Oregon weather and science watch on Earth Day: Noctilucent clouds, floating icebergs and ship clouds

It's hard not to keep going back to NASA's websites and NASA-related projects for all the cool images, cutting-edge science and, well, space ships!

When is air like water? Ask the ship clouds

“Air flows like water in the atmosphere with invisible currents and waves. On April 9, 2014, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this view (see photo gallery) that evokes fluid-like movement in the atmosphere. Ship wave clouds fan out behind the Crozet Islands over the southern Indian Ocean looking exactly like the ripples behind a rock in a stream or the waves behind a boat moving through calm water.”

Clouds at night give off a glowing light

"Noctilucent clouds occur at altitudes of 50 miles above the surface -- so high that they can reflect light from the sun back down to Earth," said James Russell, an atmospheric and planetary scientist at Hampton University in Hampton, Va.

Russell said that in order for the clouds to form, “three things are needed: very cold temperatures, water vapor and meteoric dust. The meteoric dust provides sites that the water vapor can cling to until the cold temperatures cause water ice to form."

Noctilucent clouds were first spotted in 1885, and can sometimes be seen hovering at night near the poles, “appearing to give off their own glowing light,” Russell said.

selfie20140402-640.jpgView full sizeTuesday is Global Selfie Day.
Take a selfie with the biggest star of our solar system, Earth

NASA is looking for your selfie to create a mosaic image of Earth on Tuesday, Earth Day. NASA says the global selfie event is meant to "encourage environmental awareness and recognize NASA's ongoing work to protect our home planet."

Nice Mars driving, Curiosity rover

There are no roads (or canals, as once thought) on Mars, but there are tracks being put down by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover. A few weeks back, a camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter near the base of a small butte, called "Mount Remarkable.”

Ice, ice baby

And finally, check out the time lapse video of a very large iceberg that cut loose from Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier last November: "It thus began a journey across Pine Island Bay, a basin of the Amundsen Sea. The ice island, named B31, will likely be swept up soon in the swift currents of the Southern Ocean, though it will be hard to track visually for the next six months as Antarctica heads into winter darkness.”

--Stuart Tomlinson
