Instructify

Here’s what’s going on at the NASA Earth Observatory, brought to you by Fred Beyer at EarthSciTeach.

CALIPSO Spies Polar Stratospheric Clouds

Record Low Arctic Sea Ice Extent for January

Durrat Al Bahrain, Persian Gulf

Ubinas Volcano, Peru

Landslides in Brazil

Shinmoe-dake Volcano Erupts on Kyushu

Historic Winter Storm Moves Across the U.S.

Tropical Cyclone Yasi

NASA News

NASA Satellites Capture Data on Monster Winter Storm Affecting 30 States

Satellite Images of Jan. 27 Snowstorm

GOES-13 Satellite Sees Groundhog’s Day on Ice

NASA’s TRMM Satellite Totaled Cyclone Yasi’s Heavy Rainfall in Queensland

Seeking Feedback and Improvement, NASA’s Earth Data System Earns Praise

Headlines from the press, radio, and television

How Ocean Currents Once Warmed the Arctic

Russian Volcano in Fresh Eruption

‘Alarming’ Amazon Droughts May Have Global Fallout

New ‘Hot Plate’ Technique for Marine Study

Deep Below Antarctic Ice, Lake May Soon See Light

Cows Holding Breath Over New Methane Model

Historic Pink Terraces Found in New Zealand Lake

Pictures: “Ominous” Japan Volcano Erupts Again

Tropical Cyclones Attacking Australia: Big Pic

Dust Levels Doubled World-Wide

Monster Snow and Megastorms, Oh My!

High Risk of Big Quake in Chile

Warm North Atlantic Heating Arctic

Loss of Sea Ice Poses Mercury Risk

An Atmospheric Time Machine

Two Cold Winters Don’t Make a Climate Trend

Lake Vostok Drilling in Antarctica Running Out of Time

Here’s what’s going on at the NASA Earth Observatory, brought to you by Fred Beyer at EarthSciTeach.

Latest Images

Tropical Cyclone Yasi

Ozone Hole through the years

Brasília at Night

Receding Flood Waters around Rockhampton, Queensland

Bloom in the Ross Sea

A Day of Night-Shining Clouds

Night-Shining Clouds are Getting Brighter

Arctic Oscillation Chills North America, Warms Arctic

NASA News

Little Instrument that Could Reaches Flight Milestone

NASA Scientists Study More Than Rockets in the ‘Deep South’

NASA’s Salt-Seeking Instrument Gets Blanketed in Silver

Headlines from the press, radio, and television

Greenland glaciers spring surprise

Survey to probe Arctic ice melt

Coral Moves North to Beat the Heat

Drought in Dixie

Experts seek Arctic climate early warning system

‘Hidden Plumbing’ Helps Slow Greenland Ice Flow: Hotter Summers May Actually Slow Down Flow of Glaciers

First-Ever Global Map of Surface Permeability Informs Water Supply, Climate Modelling

Time Machine for Climate Scientists: Earth’s Extreme Weather Events Since 1871 Reanalyzed

A Clearer Picture of How Rivers and Deltas Develop

Climate Change Threatens Many Tree Species

Aging and failed satellites jeopardize efforts to collect data on climate change

Here’s what’s going on at the NASA Earth Observatory, brought to you by Fred Beyer at EarthSciTeach.

Arctic Oscillation Chills United States, Warms Arctic

Landslides in Brazil

Onekotan Island, Kuril Islands, Russian Federation

A Clear View of the Alps

Eruption of Stromboli Volcano, Italy

Mud Volcano Emerges from the Arabian Sea

St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands

Channel Beneath Pine Island Glacier

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Here’s what’s going on at the NASA Earth Observatory, brought to you by Fred Beyer at EarthSciTeach.

Pine Island Glacier

Flooding in Brisbane Suburbs

North Col of Mount Everest

Northwestern Algeria

Activity at Mt. Etna

Different Records, Same Warming Trend

Winter Storm along the U.S. East Coast

Heavy Rains in Queensland

NASA news

NASA Research Finds 2010 Tied for Warmest Year on Record

NASA Satellites Capture a Stronger La Nina

Despite Subtle Differences, Global Temperature Records in Close Agreement

Headlines from the press, radio, and television

England’s uplands ‘get more frequent heavy rainfall’

NASA’s Glory Satellite Will Study Climate Change Causes

2010 Ties 2005 as Warmest Year on Record

EarthObserver: A Planet in Your Pocket

Global Warming: Dire Prediction for the Year 3000

Weather Rarity: Snow in 49 States

Current La Niña Could be Strongest Ever Recorded

Picture of Haiti Earthquake Causes Coming into Focus

El Nino seen triggering next world warmth record

Scientists see climate change link to Australian floods

Earth’s Hot Past Could Be Prologue to Future Climate

2010 Tied for Warmest Year on Record, NASA Research Finds

Mountain Glacier Melt to Contribute 12 Centimeters to World Sea-Level Increases by 2100

BY BILL FERRIS

Life is a fragile thing — slight variations in a planet’s mass or its distance from its sun can all mean the difference between a thriving global ecosystem and a cold, dead rock floating through space. If I sound bitter, it’s because I’ve just created five or six uninhabitable worlds in Extreme Planet Makeover, a planet-building simulator from NASA and the California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

This fun application lets you manipulate several conditions that make a planet conducive to life as we know it — the planet’s age, its distance from the sun, the planet it’s based on (more on that in a minute), what type of star it orbits, and more. To create a habitable planet, you have to hit a very narrow nexus of each of the factors, and your students can plan to spend a good deal of trial and error trying to build something they could live on.

You can choose between three planets to use as a template — Earth, Mars, and Gliese 581 d, a large “Super-Earth” with a rocky surface that scientists think could possibly harbor life. I think it’s pretty fun to play around with a distant planet that might actually have life on it, just as it is to renovate Mars into a place where some little green men might want to settle down.

Through playing this game, I learned several new things about the planetary life cycle, like the fact that as a planet gets older, its core cools down and all liquid water sinks into the crust, which is only a problem if you’re an organism that needs water to live. Extreme Planet Makeover has lots of facts like that, there for the learning.

Of course, this game really brings to light how little we know about life in the universe. Is an Earth-like planet the only place life could survive? We just don’t know, but Extreme Planet Makeover does a good job of illustrating what we do know. And with enough patience and mouse clicking, you too can finally build a planet you could theoretically call home (see Planet Ferris above).

Extreme Planet Makeover

Related stuff

Another fabulous site from NASA: Solar Sytem Exploration

See the planets in motion with the Solar System Visualizer

Feel Younger by Calculating Your Age on Other Worlds

Here’s what’s going on at the NASA Earth Observatory, brought to you by Fred Beyer at EarthSciTeach.

Latest images

Heavy Rains in Queensland

Sediment Transforms Lake Michigan

Montreal at Night

Anyuyskiy Volcano

Flooding in Rockhampton, Queensland

Lining Up the Sun, Moon, and ISS

Flooding in Queensland

Harratt Lunayyir, Saudi Arabia

NASA News

Under Pressure: Stormy Weather Sensor for Hurricane Forecasting

NASA Image Shows La Niña-Caused Woes Down Under

NASA’s Fermi Catches Thunderstorms Hurling Antimatter into Space

NASA’s Glory Satellite Arrives At Vandenberg Air Force Base for Launch

Just 5 Questions: Pure as the Driven Snow?

BY REBECCAH HAINES

It is no surprise that NASA is a great resource for science teachers, and this page on Solar System Exploration does not disappoint.

The website is as well organized as you’d expect from NASA, with the usual sections for kids and educators.  Like a lot of NASA sites, you can find kid-friendly information and lesson plans. What is different, however, is a thematic search for educators. Five themes — “What We Explore,” “Early Solar System,” “Planetary Processes and Weather,” “Astrobiology,” and “How We Explore” — all include a six-tabbed page at which you can find background information, science questions, education activities, related NASA missions, and careers. It is very well organized and would be helpful for any time-strapped educator.

An additional fun and different feature I found in the Kids’ section was Space School Musical — think High School Musical with a NASA twist. You can view the segments online and even download the transcripts so that you can have your kids sing along with new classics such as S-P-A-C-E and Moon Dance. Other nifty features include a multimedia gallery complete with interactives, videos, audio, and downloads. There is also a section on the planets (and other celestial bodies) that include facts and figures, pictures, and featured lesson plans and/or activities.

Finally, there is a section on NASA’s exploratory missions that can be searched by various criteria. Once you select a particular mission, you can find out its goals, accomplishments, and key people. I used this particular feature with my students in which they created an illustrated time line of space exploration.

Solar System Exploration

Related stuff

Space.com – can a URL be any simpler?

What does your night sky look like? Find out with the Starry Night Sky Chart

BY BILL FERRIS

NASA has called a press conference for Thursday, December 2 to announce findings that will “impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.” You and your class can watch to the conference via NASA’s website.

Blogger Jason Kottke looked into the backgrounds and expertise of the conference participants — a geobiologist, an oceanographer, a biologist, and an ecologist — and speculated:

“So, if I had to guess at what NASA is going to reveal on Thursday, I’d say that they’ve discovered arsenic on Titan and maybe even detected chemical evidence of bacteria utilizing it for photosynthesis (by following the elements). Or something like that.”

If that’s true, it would be a game changer in terms of what elements are needed to support life. Tune in to the conference to find out.

Also, if your school newspaper staff is feeling ambitious, it may be worth a try to dial in to ask questions of the panelists. If some aspiring journalists at your school would like to get a pretty big science scoop, they should send their name, newspaper affiliation and telephone number to Steve Cole (stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov or 202-358-0918) by December 2 at noon.

NASA Sets News Conference on Astrobiology Discovery; Science Journal Has Embargoed Details Until 2 p.m. EST On Dec. 2

Related stuff

Climate change evidence from NASA

Save humanity’s first lunar settlement in Moonbase Alpha

The building of the International Space Station in less that two minutes

BY BILL FERRIS

Hey, I’m blastin’ off here!

The Brooklyn Space Program, consisting of “a group of friends in New York City interested in scientific experiments, engineering, design and education,” sent an HD camera and an iPhone into outer space (!) via weather balloon. The camera reached an altitude of 19 miles before the balloon burst. The resulting footage looks like something taken by a satellite, albeit a satellite susceptible to wind turbulence. To think that a homemade father-and-son science project was able to capture the curvature of the earth and the inky blackness of space first-hand is pretty inspiring.

You may have already seen this video elsewhere online, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t put this on Instructify, since the educational possibilities for a project like this are pretty outstanding. Consider the considerations they had to consider to pull this off — working out how to retrieve the camera, rigging a parachute to deploy during the descent, cushioning the camera and iPhone for their eventual impact with the earth, not to mention how to safeguard sensitive electronic equipment from the icy cold of space. This project presents several juicy problems for student scientists and engineers to solve.

The BSP is publishing a small how-to book for science-minded folks wanting to send their own balloon to space. Not to steer you away from supporting a worthy cause, but I think part of the value of this sort of project is in figuring out how to do it yourself. Either way, it’s a great idea, and even cooler than the baking-soda volcanoes we made when I was a kid.

Brooklyn Dad and Kid Send iPhone Into Outer Space

Related stuff

More Google Earth lesson plans

Take a ride on a U2 spy plane

Here’s what’s going on at the NASA Earth Observatory, brought to you by Fred Beyer at EarthSciTeach.

Latest images

St. Anthony Sand Dunes, Idaho

High Pressure Cloud Patterns, Eastern U.S.

Smoke Plume, Caspian Sea, Kazakhstan

San Jose Mine, Chile

Fires in Southern Kruger National Park

Heavy Rainfall from Hurricane Karl

Water Level Changes in Lake Mead

Activity at Shiveluch Volcano

Recent blog posts

G. Projector
G.Projector is an elegant and free tool for converting map projections.

Devils Lake Interactive
A neat tool from the AP allows exploration of two satellite images of Devils Lake, North Dakota.

Design Basics: Anti-Aliasing
One of the simplest ways to improve the look of graphics on a computer screen is to anti-alias them. Here are some examples of aliased graphics, and a few techniques to improve them.

Here’s what’s going on at the NASA Earth Observatory, brought to you by Fred Beyer at EarthSciTeach.

Activity at Shiveluch Volcano

Fires in Utah

Es Safa Volcanic Field, Syria

La Nina in progress

Drought and Air Quality in August 2010

Flooding around Manchhar Lake, Pakistan

Antarctic Ozone Hole 2010

Hurricane Igor

(more…)

Here’s what’s going on at the NASA Earth Observatory, brought to you by Fred Beyer at EarthSciTeach.

Climate Q&A

What if global warming isn’t as severe as predicted?

It’s natural to question whether we and future generations will regret our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions if it turns out global warming isn’t as bad as predicted.

Latest Images

Oil Slick, Mississippi River Delta, Gulf of Mexico

Flooding in Pakistan

Kaziranga National Park, India

(more…)

BY REBECCAH HAINES

While reviewing another space-related website, I came across this one, Starry Night Sky Chart, and decided it was cool enough to warrant its own post. At this site, you can enter your ZIP code and get a picture of what the night sky will look like in your area.

This website is part of a larger website, Starry Night Education, that offers extensive (paid) resources for teaching space science and astronomy. However, the interactive sky chart is free. Its operation is pretty simple. Enter your ZIP code and you will be presented with a picture of what the sky will look like at approximately 9 p.m. as you face south on that day. You can change the viewing time and a few other simple options, like labeling constellations and planets.  You can also see what the view would look like if you were standing on the moon — how cool is that?

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BY BILL FERRIS

Forty-one years ago today, man first set foot on the moon. Could Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin have known that less than half a century later we’d all be living on cities on the moon, driving flying cars to work?

Until science catches up with science fiction, your students can still get excited about the space program and science with Moonbase Alpha, a 3-D multiplayer game from NASA. (more…)

BY REBECCAH HAINES

Have you ever found that when you ask your students to research a particular topic (let’s say lions, for example) they want to type in www.lions.com, and see what happens?  Unfortunately, if such a site exists, it may or may not be appropriate for school (remember whitehouse.com?). However, every once in a while, there is a site with a simple URL that does work out. Browsing to www.space.com will provide you and your students with quality information about — you guessed it — space.

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