Atmosphere

An underwater volcano that erupted in the South Pacific near Tonga on January 15 this year causing a catastrophe in the archipelago. The Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption also triggered an earthquake and tsunami that flooded the country. A new study indicates that during this event, the volcano spewed not just ash into the atmosphere but also a record-breaking amount of water vapour. While such water vapour is found to have cooled down the atmosphere in previous strong eruptions, the water blasted into the atmosphere through…

EnVision aerobraking in Venus atmosphere. Credit: ESA/ Paris Observatory / VR2Planets / Damia BouicEnVision, a project of the European Space Agency (ESA), is a mission to <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>Venus</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>Venus, the second planet from the sun, is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the moon, it is the second-brightest natural object in the night sky. Its…

(a) Location of observed H2O enhancements on 14 and 15 January. (b) Location of maximum H2O on 15–18 January. Lines display back trajectories from these measurements to the eruption time. Triangles mark the volcano location. (c) H2O profiles associated with locations shown in (a). The temperature profile (red dashed line) is the average of the temperature profiles retrieved by the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) at those locations. (d) H2O profiles…

New Zealand may seem to be under meteor bombardment at the moment. After a huge meteor exploded above the sea near Wellington on July 7, creating a sonic boom that could be heard across the bottom of the South Island, a smaller fireball was captured two weeks later above Canterbury.  Fireballs Aotearoa, a collaboration between astronomers and citizen scientists which aims to recover freshly fallen meteorites, has received a lot of questions about these events. One of the most frequent is about the bright green color, and…

With an aim to improve aircraft jet engine designs and bolster aviation safety, NASA is studying the formation of ice crystals at high altitudes through its DC-8 airborne laboratory. The study is part of NASA's High Ice Water Content (HIWC) research activity. The team of researchers is conducting a flight campaign where they flew through the heart of large thunderstorms to understand how ice crystals affect the performance of aircraft engines. They flew off the southeast coasts of the United States and the Gulf of Mexico…

A massive metal object could be hurtling towards our planet Earth these days, possibly entering the atmosphere next week. The object, in question, is a part of a Chinese rocket booster, which is headed towards Earth. The debris measures 53.6 metres in length and has a weight of 23 metric tonnes. The rocket, of which the object was a part, is a 23-ton Long March 5B rocket that took off from Hainan Island on July 24. It carried the Wentian laboratory module to space, which was successfully docked with China's Tiangong Space…

On 15 January, Tonga’s Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano erupted under the sea, rocking the South Pacific nation and sending tsunamis racing around the world. The eruption was the most powerful ever recorded, causing an atmospheric shock wave that circled the globe four times, and sending a plume of debris more than 50 kilometers into the atmosphere. But it didn’t stop there. The ash and gasses punching into the sky also shot billions of kilograms of water into the atmosphere, a…

If you have a habit of perusing satellite imagery of the world’s oceans—and who doesn’t, really?—you might get lucky and spot long, thin clouds, like white slashes across the sea. In some regions, like off the West Coast of the United States, the slashes might crisscross, creating huge hash marks. That’s a peculiar phenomenon known as a ship track.As cargo ships chug along, flinging sulfur into the atmosphere, they actually trace their routes for satellites to see. That’s because those pollutants rise into low-level…

The Parker Solar Probe, one of the most ambitious missions launched by NASA, has become the first spacecraft ever to pass through the Sun's atmosphere, venturing briefly into a region known as the corona. The historic feat was achieved in April but analysis of the data has confirmed the achievement only now. During its journey inside the atmosphere of our star, the solar probe had to withstand extreme heat and radiation. However, it is likely to help scientists understand better how the Sun actually works.On April 28,…

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer (EZIE) mission has passed on to the construction phase after a rigorous review for design cleared the project for further development. Under the EZIE mission, scientists will study electrical currents in the uppermost limits of Earth's atmosphere which will solve the mystery of electrojets' structure and evolution. The mission will see three identical CubeSats orbiting the Earth in a pearls-on-a-string formation, being launched no…