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The moon photobombs Earth!

Moon and Earth
The moon passes across Earth’s disk in a July 16 image captured by the DSCOVR satellite from its observation point, a million miles out in space. The Americas and the Pacific Ocean are visible beneath Earth’s cloud cover. Because the moon was moving while DSCOVR acquired the data for this three-filter image, there appears to be a thin green offset on the right side of the moon’s disk, and red and blue offsets on the left. (Credit: NASA / NOAA)

The Deep Space Climate Observatory, better known as DSCOVR, is designed to provide full-disk, sunlit views of our home planet from a vantage point a million miles away. But every so often, the moon crosses through the frame. Today, NASA released the first amazing photobomb sequence.

The perspective from DSCOVR’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (a.k.a. EPIC), captured on July 16, provides a topsy-turvy view: Here we’re seeing the moon’s far side, which earthbound skywatchers can never observe. And although it looks like a full moon, on Earth the moon was in its totally dark, “new” phase.

This isn’t the first lunar photobombing: NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft caught the moon crossing Earth’s half-lit disk back in 2008. But when DSCOVR goes into full operation next month and starts sending back near-real-time images, we can expect to see a new-moon photobomb roughly twice a year.

Launched in February, DSCOVR is a joint mission of NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with the twin objectives of making climate observations and keeping watch for incoming solar storms.

The Earth-watching part of the mission follows through on an idea put forward by Vice President Al Gore back in the 1990s – and the former veep was obviously tickled to see the latest pictures released from NASA’s lockbox:

A version of this item was published August 5, 2015, on GeekWire. For more from Alan Boyle, check out the Cosmic Log Google+ archive.

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Universe Today

Kepler mission finds Earth’s older ‘cousin’

This artist’s concept depicts one possible appearance of the planet Kepler-452b, the first near-Earth-size world to be found in the habitable zone of star that is similar to our sun. (NASA Ames / JPL-Caltech Illustration / T. Pyle)

Scientists say NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope has discovered Earth’s “older, bigger first cousin” –  a planet that’s about 60 percent bigger than our own, circling a sunlike star in an orbit that could sustain liquid water and perhaps life.

“Today, Earth is a little bit less lonely, because there’s a new kid on the block,” Kepler data analysis lead Jon Jenkins, a computer scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, said during a NASA teleconference about the find.

Get the full story on Universe Today.

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Universe Today

What are Ceres’ spots? Reply hazy, ask again later

Ceres' Occator Crater
Haze has been detected in Ceres’ Occator Crater. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA Photo)

The crater that contains those puzzlingly bright spots on Ceres may harbor an equally puzzling haze. Or not. The hints of haze on the dwarf planet, seen in some of the images coming from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, add another intriguing twist to Ceres’ mysteries.

The hubbub over haze arose this week during the Exploration Science Forum at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California. For months, Dawn’s scientists have been observing – and trying to make sense out of – unusually reflective spots within Ceres’ craters that show up when the asteroid turns into the sunlight. The team has speculated that they could be frozen pools of water ice, or patches of light-colored, salt-rich material.

Get the full story on Universe Today.

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GeekWire

Federally funded lab enlists AI to safeguard security

Portrait of Court Corley, chief scientist for AI at PNNL
Court Corley leads the Center for AI @PNNL. (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Photo / Andrea Starr)

Re-publishing to correct link to GeekWire article

Bringing artificial intelligence to bear on issues relating to nuclear weapons might sound like the stuff of a scary sci-fi movie — but at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, it’s just one of the items on the to-do list.

One of PNNL’s research priorities is to identify and combat complex threats to national security, and AI can help meet that priority by detecting attempts to acquire nuclear weapons or associated technology.

Nuclear proliferation detection is one of the potential applications that could get an assist from the Center for AI @PNNL, a newly announced effort to coordinate research that makes use of AI tools — including the generative AI tools that have captured the attention of the tech world over the past year or two.

“For decades we’ve been doing artificial intelligence,” center director Court Corley, PNNL’s chief scientist for AI, told me in a recent interview. “What we’re seeing now, though, is an exceptional phase shift in where AI is being used and how it’s being used.”

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