Topic: College Park MD
NASA excited about Apophis Asteroid passing by Earth in 2029
Pasadena, CA – NASA says that a speck of light will streak across the sky, getting brighter and faster on April 13th, 2029. At one point it will travel more than the width of the full Moon within a minute and it will get as bright as the stars in the Little Dipper.
But it won't be a satellite or an airplane – it will be a 1,100-foot-wide (340-meter-wide) near-Earth asteroid called 99942 Apophis that will cruise harmlessly by Earth, about 19,000 miles (31,000 kilometers) above the surface. That's within the distance that some of our spacecraft that orbit Earth.
The international asteroid research community couldn't be more excited.
This illustration shows the distance between the Apophis asteroid and Earth at the time of the asteroid's closest approach. The blue dots are the many man-made satellites that orbit our planet, and the pink represents the International Space Station. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
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Tennessee Lady Vols lose To #20/24 UCLA at NCAA Tournament, 89-77
UT Athletics
College Park, MD – The No. 11 seed Tennessee Lady Vols (19-13) erased a 17-point deficit and led by as many as three in the fourth quarter, but their upset bid came up short in falling to No. 6 seed UCLA (21-12) in the first round of the NCAA Tournament at the XFINITY Center, 89-77.
Sophomore Rennia Davis had a double-double for Tennessee with 21 points and 10 rebounds. Sophomore Kasiyahna Kushkituah recorded a career-high 16 points, while freshman Mimi Collins, who hails from nearby Waldorf, MD, tied her career high of 14 points.
Tennessee Women's Basketball rallies late but falls to #20/24 UCLA 89-77 in first round of the NCAA Tournament, Saturday. (UT Athletics)
Tennessee Lady Vols faces #20/24 UCLA in first round of NCAA Tournament
Tennessee Lady Vols (19-12 | 7-9 SEC) vs. UCLA (20-12 | 12-C Pac-12)
Saturday, March 23rd, 2019 | 12:00pm CT
College Park, MD | XFINITY Center | TV: ESPN2
Knoxville, TN – The Tennessee Lady Vols (19-12, 7-9 SEC) are the No. 11 seed in the Albany Region and will meet No. 6 seed UCLA (20-12, 12-6 Pac-12) at College Park, MD, on Saturday in the first round of the 2019 NCAA Tournament.
Tip-off is slated for approximately 12:00pm CT at the XFINITY Center on the University of Maryland campus. The game will be televised by ESPN2 and carried by the Lady Vol Radio Network.
In the other first round game in College Park, No. 3 seed Maryland (28-4) will meet No. 14 seed Radford (26-6) at 10:00am CT on Saturday. The winner of those games will advance to the second round and play in College Park on Monday. Tip time and TV info. are to be determined.
Tennessee Lady Vols head to NCAA Tournament as #11 Seed
Knoxville, TN – The only program to appear in every NCAA Tournament, the Tennessee Lady Vols basketball team learned it had been awarded its 38th consecutive postseason bid Monday when the bracket was revealed at 4:00pm CT on ESPN2.
The Lady Vols (19-12) are seeded No. 11 in the Albany Region. UT will face No. 6 seed UCLA (20-12) in the first round at the XFINITY Center in College Park, MD, on Saturday at approximately 12:00pm CT. The game will be televised by ESPN2 and also carried on the Lady Vol Radio Network.
#11 seed Tennessee Women's Basketball faces #6 seed UCLA in the NCAA Tournament, Saturday. (UT Athletics)
NASA research shows Gravitational Pull of Moons could preserve Liquid Water Oceans on Frigid Worlds
Written by Bill Steigerwald / Nancy Jones
Greenbelt, MD – Heat generated by the gravitational pull of moons formed from massive collisions could extend the lifetimes of liquid water oceans beneath the surface of large icy worlds in our outer solar system, according to new NASA research.
This greatly expands the number of locations where extraterrestrial life might be found, since liquid water is necessary to support known forms of life and astronomers estimate there are dozens of these worlds.
"These objects need to be considered as potential reservoirs of water and life," said Prabal Saxena of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, lead author of the research published in Icarus November 24th.
Composite, enhanced-color image of Pluto (lower right) and its largest moon Charon (upper left) taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft on July 14, 2015. Pluto and Charon are shown with approximately correct relative sizes, but their true separation is not to scale. (NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)
NASA announces Jason-3 Satellite creates it's first Global Ocean Map
Written by Alan Buis
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Pasadena, CA – Jason-3, a new U.S.-European oceanography satellite mission with NASA participation, has produced its first complete science map of global sea surface height, capturing the current signal of the 2015-16 El Niño.
The map was generated from the first 10 days of data collected once Jason-3 reached its operational orbit of 830 miles (1,336 kilometers) last month. It shows the state of the ongoing El Niño event that began early last year. After peaking in January, the high sea levels in the eastern Pacific are now beginning to shrink.
The U.S./European Jason-3 satellite has produced its first map of sea surface height, which corresponds well to data from its predecessor, Jason-2. Higher-than-normal sea levels are red; lower-than-normal sea levels are blue. El Nino is visible as the red blob in the eastern equatorial Pacific. (NASA/JPL Ocean Surface Topography Team)
NASA observes Extreme Weather across United States
Written by Hal Pierce / Rob Gutro
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, MD – NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement or GPM mission core satellite analyzed extreme weather that affected the U.S. over the course of five days. Heavy rainfall, flooding and tornado outbreaks affected areas of the United States from the Southwest through the Midwest from December 23rd to 27th, 2015.
GPM is an international satellite mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to provide next-generation observations of rain and snow worldwide every three hours.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA4BS8AfKao «Read the rest of this article»
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft discovers Pluto has Blue Skies and Water Ice
NASA Headquarters
Washington, D.C. – The first color images of Pluto's atmospheric hazes, returned by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft last week, reveal that the hazes are blue.
"Who would have expected a blue sky in the Kuiper Belt? It's gorgeous," said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado.
The haze particles themselves are likely gray or red, but the way they scatter blue light has gotten the attention of the New Horizons science team.
Pluto's Blue Sky: Pluto's haze layer shows its blue color in this picture taken by the New Horizons Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). The high-altitude haze is thought to be similar in nature to that seen at Saturn's moon Titan. The source of both hazes likely involves sunlight-initiated chemical reactions of nitrogen and methane, leading to relatively small, soot-like particles (called tholins) that grow as they settle toward the surface. (NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)
NASA's Aura spacecraft data reveals Background Ozone in U.S. West a real problem
Pasadena, CA – Levels of "background ozone" — ozone pollution present in a region but not originating from local, human-produced sources — are high enough in Northern California and Nevada that they leave little room for local ozone production under proposed stricter U.S. ground-level ozone standards, finds a new NASA-led study.
The researchers, led by Min Huang of George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, used a novel technique that combined data acquired from two instruments on NASA's Aura spacecraft in the summer of 2008.
In parts of Northern California, background ozone levels already account for more than three-quarters of total ozone, leaving little room for local ozone production if stricter standards go into effect. (Flickr user Lisa Brettschneider, CC BY-NC 2.0)
Any Gardener has the capabilities to grow Orchids
By Sue Freeman Culverhouse | May 26, 2015 |
Large Purple Cattleya Orchid Corsage
Clarksville, TN – When I was growing up, I believed that the most glamorous corsage any woman could receive was either a huge purple or white Cattleya orchid. My dad believed that too and usually presented both my grandmothers and my mother with either this type of showy bloom or a couple of Cymbidium orchids for most special occasions.
When I lived in College Park, Maryland, I visited Kensington Orchids just off the Beltway outside of Washington, D. C., and bought my first Cattleya orchid plant. When I lived in Belmont, Massachusetts, I was fortunate to belong to the Massachusetts Orchid Society and to get to know Dick Peterson, then editor of the American Orchid Society Bulletin. When I moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, I was one of the founding members of the Charlottesville Orchid Society and served as its first president.