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Mars Base

Big Meteorite Discovered in Antarctica | Meteorites & Antarctica | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/eteorite-found-antarctica.html

scibyte84 meteorite

shared by Mars Base on 01 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • 40-pound (18 kilogram)
  • Initial tests show it is an ordinary chondrite, the most common type of meteorite found on Earth
  • This is the biggest meteorite found in East Antarctica for 25 years
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • More than 38,000 meteorites have been found in Antarctica, but only 30 bigger than 40 pounds (18 kg).
  • The Russian meteor that burst into fragments above the Chelyabinsk region on Feb. 15 is also an ordinary chondrite
  • charred black crust stands out
  • in the
  • snow, and the cold, dry climate helps preserve any organic chemicals inside the rocks
  • The expedition collected 425 meteorites in 40 days, with a total weight of 165 pounds (75 kg).
  • they may have found one Mars meteorite and one piece of the asteroid Vesta among the many discoveries.
  • A team from Belgium and Japan discovered the
  • meteorite as the members drove across the East Antarctic plateau on snowmobiles
Mars Base

Jupiter Moon's Buried Lakes Evoke Antarctica | Jupiter Moon Europa | Subsurface Lakes P... - 0 views

www.space.com/arth-antarctica-analogues.html

scibyte22 Europa

shared by Mars Base on 17 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Patches of broken ice unique to the moon have puzzled scientists for over a decade
  • Some have argued they are signs of a subterranean ocean breaking through, while others believe that the crust is too thick for the water to pierce
  • studies of ice formations in Antarctica and Iceland have provided clues to the creation of these puzzling features
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • , a combination of these elements could very well be at work on Jupiter's moon
  • "It looks like crushed ice,
  • In Iceland, volcanoes lay beneath the ice. Their heat melts the base of glaciers and ice sheets, causing the surface to buckle in on itself and allowing stress fractures to form
  • there's no evidence for volcanoes on Europa, and the makeup of the ice is likely different from Earth'
  • irregular areas contain domes and iceberglike blocks that no theoretical models have been able to replicate
  • "On Earth, it is the volcano [melting the ice]," Schmidt said. "On Europa, it is the warm ice plume coming up from below."
  • estimated that it contained as much water as all of the North America's Great Lakes combined, about 1.5 miles (3 kilometers) beneath the surface.
  • One such lake
  • several liquid lakes are likely to exist near the surface today
  • The material cycled into the ocean via these lakes may make Europa's ocean even more habitable than previously imagined
  • The lakes may even be habitats themselves
Mars Base

Russia finds 'new bacteria' in Antarctic lake - 0 views

phys.org/...a-bacteria-antarctic-lake.html

scibyte85 SubglacialLake

shared by Mars Base on 08 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Russian scientists believe they have found a wholly new type of bacteria in the mysterious subglacial Lake Vostok in Antarctica
  • The samples obtained from the underground lake in May 2012 contained a bacteria which bore no resemblance to existing type
  • "After putting aside all possible elements of contamination, DNA was found that did not coincide with any of the well-known types in the global database,"
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • discovery comes from samples collected in an expedition in 2012 where a Russian team drilled down to the surface of Lake Vosto
  • believed to have been covered by ice for more than a million years but has kept its liquid state.
  • Lake Vostok is the largest subglacial lake in Antarctica
  • The Russian team last year drilled almost four kilometres (2.34 miles) to reach the lake and take the samples.
  • t the interest surrounded one particular form of bacteria whose DNA was less than 86 percent similar to previously existing forms.
  • "In terms of work with DNA this is basically zero. A level of 90 percent usually means that the organism is unknown."
  • not even possible to find the genetic descendants of the bacteria.
  • "If this had been found on Mars everyone would have undoubtedly said there is life on Mars. But this is bacteria from Earth."
  • new samples of water would be taken from Lake Vostok during a new expedition in May.
  • "If we manage to find the same group of organisms in this water we can say for sure that we have found new life on Earth that exists in no database,"
  • Exploring environments such as Lake Vostok allows scientists to discover what life forms can exist in the most extreme conditions
  • whether life could exist on some other bodies in the solar system.
  • Saturn's moon Enceladus and the Jupiter moon Europa as they are believed to have oceans, or large lakes, beneath their icy shells.
Mars Base

Antarctic's Mountains Revealed By Sharpest Map Yet - 0 views

news.nationalgeographic.com/...unken-mountains-antarctica-ice

scibyte97 scibyte98

shared by Mars Base on 08 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • the British Antarctic Survey, Bedmap2 drew upon millions of new measurements of the frozen continent's surface elevation, ice thickness, and bedrock topography from a wide variety of sources collected over several decades
  • the original Bedmap relied mostly on ground-based measurements, which limited the scientists in terms of how much land they could cover
  • a NASA program called Operation IceBridge sends out airplanes that fly over the entire continent. The airplanes are equipped with lasers that measure the surface mountains' heights and other features, as well as ice-penetrating radar that maps subglacial bedrock—"giving [scientists] a more 3-D picture of the ice sheet itself
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • the new data has revealed several smaller features—both on Antarctica's surface and buried under the ice—that were missed in the previous Bedmap effort
  • scientists want to know the shapes of mountains and rocks to model how fast ice will move across these features on its way to the ocean, where the ice can melt and contribute to sea level rise
Mars Base

First Evidence of Life in Antarctic Subglacial Lake : The Crux - 0 views

blogs.discovermagazine.com/...e-in-antarctic-subglacial-lake

scibyte80 AntarcticLake

shared by Mars Base on 01 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • The search continues for life in subglacial Lake Whillans, 2,600 feet below the surface of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet—but a thrilling preliminary result has detected signs of life
  • At 6:20am on January 28, four people in sterile white Tyvek suits tended to a winch winding cable onto the drill platform
  • One person knocked frost off the cable as it emerged from the ice borehole a few feet below
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • a gray plastic vessel, as long as a baseball bat, filled with water from Lake Whillans, half a mile below.
  • The bottle was hurried into a 40-foot cargo container outfitted as a laboratory on skis
  • Some of the lake water was squirted into bottles of media in order to grow whatever microbes might inhabit the lake
  • cultures could require weeks to produce results
  • When lake water was viewed under a microscope, cells were seen: their tiny bodies glowed green in response to DNA-sensitive dye. It was the first evidence of life in an Antarctic subglacial lake.
  • (A Russian team has reported that two types of bacteria were found in water from subglacial Lake Vostok, but DNA sequences matched those of bacteria that are known to live inside kerosene—causing the scientists to conclude that those bacteria came from kerosene drilling fluid used to bore the hole, and not from Lake Vostok itself
  • In order to conclusively demonstrate that Lake Whillans harbors life, the researchers will need to complete more time-consuming experiments showing that the cells actually grow
  • dead cells can sometimes show up under a microscope with DNA-sensitive
  • weeks or months will pass before it is known whether these cells represent known types of microbes, or something never seen before
  • t a couple of things seem likely. Most of those microbes probably subsist by chewing on rocks. And despite being sealed beneath 2,600 feet of ice, they probably have a steady supply of oxygen.
  • oxygen comes from water melting off the base of the ice sheet—maybe a few penny thicknesses of ice per year
  • When you melt ice, you’re liberating the air bubbles [trapped in that ice
  • That’s 20 percent oxygen
  • , lake bacteria could live on commonly occurring pyrite minerals that contain iron and sulfur
  • would obtain energy by using oxygen to essentially “burn” that iron and sulfur (analogous to the way that animals use oxygen to slowly burn sugars and fats).
  • The half mile of glacial ice sitting atop Lake Whillans is quite pure—derived from snow that fell onto Antarctica thousands of years ago.
  • contains only one-hundredth the level of dissolved minerals that are seen in a clear mountain creek, or in tap water from a typical city
  • a sensor lowered down the borehole this week showed that dissolved minerals were far more abundant in the lake itself
  • The fact that we see high concentrations is suggestive that there’s some interesting water-rock-microbe interaction that’s going on
  • Microbes, in other words, might well be munching on minerals under the ice sheet
  • will take months or years to unravel this picture
  • will perform experiments to see whether microbes taken from the lake metabolize iron, sulfur, or other components of minerals
  • will analyze the DNA of those microbes to see whether they’re related to rock-chewing bacteria that are already known to science.
  • Antarctica isn’t the only place in the solar system where water sits concealed in the dark beneath thick ice. Europa and Enceladus (moons of Jupiter and Saturn, respectively) are also thought to harbor oceans of liquid water. What is learned at Lake Whillans could shed light on how best to look for life in these other places
Mars Base

NASA - NASA Researchers Discover Ancient Microbes in Antarctic Lake - 0 views

www.nasa.gov/...12-408_Lake_Vida_Microbes.html

scibyte73 AntarcticLake

shared by Mars Base on 01 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • In one of the most remote lakes of Antarctica, nearly 65 feet beneath the icy surface, scientists
  • , have uncovered a community of bacteria
  • one of Earth's darkest, saltiest and coldest habitats
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • increase our limited knowledge of how life can sustain itself in these extreme environments on our own planet and beyond.
  • Lake Vida, the largest of several unique lakes found in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, contains no oxygen, is mostly frozen and possesses the highest nitrous oxide levels of any natural water body on Earth
  • approximately six times saltier than seawater
  • average temperature is minus 8 degrees Fahrenheit
  • the brine harbors a surprisingly diverse and abundant variety of bacteria that survive without a current source of energy from the sun
  • Previous studies of Lake Vida dating back to 1996 indicate the brine and its inhabitants have been isolated from outside influences for more than 3,000 years.
  • the best analog we have for possible ecosystems in the subsurface waters of Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Europa
  • collaborators
  • developed stringent protocols and specialized equipment for their 2005 and 2010 field campaigns to sample from the lake brine while avoiding contaminating the pristine ecosystem
  • expands our knowledge of environmental limits for life and helps define new niches of habitability
  • To sample unique environments such as this, researchers must work under secure, sterile tents on the lake's surface
  • The tents kept the site and equipment clean as researchers drilled ice cores, collected samples of the salty brine residing in the lake ice and assessed the chemical qualities of the water and its potential for harboring and sustaining life
  • analyses suggest chemical reactions between the brine and the underlying iron-rich sediments generate nitrous oxide and molecular hydrogen
  • may provide the energy needed to support the brine's diverse microbial life.
  • Additional research is under way to analyze the abiotic, chemical interactions between the Lake Vida brine and its sediment
  • investigating the microbial community by using different genome sequencing approaches
Mars Base

Rare Water-Rich Mars Meteorite Discovered : Discovery News - 0 views

news.discovery.com/...rs-meteorite-found-120103.html

scibyte76 mars

shared by Mars Base on 04 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • A rare Martian meteorite recently found in Morocco contains minerals with 10 times more water than previously discovered Mars meteorites
  • raises new questions about when and how long the planet most like Earth in the solar system had conditions suitable for life
  • believed to be similar to those studied by NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • known as Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034, is the second-oldest of 110 named stones originating from Mars that have been retrieved on Earth
  • Purchased from a Moroccan meteorite dealer in 2011, the black, baseball-sized stone, which weighs less than 1 pound, is 2.1 billon years old, meaning it formed during what is known as the early Amazonian era in Mars' geologic history.
  • The only older Mars meteorite found so far is the 4-billion-year-old Allan Hills 84001 Antarctica stone that was the source of speculation about microfossils in 1996
  • Early Mars was believed to be warm and wet, but the planet lost most of its atmosphere and its surface water to become a cold, dry desert that appears today
  • The time from when our meteorite is from is maybe a transitional period in the climate, when Mars was losing its atmosphere, losing its water on the surface
  • relatively rich in water -- about 6,000 parts per million -- compared with typical Martian meteorites that contain about 200- to 300 parts per million
  • similar to basaltic rocks on Earth that form in volcanic eruptions
  • NWA 7034, nicknamed "Black Beauty," also contains tiny bits of carbon, formed from geologic, not biological activity
  • Scientists don't know why more meteorites like Black Beauty haven't been found on Earth. The period of time from which they originated may be relatively short, or most may not survive the trip through Earth's atmosphere
  • This one does look completely different," he added. "It's jet black. The others are slightly greenish cast
  • After an initial battery of tests revealed the rock's unique nature, meteorite hunters returned to the area where it was found to search for other similar stones
  • took several months to get an idea of what it was
  • eventually realized there was no other conclusion but that it was Martian and that it was different from all the other ones
  • If it were similar, we would have known within one day," he added
  • Four more pieces, all smaller than the original, have now been found
Mars Base

For the first time, astronomers have measured the radius of a black hole - 0 views

phys.org/...onomers-radius-black-hole.html

scibyte65 black holes

shared by Mars Base on 30 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • an international team
  • , has for the first time measured the radius of a black hole at the center of a distant galaxy—the closest distance at which matter can approach before being irretrievably pulled into the black hole.
  • scientists linked together radio dishes in Hawaii, Arizona and California to create a telescope array called the "Event Horizon Telescope" (EHT) that can see details 2,000 times finer than what's visible to the Hubble Space Telescope.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • , the team observed the glow of matter near the edge of this black hole—a region known as the "event horizon."
  • , not everything can cross the event horizon to squeeze into a black hole
  • "cosmic traffic jam" in which gas and dust build up, creating a flat pancake of matter known as an accretion disk
  • disk of matter orbits the black hole at nearly the speed of light, feeding the black hole a steady diet of superheated material
  • Over time, this disk can cause the black hole to spin in the same direction as the orbiting material
  • Caught up in this spiraling flow are magnetic fields, which accelerate hot material along powerful beams above the accretion disk
  • resulting high-speed jet, launched by the black hole and the disk, shoots out across the galaxy, extending for hundreds of thousands of light-years
  • jets can influence many galactic processes, including how fast stars form.
  • . Because M87's jet is magnetically launched from this smallest orbit,
  • astronomers can estimate the black hole's spin through careful measurement of the jet's size as it leaves the black hole
  • Until now, no telescope has had the magnifying power required for this kind of observation
  • team used a technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry, or VLBI, which links data from radio dishes located thousands of miles apart.
  • , taken together, create a "virtual telescope" with the resolving power of a single telescope as big as the space between the disparate dishes
  • enables scientists to view extremely precise details in faraway galaxies.
  • Using the technique
  • team measured the innermost orbit of the accretion disk to be only 5.5 times the size of the black hole event horizon
  • According to the laws of physics, this size suggests that the accretion disk is spinning in the same direction as the black hole
  • first direct observation to confirm theories of how black holes power jets from the centers of galaxies
  • The team plans to expand its telescope array, adding radio dishes in Chile, Europe, Mexico, Greenland and Antarctica, in order to obtain even more detailed pictures of black holes in the future.
  • www.eventhorizontelescope.org/
Mars Base

ScienceShot: Counting Penguins From Space - ScienceNOW - 0 views

news.sciencemag.org/...nceshot-counting-penguins.html

AprMedia scibyte43 penguins

shared by Mars Base on 18 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Counting penguins isn't as hard as it might sound.
  • Someone snaps a photograph of a colony and then marks up the picture to make sure that they aren't missing or double counting anybody
  • What is hard is getting to remote places, especially Antarctica
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • also came across seven new colonies (one shown at left), bringing the total to 44
  • Scientists have found twice as many emperor penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri) as previously thought to exist, roughly 595,000 (plus or minus 81,000
  • a new approach is to use satellite images, and today researchers report the results of the first such comprehensive stu
Mars Base

Meteorites found in Calif. along path of fireball - 0 views

phys.org/...4-fireball-remnants-calif.html

scibyte44 meteor meteorite

shared by Mars Base on 26 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Meteorites found in Calif. along path of fireball
  • pieces from a meteor that was probably about the size of a minivan
  • rocks came from a meteor, believed to between 4 to 5 billion years old
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  • scientists have confirmed his suspicions: it's one of the more primitive types of space rocks out there, dating to the early formation of the solar system 4 to 5 billion years ago
  • found the first piece on Tuesday along a road between a baseball field and park on the edge of Lotus near Coloma, where James W. Marshall first discovered gold in California, at Sutter's Mill in 1848.
  • Robert Ward has been hunting and collecting meteorites for more than 20 years
  • Ward, who has found meteorites in every continent but Antarctica
  • CM" - carbonaceous chondrite
  • actually has two rocks but suspects they were part of the same small meteorite that broke on impact. Each weighs about 10 grams - about the same as two nickels
  • Experts say the flaming meteor was probably about the size of a minivan when it entered the Earth's atmosphere with a loud boom and about one-third of the explosive force of the atomic bomb
  • seen from Sacramento, Calif., to Las Vegas and parts of northern Nevada.
  • event of that size might happen once a year around the world
  • most of them occur over the ocean or an uninhabited area
  • most meteors you see in the night's sky are the size of tiny stones or even grains of sand, and their trail lasts all of a second or two
  • meteor probably weighed about 154,300 pounds
  • probably released energy equivalent to a 5-kiloton explosion - the Hiroshima bomb was 15 kilotons
  • The boom, another expert said, was caused by the speed with which the space rock entered the atmosphere
  • Meteorites enter Earth's upper atmosphere at somewhere between 22,000 mph and 44,000 mph - faster than the speed of sound, thus creating a sonic boom.
  • friction between the rock and the air is so intense that "it doesn't even burn it up, it vaporizes
Mars Base

Norwegian Family Finds Meteorite Crashed Through Their Roof | Fallen Meteorites | Space... - 0 views

www.space.com/teorite-crash-oslo-norway.html

scibyte38 meteor meteorite

shared by Mars Base on 14 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Norwegian family arrived at their cabin in Oslo recently to discover that a meteorite had apparently fallen through their roof
  • after visiting the holiday cabin for the first time all winter,
  • rock may have fallen during a wave of meteor sightings over Norway on March 1
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • hundreds of tips and have been searching for bits of meteorites
  • identified the rock as a rare type of breccia meteorite, which is a conglomerate of smaller fragments of minerals
  • 1.3 pound (585 gram) stone was found split in two
  • Space rocks rarely fall in populated areas, and such a find in Norway is exceedingly special
  • According to Views and News from Norway, only 14 meteorites have been found in the Scandinavian country since 1848.
Mars Base

Missing 'Big Bang' Antarctic Telescope Found - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...ig-bang-arctic-telescope-found

scibyte49 telescope

shared by Mars Base on 01 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Astronomers and students from the University of Minnesota hoping to search for radiation left over from the Big Bang instead spent the past few days looking for their telescope
  • 6,000 lb (2729 kg)
  • the truck driver who was supposed to deliver it to a NASA facility in Palestine, Texas
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • he’s not talking and police in Texas won’t press charges against him.
  • good news is that the missing telescope has been found – sitting at a truck wash — after a frantic cross-country search
  • telescope is a high-tech irreplaceable piece of equipment that is 22 ft high 15 ft wide (6.5 X 4.5 meters
  • designed to detect radiation from the Big Bang and it took fifteen people 8 years to build
  • will be shipped to Antarctica, where it will be attached to a giant balloon in December and sent 110,000 feet (33,500 meters) into the atmosphere.
  • Friday, a Minnesota trucking company sent off one of their trucks with telescope inside
  • Monday there was no word from the trucker and the scientists started to panic when the truck didn’t show up at the NASA facility
  • Calls to the trucker went unanswered
  • The owner of the trucking company sent his son to Dallas to search for the truck and the driver
  • only clue was a credit card charge at a Dallas truck stop.
  • The son found the driver, asleep in the cab of the truck, but the trailer, with the precious cargo inside, was nowhere to be seen.
  • driver said he left the trailer at a hotel parking lot
  • when the searchers arrived, it wasn’t there
  • trucker clammed up and wouldn’t provide any more clues or reasons for why he didn’t deliver his cargo
  • another employee of the trucking company found the trailer sitting at a truck wash in Dallas
  • If they would not have found that particular trailer at that time, maybe half a day or a day later someone would have stolen it and taken it for metal or just for scrap,”
  • NASA unpacked the crate Thursday morning and said the telescope was unharmed and is in great shape
Mars Base

Magma Boils Beneath Antarctic Ice | Science/AAAS | News - 0 views

news.sciencemag.org/...ma-boils-beneath-antarctic-ice

scibyte110

shared by Mars Base on 19 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Marie Byrd Land is a desolate region of Antarctica buried deep beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet
  • Historic eruptions have punctured the ice sheet, creating a chain of volcanoes amid the ice
  • researchers have shown that molten rock still stirs deep underground
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • Only the largest eruptions could melt all the ice above them and poke through to the surface, but even smaller eruptions could potentially cause global sea level to rise, although no one knows how big the rise might be
  • The crust is thinned by the West Antarctic Rift System, a series of giant rift valleys beneath the ice sheet
  • erupted lava from underground magma chambers has burst through the ice repeatedly over geological history as the plates moved over the top
  • No one knew whether magma was still stirring
  • until seismic monitoring stations were installed on the ice between 2007 and 2010.
  • Researchers built the stations to study the shifting crustal blocks of the West Antarctic Rift System
  • But seismologist
  • found another use
  • They noticed a series of small earthquakes, mainly occurring during two “seismic swarms” in January and February 2010 and March 2011
  • These earthquakes were unusual: The ground was shaking much more slowly during the quakes than one would expect from the plates grinding against each other
  • looked at two different types of waves that come in—the P wave, which is the primary wave, and the S wave, which is the secondary wave
  • calculations revealed that the waves had come from 25 to 40 kilometers below Earth's surface and were centered around a point
  • approximately the point the volcanic activity should have reached if it had continued the linear trend of volcanoes to the south
  • The exact cause of these deep quakes is not understood, but they are thought to result from the movement of magma deep below active or soon-to-be active volcanoes
  • They found that the area showed a slightly higher magnetic field than the surrounding area and that there was a bump in the crust—common signals of magmatic activity
  • Radar mapping also indicated a layer of volcanic ash embedded in the ice
  • probably
  • from an eruption of Mount Waesche about 8000 years ago—very recent geological history
  • There is no evidence of an actual eruption since then, but, because magma is still moving deep under the Earth, an eruption could occur at any time
  • The current center of volcanic activity is covered by at least 1 kilometer of ice, and it would take an exceptionally large eruption to melt all this
  • But an eruption could make its presence felt in subtler ways. As fresh snow adds to their own mass, ice sheets flow downward into the sea
  • melting the base of the ice sheet, an eruption could speed up this flow, potentially raising the level of the ocean. No one knows how significant such a rise might be
  • Any effect on the ice sheet above, and thus any effect on the oceans, would probably be quite small
  • a proper study is needed to find out how significant volcanic activity could be to future sea levels
Mars Base

New Era of Neutrino Astronomy Begins at the South Pole - 0 views

www.scienceworldreport.com/...stronomy-begins-south-pole.htm

scibyte110 Neutrinos

shared by Mars Base on 23 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Astrophysicists have managed to detect and record the mysterious phenomena known as cosmic neutrinos
  • nearly massless particles that stream to Earth at the speed of light from outside our solar system, striking the surface in a burst of energy that can be as powerful as a baseball pitcher's fastball
  • In this particular study, the researchers observed 28 very high-energy particle events with the use of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • These events constitute the first solid evidence for astrophysical neutrinos from cosmic sources
  • The sources of neutrinos, and the question of what could accelerate these particles, has been a mystery for more than 100 years
  • IceCube is made up of 5,160 digital optical modules suspended along 86 strings embedded in ice beneath the South Pole
  • It detects neutrinos through the tiny flashes of blue light, called Cherenkov light, produced when neutrinos interact in the ice.
  • Computers then collect near-real-time data from the optical sensors and send information about interesting events north via satellite
  • astrophysical neutrinos move in straight lines unimpeded by outside forces, they can act as pointers to the place in the galaxy where they originated
  • This, in turn, can tell astronomers quite a bit out our universe
  • The 28 events recorded so far are too few to point to any particular location
Mars Base

Our Guide to the Bizzare April 29th Solar Eclipse - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...zzare-april-29th-solar-eclipse

scibyte127 eclipse

shared by Mars Base on 22 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • On April 29th, an annular solar eclipse occurs over a small D-shaped 500 kilometre wide region of Antarctica
  • 2014 has the minimum number of eclipses possible in one year, with four: two partial solars and two total lunars
  • This month’s solar eclipse is also a rarity in that it’s a non-central eclipse with one limit
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • the center of the Moon’s shadow — known as the antumbra during an annular eclipse — will juuuust miss the Earth and instead pass scant kilometres above the Antarctic continent
  • out of 3,956 annular eclipses occurring from 2000 BCE to 3000 AD, only 68 (1.7%) are of the non-central variety
  • An annular eclipse occurs when the Moon is too distant to cover the disk of the Sun, resulting in a bright “annulus” or “ring-of-fire” eclipse
  • several southern Indian Ocean islands and all of Australia will still witness a fine partial solar eclipse from this event
  • A scattering of islands in the southern Indian Ocean will see a 55% eclipsed Sun.
  • for Australia
  • Perth seeing a 55% eclipsed Sun and Sydney seeing a 50% partial eclipse.
  • in Sydney and eastern Australia
  • the eclipse occurs low to the horizon to the west at sunset
  • The safest method to view a partial solar eclipse is via projection
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