Observation

Related Pages

• Article: Why we explore space
  Human space exploration helps to address fundamental questions about our place in the Universe and the history of our solar system. Through addressing the challenges related to human space exploration we expand technology, create new industries, and help to foster a peaceful connection with other nations.
• Article: 4,000 Comet Discovered by ESA & NASA Solar Observatory
  "On June 15, 2020, a citizen scientist spotted a never-before-seen comet in data from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO — the 4,000th comet discovery in the spacecraft’s 25-year history."
• Article: Is Mars' Soil Too Dry to Sustain Life?
  "Life as we know it needs water to thrive. Even so, we see life persist in the driest environments on Earth. But how dry is too dry? At what point is an environment too extreme for even microorganisms, the smallest and often most resilient of lifeforms, to survive? These questions are important to scientists searching for life beyond Earth, including on the planet Mars. To help answer this question, a research team from NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley traveled to the driest place on Earth: the Atacama Desert in Chile, a 1000 kilometer strip of land on South America’s west coast."
• Article: Our Living Planet Shapes the Search for Life Beyond Earth
  "Life. It's the one thing that, so far, makes Earth unique among the thousands of other planets we've discovered. Since the fall of 1997, NASA satellites have continuously and globally observed all plant life at the surface of the land and ocean. During the week of Nov. 13-17, NASA is sharing stories and videos about how this view of life from space is furthering knowledge of our home planet and the search for life on other worlds."
• Article: The Fluid Dynamics of "The Starry Night"- How Vincent Van Gogh's Masterpiece Explains the Scientific Mysteries of Movement and Light
  “In a period of intense suffering, Van Gogh was somehow able to perceive and represent one of the most supremely difficult concepts nature has ever brought before mankind.”
• Article: Top 5 Messages to Alien Civilizations
  "Ever since we've had the capability, humanity has been desperately trying to make contact with other life in the universe. While we've been beaming out information passively through our television and radio broadcasts, we've also sent more intentional messages. Looking at these messages tells us how humanity wants to think of itself and what kind of relationship we hope to have with alien life."
• Citizen Science Game: NASA's Nemo-Net
  “NeMO-Net is a single player iPad game where players help NASA classify coral reefs by painting 3D and 2D images of coral...Data from the NeMO-Net game is fed to NASA NeMO-Net, the first neural multi-modal observation and training network for global coral reef assessment. NeMO-Net is an open source deep convolutional neural network (CNN) that leverages NASA’s Supercomputer, Pleiades, to use game data to classify and assess the health of coral reefs around the world. “
• Citizen Science: Backyard Worlds-Planet 9
  "We need your help searching for new objects at the edges of our solar system. In this project, we'll ask you to help us distinguish real celestial objects from image artifacts in data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission. The real objects are brown dwarfs and low-mass stars, the Sun's nearest neighbors. You may find an object closer than Proxima Centauri (the closest star to the Sun) or even discover the Sun's hypothesized ninth planet, which models suggest might appear in these images."
• Citizen Science: GLOBE Observer- Clouds
  "GLOBE Observer: Clouds is an app-based tool that will help you document what you see in the sky. Once you have downloaded the app and created an account, the Clouds tool (including the Clouds Wizard if you wish to use it) will guide you through the observation process. Required data includes providing your location, reporting on overall cloud cover and surface conditions that can impact satellite observations. Optional (but very useful) data include cloud types, cloud opacity, sky conditions and visibility, then taking photos of what you see in the sky. Even a basic observation without optional elements is valuable!"
• Citizen Science: Spiralgraph
  "The ability of the human brain find and process patterns is far superior to any computer. Spiral patterns in disk galaxies are easily seen and followed by people but computer algorithms have a harder time determining where spirals begin and end, especially if they aren't continuous. That's where you come in! By tracing the spiral arms you see in galaxy images, you are giving our computer algorithm a boost so it can accurately measure how tightly wrapped the structure is."
• Data Visualization: Masses in the Stellar Graveyard
  What are the densest objects that form when stars die?
• PDF: Biodiversity from Space
  Mapping and quantifying biodiversity is key to effective conservation planning, yet gathering the necessary data can be costly and time-consuming. Conservationists and land managers therefore place a premium on methods, such as remote sensing, that yield tolerable estimates of biodiversity in the absence of exhaustive ground surveys. Bawa et al. have tested a method of estimating tree diversity from space. Their study, conducted in the Biligiri Rangaswamy hills in the Western Ghats, India, shows a strong and positive correlation between species richness and an index of green biomass—the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)—which can be assessed accurately using satellite imagery. This technique shows promise for estimating broad patterns of tree species diversity at the landscape scale in tropical forests, which may be crucial to identifying areas most in need of protection and where rapid destruction is underway. — AMS
• Video: Earth Climate Models Bring Exoplanets to Life
  "In a generic brick building on the northwestern edge of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center campus in Greenbelt, Maryland, thousands of computers packed in racks the size of vending machines hum in a deafening chorus of data crunching. Day and night, they spit out five quadrillion calculations per second. Known collectively as the Discover supercomputer, these machines are tasked with running sophisticated climate models to predict Earth’s future climate. But now, they’re also sussing out something much farther away: whether any of the more than 4,000 curiously weird planets beyond our solar system — or exoplanets — discovered in the past two decades could have the ingredients necessary to support life."
• Video: Gravitational Waves Explained
  "This video is about gravitational waves in the weak field limit as discovered by the LIGO collaboration, explained by parallels to electromagnetic radiation, sound waves, water waves, etc."
• Video: How We'll Find Life On Other Planets
  Astronomer Aomawa Shields searches for clues that life might exist elsewhere in the universe by examining the atmospheres of distant exoplanets. When she isn't exploring the heavens, the classically trained actor (and TED Fellow) looks for ways to engage young women in the sciences using theater, writing and visual art. "Maybe one day they'll join the ranks of astronomers who are full of contradictions," she says, "and use their backgrounds to discover, once and for all, that we are truly not alone in the universe."- TED 2015
• Video: I Visited the First Gravitational Wave Detector! LIGO
  "We’ve been waiting to verify the existence of Gravitational Waves for over 100 years and I actually got to go to LIGO to see exactly how they proved it! "- Physics Girl
• Video: Nuetron Star Collision Observed for First Time
  "On August 17, researchers around the world detected the signals from a neutron star collision that took place 130 million years ago. Georgia Tech Professor Laura Cadonati explains what happened, how it was seen, and what researchers have learned."
• Video: Ripple of Gravity, Flashes of Light
  " On Aug. 17, 2017, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) and Virgo detected, for the first time, gravitational waves from the collision of two neutron stars. The event was not only “heard” in gravitational waves but also seen in light by dozens of telescopes on the ground and in space. Learn more about what this rare astronomy event taught us in a new video from LIGO and Virgo."
• Video: Tardigrades Are the Toughest Animal on Earth That Can Survive Space and Volcanos
  "Tardigrades, also known as water bears or moss piglets, are the toughest and probably the weirdest animal species on Earth. Tardigrades are eight-legged micro-animals that can withstand just about anything, from mass extinctions to the vacuum of outer space, to the pressure of the Mariana Trench, the deepest point on Earth, and radiation 1,000 times stronger than humans can handle"
• Video: The Unexpected Math Behind Van Gogh's "Starry Night"
  "Physicist Werner Heisenberg said, 'When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first.' As difficult as turbulence is to understand mathematically, we can use art to depict the way it looks. Natalya St. Clair illustrates how Van Gogh captured this deep mystery of movement, fluid and light in his work. Lesson by Natalya St. Clair, animation by Avi Ofer."
• Video: What Are Gravitational Waves?
  "In September 2015, scientists witnessed something never seen before: two black holes colliding. Both about 30 times as big as our Sun, they had been orbiting each other for millions of years. A fraction of a second before the crash, they sent a vibration across the universe at the speed of light that was picked up by the LIGO detector. So what are these ripples in space? Amber L. Stuver explains. " TED-Ed includes lessons
• Video: What Does Your Sky Look Like? Globe Observer- Clouds
  Clouds are a major component of the Earth's system that reflect, absorb, and scatter sunlight and infrared emissions from Earth. This affects how energy passes through the atmosphere. Different types of clouds have different effects, and the amount of cloud cover is also important. Clouds can change rapidly, so frequent observations are useful to track these changes. Such observations are able to see change over time and help with interpretation of satellite cloud data. The cloud observation tool in the GLOBE Observer app allows you to photograph clouds and record sky observations and compare them with NASA satellite images. Our goal is to provide a step-by-step process that helps you learn about clouds and their classification through simple observations and photography. You are an important part of the puzzle, providing a new perspective of the clouds that our NASA satellites do not have, looking up. We are excited for you to start collecting data through this updated cloud protocol featuring NASA satellite comparison! Learn the basics of how to observe clouds with the GLOBE Observer App. Observations can be made anywhere and anytime. Open the app, select Clouds and follow the directions! Help scientists as a citizen scientist with your observations.