Particles and Psychedelia

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Super typhoon Vonphong was the largest storm of 2014. Astronaut Reid Wiseman was lucky enough to capture this image from the relative safety of the ISS. 

photo credit: NASA, Reid Wiseman

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Amateur astronomer Sergio Castillo captured this image of a solar flare erupting from the largest sunspot observed since 1990. The sunspot is approximately ten times as wide as the Earth.

photo credit: Sergio Castillo, 10/24/14

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In Mexico City, smog is becoming a huge problem. This hospital building has a facade, built by Elegant Embellishments, that is helping to combat the problem. The facade is made of titanium dioxide, which, when exposed to sunlight, helps break down smog into calcium nitrate and water. The titanium dioxide merely acts as a catalyst and is not used up. 

photo credit: Elegant Embellishments

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12-year-old Udayan Pawar captured this amazing image of a mother gharial carrying her children on her head. The photo won Best Wildlife Photographer of the Year (age 11-14) for Udayan Pawar from the Natural History Museum of London, and is being displayed there now.

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High resolution composite image of Jupiter's moon Io created from several flybys of the probe Galileo in 1996. The resolution is sufficiently high to make out features as small as 1.5 miles across.  Io is so close to Jupiter that the tidal forces from the massive body are immense. The compression creates enough heat and friction to make Io the most volcanically active body in the Solar System. It is so active that no impact craters (like those of our moon) are visible; they are quickly covered by lava and ash flows. Image credit: Galileo Project, NASA

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An Eastern Screech Owl blends into the trunk of a tree. Photo credit: Graham McGeorge.

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The MESSENGER spacecraft took this time-lapse series of images as it departed Earth for Mercury. It is seriously stunning. Photo credit: JHU Applied Physics Lab

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This image, captured by a NASA satellite, shows a massive algae bloom around an island in the Baltic Sea. The whorls are reminiscent of Van Gogh's "Starry Night," and, in fact, the NASA and USGS scientists working through the satellite images named it exactly that.

Photo credit: USGS, NASA

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The Yeti lobster (Kiwa hirsuta) lives in colonies near hydrothermal vents more than 2000 meters below the surface of the Pacific ocean. These lobsters are covered in setae that resemble thick fur. The "fur" is colonized by bacteria, which feed off the nutrient-rich seeps from the hydrothermal vents. The lobsters carefully tend their bacteria-laden "fur," and periodically comb it out to eat the bacteria; this is their primary food source. Photo credit: CHESSO consortium 

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The Curiosity Rover on Mars takes a selfie.

Photo credit: NASA

[particlesandpsychedelia]

1. I'm a skeptic and an atheist, but I'm only interested in atheism and organized skepticism if they also include feminism and other social justice issues.

2. I was seventeen and very, very excited when Obama was elected in 2008, but I've been very disappointed since. I'm much, much farther to the left than he has turned out to be.

3. I met my wife at Missouri Scholars Academy, a summer camp for nerds, when I was 15 and she was 16. We are now 22 and 23, and we have been married for almost exactly a year. It was the best decision I've ever made, and I'm incredibly lucky that she puts up with me. She blogs at thepaisleyelf.tumblr.com

4. I have a weirdly passionate love for Ken Burns-style documentaries.

5. I have been babysitting my nieces Evelyn and Linda for the past four summers. They are now 8 and 5, and the most adorable freaking children in the world.

6. My favorite animal is the tardigrade. Aww, look at you, surviving the vacuum of space! Who's a cute little extremophile! You are!

7. Carl Sagan, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Greta Christina, and Rebecca Watson are my heroes.

8. I struggle with severe depression and social anxiety, but I started taking medication for it a few weeks ago and am already feeling noticeably better in social groups.

9. I love music festivals and jam bands. My wife and I actually got to see the (surviving members of the) Grateful Dead a couple years ago, and it was awesome!

10. I identify as the B in LGBT, but since I am married to a woman and thus have the privileges of passing for straight, I mostly shut my privileged mouth and listen when it comes to those issues. My wife and I are also taking the first faltering steps into polyamory, so we'll see how that goes!

Since this isn't a personal blog, I won't do much stuff like this, but I'm always very happy to talk to anyone who messages me! Back to the science pictures.

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NASA's Terra satellite captured this image of the annular eclipse on May 20. Image credit: NASA

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This picture of Super Typhoon Bopha was taken from the ISS by astronaut Kevin Ford.

Image credit: NASA, ISS

(in non-science related news: finally added an about me page to my blog!)

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Solar Impulse, the world's first completely solar-powered aircraft, completed the first leg of its journey from San Francisco to New York today. The aircraft does not carry a single drop of fuel; it supports itself, a pilot, and a copilot entirely through solar power, and is capable of storing enough power during the day to continue flying for 12 hours of darkness. Air travel accounts for roughly 9% of greenhouse gas emissions in the US (source), so this is a very exciting prototype. We still have a long way to go, but we may someday look back on this as an encouraging first step. Image credit: Fred Merz, Solar Impulse Project

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Captured in the near-infrared spectrum by the Cassini probe, this false-color image shows the hexagonal storm at Saturn's north pole. The colors represent the altitude of the clouds, with dark red being lower and green being higher. The eye of the storm alone is over 2000 kilometers wide. Image credit: Cassini Imaging Team, NASA

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A crescent moon, the streak of the ISS, and Jupiter are all captured in this picture by amateur astronomer Stephan Seip.

In totally unrelated news, this blog will go dark for a few days while I go camping at a music festival with my wife, thepaisleyelf! If you are of the countercultural persuasion and anywhere close, you should come out to Byrdfest in Ozark, AR this weekend. It's a beautiful festival in a beautiful place full of beautiful people listening to beautiful music, and if you are a fellow tumblr person thepaisleyelf and I would love to hang out with you! Tickets are only $60. I'm sure our pictures and stories will be on her blog when we get back, so if you are interested in what my life is like outside of my love for science, check it out.

Sorry for the personal post. They will continue to be very rare- regular science posts will resume next week.

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Supernova remnant SN 1006 is seen here in an image taken by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. When light from this supernova reached Earth in 1006 CE, it was observed and recorded in many cultures in Asia and the Americas. The light from this "false star" was briefly the brightest object in the night sky- bright enough to cast shadows at midnight.