The image shows a northern hemispheric summer day of the year 2012. One can see an impressive north Atlantic cyclone, a cloud free Mediterranean Sea, Saharan dust north of the Canary Islands, and cumulus fields near the coast of Namibia and Angola. The image was taken at June 28, 2012 09:00 UTC from the MSG satellite in a geostationary orbit 36000km above the equator. EUMETSAT provided the level 1 ...[Read More]
When we were following the route of the Silk Road and heading to the Xinjiang province of China, this was what we saw. The large scale wind power plant brought some hope to this very old road. Hope that with all other renewable energies, it can become an answer to our sustainable future. Description by Wenzhu Hou, after the description on imaggeo.egu.eu. Imaggeo is the EGU’s online o ...[Read More]
This 10 centimetre giant is a pioneer of marine conquest. All summer, glassworts (Salicornia europaea) will be rhythmically swept by the tide, gradually trapping seaborne sediment on the shores of Aberlady Bay in Scotland. The resulting elevation of the mudflat marks the start of a race of growth against waves, currents and sea level rise, eventually leading to the development of a salt marsh. How ...[Read More]
Around 17th July 2020, the core of the Neowise comet starting giving off a greenish-glow. At first I thought this strange colour was due to some glitch in my camera sensor (I used an entry-level DSLR), but other photos online also started reporting this greenish glow. It has since been speculated to be because of the formation of a new vent on the surface of the comet, discharging gaseous ions whi ...[Read More]
Cassiopeia with Milky Way in the background on September 9th, 2020. The image was taken in north-eastern state of Germany (Mecklenburg – Lower Pomerania) near the Town of Jarmen. The region has little light pollution and the evening had a clear sky (sky quality measure was 21.15). The image was taken at about 22:00 hrs local time. An EOS 1100D with a 50/1.6 lens was used. The exposure time w ...[Read More]
Space weather is a ubiquitous, but little known, natural hazard. Though not as tangible as a volcanic eruption, storm or tsunami wave, space weather has the potenital to cause huge economic losses across the globe. In Europe alone, the interaction of solar wind with our planet’s magnetosphere, ionosphere and thermosphere, could lead to disrutions to space-based telecommunications, broadcasti ...[Read More]
The International Space Station, a human-made, life-supporting habitat, and a most complex and unique scientific laboratory, orbits the Earth in only 90 minutes – that is 16 times a day! Even so, only occasionally, we earthlings have the privilege of seeing it’s dark outline against the much brighter surfaces of the Sun or Moon. Timing is of crucial importance if you want to see this, ...[Read More]
Working on the sea ice can be quite exhausting. Scientists face cold temperatures and wind, constantly scanning for polar bears, while trying to squeeze valuable data out of frozen instruments. At the end of the day you might have not found what you wanted, but every single bit of information brought back truly helps in understanding our complex World. Over 12 months, 442 experts worked in ...[Read More]
Chacaltaya ski hut, Bolivian Andes, 5400 m above sea level. The world’s former highest ski resort where the Chacaltaya glacier once stood, situated in the Cordillera Real, close to La Paz. Chacaltaya vanished in 2009, six years earlier than scientists had predicted. The disappearance of the glacier is a sign of what to come for the glaciers of the Andes, with glacier retreat and disappearanc ...[Read More]
This photo was taken standing in the middle of Arasbârân Forest, a beautiful virgin forest in Kaleybar, East Azerbaijan province, Iran. In Autumn and Spring, it gets extremely rainy around this area, thus begins the flowing of ephemeral streams, like the one that is captured in this photo. Located between the Caspian Sea, Aras River and the Mediterranean region, this forest has got exceptional con ...[Read More]