and brighter continents. The light changes as clouds pass across the surface, hinting at things such as wind speed. In infrared wavelengths, other information emerges: seasonal variations, planetary tilt and, possibly, hints to the underlying terrain.
For example, Cowan said, "tropical rainforests look dark from space because there are clouds in the way."
‘Hot Jupiters’ likely first target
Cowan’s team created a series of simple maps and then modeled what they would look like on a spinning planet, as seen from different orientations. Generally the maps focus on very large regions with high contrast, similar to what would be visible from a telescope peering at the world from many light-years away.
If astronomers were looking at Earth from this scale, they might be able to see Eurasia, the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean, Cowan said. Infrared maps might show the difference between the day side and night side of the planet.
"Really coarse stuff," Cowan acknowledged — but a start.
The aim is to put these maps, and the analyzed light curves, in a database that astronomers can access. As a next step, they could then be applied to planets visible in telescopes today.
"Hot Jupiters" are a likely target for infrared studies, Cowan said, referring to gas giants that are close to their parent star. Astronomers have detected atmospheres around these planets but have spotted no surface features yet.
It's possible that astronomers could map out rough surface features on hot Jupiters by studying temperature differences from afar.
"What you’re hoping to measure there is the fact that this hot Jupiter has different temperatures in different locations. You’d make a climate map, a temperature map from far away," Cowan said.

Learning from light
Mapping planets in visible light would be even more challenging. The star’s brightness overwhelms the telescope and makes it difficult to see any planetary dots nearby — Earth-like alien planets included.
Cowan said there are two surveys coming online, however, that are aiming to take more pictures of alien planets: the European Southern Observatory’s SPHERE (Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch) instrument for the Very Large Telescope in Chile, and the Gemini Project Imager that will use adaptive optics on the Gemini South Telescope (also in Chile).
"Those sorts of experiments should detect a whole bunch more of these directly imaged planets," including worlds with relatively distant orbits, Cowan said.
"The difference between them and the [hot] Jupiters is they’re much further away from their star and they orbit slowly," he added. "In that case, you can’t really stare at them for a full orbit, as it would take decades. So we’re hoping the planet is spinning [rapidly] on an axis and as it spins around, its brightness might change."
The new study has been submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and is currently available on the prepublishing site Arxiv. Other participating institutions include the University of Chile and the Center for Theoretical Physics, Luminy Campus in Marseille, France.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/

World's Largest Solar Sail to Launch in November 2014

Mapping the surface features of farflung alien planets is a tough task, as a simple example illustrates.
Rapidly spin a globe with black and white regions painted evenly on its surface. These distinct sections fade to a mottled grey when seen in certain orientations.
"You don’t see it in the light curve from the planet, so I call it a stealth map or a ninja map," said Nicolas Cowan, a researcher at Northwestern University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics. "No one would be the wiser if they were far away. They have no sensitivity to that particular map." [The Strangest Alien Planets (Images)]
Cowan and his colleagues investigate that problem and several others in a recently completed study that, they say, could aid scientists' efforts to map out the surfaces of exoplanets in the coming years.
Mapping oceans and continents
Alien planets appear very tiny, even in the most powerful telescopes astronomers use. Many worlds are only visible through their effects on their host stars — either by changing these stars' spin slightly, or altering their brightness when passing in front of them.
As a result, few pictures of alien planets exist. Although astronomers first spotted a world beyond our solar system in 1992, it wasn’t until 2010 that the first direct image of an alien planet was confirmed. Even then, it was only a small dot.
As our understanding of extrasolar planetary systems increases, however, Cowan’s team is developing techniques to learn more about alien worlds by studying their reflected light, as well as their heat signatures.
From a distance, light coming from a planet can reveal dark oceans and brighter continents. The light changes as clouds pass across the surface, hinting at things such as wind speed. In infrared wavelengths, other information emerges: seasonal variations, planetary tilt and, possibly, hints to the underlying terrain.
For example, Cowan said, "tropical rainforests look dark from space because there are clouds in the way."
‘Hot Jupiters’ likely first target
Cowan’s team created a series of simple maps and then modeled what they would look like on a spinning planet, as seen from different orientations. Generally the maps focus on very large regions with high contrast, similar to what would be visible from a telescope peering at the world from many light-years away.
If astronomers were looking at Earth from this scale, they might be able to see Eurasia, the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean, Cowan said. Infrared maps might show the difference between the day side and night side of the planet.
"Really coarse stuff," Cowan acknowledged — but a start.
The aim is to put these maps, and the analyzed light curves, in a database that astronomers can access. As a next step, they could then be applied to planets visible in telescopes today.
"Hot Jupiters" are a likely target for infrared studies, Cowan said, referring to gas giants that are close to their parent star. Astronomers have detected atmospheres around these planets but have spotted no surface features yet.
It's possible that astronomers could map out rough surface features on hot Jupiters by studying temperature differences from afar.
"What you’re hoping to measure there is the fact that this hot Jupiter has different temperatures in different locations. You’d make a climate map, a temperature map from far away," Cowan said.

Learning from light
Mapping planets in visible light would be even more challenging. The star’s brightness overwhelms the telescope and makes it difficult to see any planetary dots nearby — Earth-like alien planets included.
Cowan said there are two surveys coming online, however, that are aiming to take more pictures of alien planets: the European Southern Observatory’s SPHERE (Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch) instrument for the Very Large Telescope in Chile, and the Gemini Project Imager that will use adaptive optics on the Gemini South Telescope (also in Chile).
"Those sorts of experiments should detect a whole bunch more of these directly imaged planets," including worlds with relatively distant orbits, Cowan said.
"The difference between them and the [hot] Jupiters is they’re much further away from their star and they orbit slowly," he added. "In that case, you can’t really stare at them for a full orbit, as it would take decades. So we’re hoping the planet is spinning [rapidly] on an axis and as it spins around, its brightness might change."
The new study has been submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and is currently available on the prepublishing site Arxiv. Other participating institutions include the University of Chile and the Center for Theoretical Physics, Luminy Campus in Marseille, France.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/

All About Astronomy

Where are we in the universe? We live on Earth, the third planet of our solar system. Our solar system is located in the Milky Way Galaxy, a collection of 200 billion stars (together with their solar systems). The Milky Way Galaxy is located in a group of 30+ galaxies we call the Local Group. The Local Group is a part of a local supercluster of 100+ galaxies (called the Virgo Supercluster). This supercluster is one of millions of superclusters in the universe.

Our Solar System
Our solar system consists of the sun, planets, dwarf planets (or plutoids), moons, an asteroid belt, comets, meteors, and other objects. The sun is the center of our solar system; the planets, over 61 moons, the asteroids, comets, meteoroids and other rocks and gas all orbit the Sun. The Earth is the third planet from the sun in our solar system.

The Planets
The nine planets that orbit the sun are (in order from the Sun): Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter (the biggest planet in our Solar System), Saturn (with large, orbiting rings), Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto (a dwarf planet or plutoid). A belt of asteroids (minor planets made of rock and metal) orbits between Mars and Jupiter. These objects all orbit the sun in roughly circular orbits that lie in the same plane, the ecliptic (Pluto is an exception; this dwarf planet has an elliptical orbit tilted over 17° from the ecliptic).

The inner planets (those planets that orbit close to the Sun) are quite different from the outer planets (those planets that orbit far from the Sun).

• The inner planets are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. They are relatively small, composed mostly of rock, and have few or no moons.
• The outer planets include: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. They are mostly huge, mostly gaseous, ringed, and have many moons (plus Pluto, which is a dwarf planet that has one large moon and two small moons).

Small Bodies
There are other smaller object that orbit the Sun, including asteroids, comets, meteoroids and dwarf planets.

• Asteroids (also called minor planets) are rocky or metallic objects, most of which orbit the Sun in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
• Comets are small, icy bodies that orbit the sun. They have very long tails.
• Meteoroids are small bodies that travel through space. They are stony and/or metallic and are smaller than asteroids. Most are very tiny.

The Milky Way Galaxy

Our solar system is located in the outer reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, which is a spiral galaxy. The Milky Way Galaxy contains roughly 200 billion stars. Most of these stars are not visible from Earth. Almost everything that we can see in the sky belongs to the Milky Way Galaxy.

The sun is about 26,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, which is about 80,000 to 120,000 light-years across (and less than 7,000 light-years thick). We are located on on one of its spiral arms, out towards the edge. It takes the sun (and our solar system) roughly 200-250 million years to orbit once around the Milky Way. In this orbit, we (and the rest of the Solar System) are traveling at a velocity of about 155 miles/sec (250 km/sec).

To reach the center of the Milky Way Galaxy starting from the Earth, aim toward the constellation Sagittarius. If you were in a spacecraft, during the trip you would pass the stars in Sagittarius one by one (and many other stars!).

The Milky way Galaxy is just one galaxy in a group of galaxies called the Local Group. Within the Local Group, the Milky Way Galaxy is moving about 300 km/sec (towards the constellation Virgo). The Milky Way Galaxy is moving in concert with the other galaxies in the Local Group (the Local Group is defined as those nearby galaxies that are moving in concert with each other, independent of the "Hubble

Source : www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/