Picture of the day

[aspundir]

Sochi, Russia Winter Olympic Sites (Mountain Cluster)



The 2014 Winter Olympic ski runs may be rated double black diamond, but they're not quite as steep as they appear in this image of the skiing and snowboarding sites for the Sochi Winter Olympic Games, acquired on Jan. 4, 2014, by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft. Rosa Khutar ski resort near Sochi, Russia, is in the valley at center, and the runs are visible on the shadowed slopes on the left-hand side of the valley. Height has been exaggerated 1.5 times to bring out topographic details. The games, which begin on Feb. 7 and continue for 17 days, feature six new skiing and boarding events plus the return of the legendary Jamaican bobsled team to the winter games for the first time since 2002. In this southwest-looking image, red indicates vegetation, white is snow, and the resort site appears in gray. The area imaged is about 11 miles (18 kilometers) across in the foreground and 20 miles (32 kilometers) from front to back. The image was created from the ASTER visible and near-infrared bands, draped over ASTER-derived digital elevation data. With its 14 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region and its high spatial resolution of 15 to 90 meters (about 50 to 300 feet), ASTER images Earth to map and monitor the changing surface of our planet. ASTER is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched Dec. 18, 1999, on Terra. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and data products. The broad spectral coverage and high spectral resolution of ASTER provides scientists in numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping and monitoring of dynamic conditions and temporal change. Example applications are: monitoring glacial advances and retreats; monitoring potentially active volcanoes; identifying crop stress; determining cloud morphology and physical properties; wetlands evaluation; thermal pollution monitoring; coral reef degradation; surface temperature mapping of soils and geology; and measuring surface heat balance. The U.S. science team is located at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The Terra mission is part of NASA's Science Mission Directorate,

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SURROUNDED BY GIANTS

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Coronal Loops in an Active Region of the Sun


An active region of the sun just rotating into the view of NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory gives a profile view of coronal loops over about a two-day period, from Feb. 8-10, 2014. Coronal loops are found around sunspots and in active regions. These structures are associated with the closed magnetic field lines that connect magnetic regions on the solar surface. Many coronal loops last for days or weeks, but most change quite rapidly. This image was taken in extreme ultraviolet light.

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GOT MILK?



In this beautiful portrait, we see a majestic elk in Quebec, Canada. He must have just been surveying the ground as a little tuft of snow remains on his face as he looks at the camera (Got Milk ads anyone?). We know this is a male since only male elk have antlers (and what beautiful antlers they are). Did you know they also shed their antlers each year?
The elk (Cervus canadensis) is one of the largest species of the Cervidae or deer family in the world, and one of the largest land mammals in North America and eastern Asia. Apart from the moose, the only other member of the deer family to rival the elk in size is the south Asian sambar (Rusa unicolor).

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Sounding Rocket Launches Into Aurora Over Venetie, Alaska


On March 3, 2014, at 6:09 a.m. EST, a NASA-funded sounding rocket launched straight into an aurora over Venetie, Alaska. The Ground-to-Rocket Electrodynamics – Electron Correlative Experiment (GREECE) sounding rocket mission, which launched from Poker Flat Research Range in Poker Flat, Alaska, will study classic curls in the aurora in the night sky. The GREECE mission seeks to understand what combination of events sets up these auroral curls as they're called, in the charged, heated gas – or plasma – where aurorae form. This is a piece of information, which in turn, helps paint a picture of the sun-Earth connection and how energy and particles from the sun interact with Earth's own magnetic system, the magnetosphere.

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SUNRISE OVER MOUNT BROMO


the famous Mount Bromo in East Java, Indonesia.
The active volcano has an elevation of 2,329 meters (7,641 ft) and is a popular tourist attraction in East Java. The volcano is situated within Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park and its name is derived from the Javanese pronunciation of Brahma, the Hindu god of creation.
Many tourists visit Mount Bromo by way of the nearby mountain village, Cemoro Lawang. From there it is possible to walk to the volcano in about 45 minutes.

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GENERAL SHERMAN


General Sherman is a giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) located in the Giant Forest of Sequoia National Park in California. By volume, it is the largest known living single stem tree on Earth.
General Sherman isn’t the tallest known living tree on Earth (that distinction belongs to the Hyperion tree, a Coast redwood), nor is it the widest (both the largest cypress and largest baobab have a greater diameter), nor is it the oldest known living tree on Earth (that distinction belongs to a Great Basin bristlecone pine). However with a height of 83.8 metres (275 ft), a diameter of 7.7 metres (25 ft), an estimated bole volume of 1,487 cubic metres (52,513 cu ft), and an estimated age of 2,300–2,700 years, it is among the tallest, widest and longest-lived of all trees on the planet.
The Crannell Creek Giant, a coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) near Trinidad, California, is the largest tree known to humans and is estimated to have been 15 to 25% larger than General Sherman by volume. Unfortunately the tree was cut down in the mid-1940s.
The tree was named after American Civil War general, William Tecumseh Sherman, in 1879 by naturalist James Wolverton, who had served as a lieutenant in the 9th Indiana Cavalry under Sherman. In 1931, following comparisons with the nearby General Grant tree, General Sherman was identified as the largest tree in the world. One result of this process was that wood volume became widely accepted as the standard for establishing and comparing the size of different trees.