Friday 11 August 2017

U.R. Rao, Pioneer of India’s Space Program, Dies at 85

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Mr. Rao helped India propel its first satellites into space, providing television signals and weather forecasting data to the most rural parts of the country.
via New York Times

A Total Solar Eclipse of Saros 145

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A darkened sky holds bright planet Venus, the New Moon in silhouette, and the shimmering corona of the Sun in this image of a total solar eclipse. A composite of simultaneous telephoto and wide angle frames it was taken in the path of totality 18 years ago, August 11, 1999, near Kastamonu, Turkey. That particular solar eclipse is a member of Saros 145. Known historically from observations of the Moon's orbit, the Saros cycle predicts when the Sun, Earth, and Moon will return to the same geometry for a solar (or lunar) eclipse. The Saros has a period of 18 years, 11 and 1/3 days. Eclipses separated by one Saros period belong to the same numbered Saros series and are very similar. But the path of totality for consecutive solar eclipses in the same Saros shifts across the Earth because the planet rotates for an additional 8 hours during the cycle's fractional day. So the next solar eclipse of Saros 145 will also be a total eclipse, and the narrow path of totality will track coast to coast across the United States on August 21, 2017.

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Controlled manipulation of carbon nanostructures

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Researchers around the world are looking at how they can manipulate the properties of carbon nanostructures to customize them for specific purposes; the idea is to make the promising mini-format materials commercially viable. A research team has now managed to selectively influence the properties of hybrid systems consisting of carbon nanostructures and a dye.
via Science Daily

Day to night and back again: Earth's ionosphere during the total solar eclipse

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Three NASA-funded studies will use the Aug. 21 total solar eclipse as a ready-made experiment, courtesy of nature, to improve our understanding of the ionosphere and its relationship to the Sun.
via Science Daily
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