Most of the planets in our solar system have some sort of atmosphere and many have dynamic weather systems. But only one moon in the solar system, Saturn’s large moon Titan, can say the same. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/titan-saturns-moon-weather-seasons-methane-rain-storms…
Tag: soot
Illegal Tampering By Diesel Pickup Owners Is Worsening Pollution, EPA Says
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The owners and operators of more than half a million diesel pickup trucks have been illegally disabling their vehicles’ emissions control technology over the past decade, allowing excess emissions equivalent to 9 million extra trucks on the road, a new federal report has concluded. The practice, described in a report…
Ancient Egyptian temple reveals previously unknown star constellations
The ancient Egyptian temple was covered with soot, dirt and bird droppings. Source: https://www.livescience.com/ancient-egyptian-star-constellations.html
Why are skies so red over the U.S. West this week?
Perhaps you’ve seen the photos of the eerie red skies over San Francisco and other cities in the U.S. West this week as massive ongoing wildfires rage. But why red exactly? Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/why-skies-look-red-when-there-are-wildfires…
John Mooney, an Inventor of the Catalytic Converter, Dies at 90
John J. Mooney, an inventor of the catalytic converter, the small and ubiquitous device that makes the engines that power everything from cars to lawn mowers less polluting and more fuel efficient, died on June 16 at his home in Wyckoff, N.J. He was 90. From a report: The cause was complications of a stroke, his daughter Elizabeth Mooney Convery said….
DY Centauri: Stellar evolution while you watch
In 1930, Dorrit Hoffleit reported that star number #4749 in the Harvard List of variables had faded four times between 1897 and 1929, and identified it as an R Coronae Borealis (RCB) variable. RCB stars are luminous low-mass stars (red giants) with surfaces around 5,000—7,000 K—not much hotter than the sun. They are remarkable for having little or no hydrogen on…
Can Nuclear Fallout Make It Rain?
sciencehabit writes:
Radioactive fallout is rarely a good thing. But new research suggests charged particles emitted from Cold War-era nuclear tests may have boosted rainfall thousands of kilometers away from the testing sites, by triggering electrical charges in the air that caused water droplets to coalesce. The United States, Soviet Union, and other nations often tested nuclear weapons above ground in the…
Satellite images: Air pollution in India plummets
These satellite images show how much aerosol levels have dropped over northern India since the Covid-19 lockdown began. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/satellite-images-air-pollution-india-covid19…