Today we are launching code.nasa.gov, the latest member of the open NASA web family. Through this website, we will continue, unify, and expand NASA’s open source activities. The site will serve to surface existing projects, provide a forum for discussing projects and processes, and guide internal and external groups in open development, release, and contribution.
A Sun Halo Beyond Stockholm
Credit & Copyright: Peter RosénExplanation: What’s happened to the Sun? Sometimes it looks like the Sun is being viewed through a large lens. In the above case, however, there are actually millions of lenses: ice crystals. As water freezes in the upper atmosphere, small, flat, six-sided, ice crystals might be formed. As these crystals flutter to the ground, much time is spent with their faces flat, parallel to the ground. An observer may pass through the same plane as many of the falling ice crystals near sunrise or sunset. During this alignment, each crystal can act like a miniature lens, refracting sunlight into our view and creating phenomena like parhelia, the technical term for sundogs. The above image was taken last year in Stockholm, Sweden. Visible in the image center is the Sun, while two bright sundogs glow prominently from both the left and the right. Also visible is the bright 22 degree halo — as well as the rarer and much fainter 46 degree halo — also created by sunlight reflecting off of atmospheric ice crystals.
Aurora Borealis in the distance on this beautiful night over Europe. The Strait of Dover is pretty clear as is Paris, the City of Lights. A little fog over the western part of England and London. It is incredible to see the lights of the cities and small towns against the backdrop of deep space. I am going to miss this view of our wonderful world… (11-8-2010)
Uppdatering: 1337st inlägg! Wohoo.
A night view of the Nile River winding up through the Egyptian desert toward the Mediterranean Sea, and Cairo in the river delta. Such a stark contrast between the dark desolate lifeless desert of northern Africa and the Nile River teeming with life along its shores. In the distance… the eastern Mediterranean on a beautiful autumn evening (1-31-2010).
i love the hard transition blips, but i’m not so keen on the overly bright shapes. the monochrome shape, floating above the planet, invokes a sense of fear & doom that i find oddly appealing. it’d be interesting to see what one could do using just sound files/images available from nasa’s archives. possible future assignment?
Engineers working for NASA know a lot about physics. They know exactly which characteristics make for a good communications antenna. But the process of designing an antenna so that it has the necessary properties is hard. Even though the engineers know what is required from the final antenna, they may not know how to design the antenna so that it satisfies those requirements. NASA’s Evolvable Systems Group has used evolutionary algorithms to successfully evolve antennas for use on satellites. These evolved antennas have irregular shapes with no obvious symmetry (one of these antennas is pictured below). It is unlikely that a human expert would have arrived at such an unconventional design. Despite this, when tested these antennas proved to be extremely well adapted to their purpose. (via When are Evolutionary Algorithms Useful?)
![matthen:
Liquid water on the surface of Mars! NASA has just announced news that it has observed the phenomenon shown above. These dark surface flows in the Southern hemispheres seem to be a volatile substance, and the leading hypothesis is that it is heavily salty liquid water. [NASA TV] [more]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lpf2deWEOg1qfg7o3o1_400.gif)
