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Digital imaging pioneer Russell Kirsch, inventor of the pixel, dies at 91

Devin Coldewey
TechCrunch
Thu, 13 Aug 2020 21:31 UTC
Russell Krish digital imaging first digital picture
© Russell Kirsch / NIST
Russell Kirsch
Russell Kirsch, whose research going back to the '50s underlies the entire field of digital imaging, died earlier this week at the age of 91. It's hard to overstate the impact of his work, which led to the first digitally scanned photo and the creation of what we now think of as pixels.

Born to Russian and Hungarian immigrant parents in 1929, Kirsch attended NYU, Harvard and MIT, eventually landing a job at the National Bureau of Standards (later the National Institutes of Science and Technology) that he would keep for the rest of his working life.

Although he researched, coded and theorized for 50 years and even after his retirement, his most famous accomplishment is no doubt the first scanned digital image — decades before the first digital camera.
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Comet 2

Triple comet fly-pass imaged by SOHO

Karl Battams
Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)
Fri, 14 Aug 2020 18:34 UTC
Sungrazer Comet
© ESA/NASA/SOHO/Karl Battams
Still shot identifying the comet and the fragments and an animation image below.
First appearances can be deceiving, and one of the latest comet discoveries by SOHO is the perfect example of that!

SOHO is no stranger to discovering new comets - via the NASA-funded Sungrazer Project, the observatory has discovered over 4,000 previously unknown comets since launch in 1995. Most of SOHO's comet discoveries can be categorized into families, or groups, the most famous being the "Kreutz" sungrazer group which accounts for over 85% of the Project discoveries. Only around 4% -some 175 comets- do not appear to belong to any known group or comet family. However, these are often among the most interesting comets and this most recent discovery -SOHO's 4,049th comet- was no exception!


The comet was first spotted on August 5th, 2020, by amateur astronomer Worachate Boonplod. At discovery, it was just a tiny faint smudge near the edge of the C3 coronagraph images recorded SOHO's Large Angle Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) instrument. As it neared the Sun over the next day or so, the smudge became increasingly elongated, ultimately hinting that it may be two comets pretending to be one!

This was confirmed as the comets entered the narrower field of view of the LASCO C2 camera, where the improved resolution confirmed that not only was this more than one comet, it was actually THREE comets! The two main components are easy to spot, with the third a very faint, diffuse fragment following alongside the leading piece.
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Blue Planet

125 million year old shell is only the 'third dinosaur egg ever found in Russia' - or it's an early bird

Olga Gertcyk
Siberian Times
Fri, 14 Aug 2020 11:48 UTC
dinosaur egg
© Kuzbass History Museum
125 million year old shell is ‘third dinosaur's egg ever found in Russia’ - or an early bird.
Siberian archeologists report sensational discovery at Dinosaur Graveyard in Kemerovo region.

Pieces of the broken shell still shaped as an egg were found on 8 August at Shestakovo-3 paleontological site.

The fossilised shell was in the same layer where six years ago archeologists found a mass burial of Psittacosaurus, otherwise known as Parrot Lizards - extinct ceratopsian dinosaurs with a high skull and a robust beak that lived between 126 and 101 million years ago (Early Cretaceous).

Back then there were four fully preserved skeletons of these dinosaurs found in the burial.

Psittacosaurus Sibiricus is the largest-known species of Psittacosaurus, with the biggest skull (20.7cm) and two striking features like the longest neck frill and four 'horns' around each eye.

Comment: See also:

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Comet 2

NASA satellite catches unusual triple comet flying past the sun

Inigo Monzon
International Business Times
Fri, 14 Aug 2020 04:25 UTC
Image of three comets captured by the SOHO satellite
© ESA/NASA/SOHO/Karl Battams
Image of three comets captured by the SOHO satellite
A solar satellite launched by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) spotted a cluster of three comets flying close to the sun. A scientist who analyzed the images stated that the object did not come from a well-known family of comets.

The comet cluster was spotted by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a robotic satellite launched by NASA through a joint project with the ESA in 1995. The main mission of the satellite is to observe the sun in order to collect data regarding its various activities and behavior.

Recently, while gazing at the giant star, SOHO spotted three comets flying in front of it. Karl Battams, a computational scientist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington D.C., compiled the coronagraph images captured by SOHO to create a short animated video of the flying comets. The clip shows the bright objects flying across the surface of the sun.

"The two main components are easy to spot, with the third, a very faint, diffuse fragment following alongside the leading piece," Battams said, according to SpaceWeather.com.

Usually, the comets spotted by SOHO flying in front of the sun are members of the Kreutz sungrazer family. These sungrazers are the fragments of a massive comet that broke apart over a thousand years ago.
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Rose

Bees use shark 'supersense' to help find food

Anthony King
Horizon Magazine
Tue, 11 Aug 2020 12:00 UTC
bees
© Unsplash/George Hiles, licenced under Unsplash licence
Fine hairs on bees' bodies can sense tiny changes in electrostatic fields, enabling them to sense whether another bee has visited a flower before them.
Flying insects such as bees and moths have secret senses that allow them to 'feel' nearby flowers and navigate over long distances, according to new research.

Armed with sensitive antennae and wide-angled compound eyes, bees have a sophisticated set of senses to help them search out pollen and nectar as they buzz from flower to flower.

But new research is revealing that bumblebees may employ another hidden sense that lets them detect when a flower was last visited by another insect.

Comment: See also:

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Cassiopaea

Betelgeuse's mysterious dimming due to a traumatic outburst - NASA


NASA
Thu, 13 Aug 2020 21:26 UTC
Betelgeuse
© NASA, ESA, and E. Wheatley (STScI)
This four-panel graphic illustrates how the southern region of the rapidly evolving, bright, red supergiant star Betelgeuse may have suddenly become fainter for several months during late 2019 and early 2020. In the first two panels, as seen in ultraviolet light with the Hubble Space Telescope, a bright, hot blob of plasma is ejected from the emergence of a huge convection cell on the star's surface. In panel three, the outflowing, expelled gas rapidly expands outward. It cools to form an enormous cloud of obscuring dust grains. The final panel reveals the huge dust cloud blocking the light (as seen from Earth) from a quarter of the star's surface.
Observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope are showing that the unexpected dimming of the supergiant star Betelgeuse was most likely caused by an immense amount of hot material ejected into space, forming a dust cloud that blocked starlight coming from Betelgeuse's surface.

Hubble researchers suggest that the dust cloud formed when superhot plasma unleashed from an upwelling of a large convection cell on the star's surface passed through the hot atmosphere to the colder outer layers, where it cooled and formed dust grains. The resulting dust cloud blocked light from about a quarter of the star's surface, beginning in late 2019. By April 2020, the star returned to normal brightness.

Betelgeuse is an aging, red supergiant star that has swelled in size due to complex, evolving changes in its nuclear fusion furnace at the core. The star is so huge now that if it replaced the Sun at the center of our solar system, its outer surface would extend past the orbit of Jupiter.

Comment: Notably it isn't only Betelgeuse that's displaying unusual behaviour out in Space: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Syringe

Russia's approval of a COVID-19 vaccine is less than meets the press release

Jon Cohen
Science
Tue, 11 Aug 2020 05:15 UTC
Russian vaccine
© MINISTRY OF HEALTH OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
An experimental COVID-19 vaccine made by a Russian research institute.
In a startling and confusing move, Russia claimed today it had approved the world's first COVID-19 vaccine, as the nation's Ministry of Health issued what's called a registration certificate for a vaccine candidate that has been tested in just 76 people. The certificate allows the vaccine, developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology in Moscow, to be given to "a small number of citizens from vulnerable groups," including medical staff and the elderly, a Ministry of Health spokesperson tells ScienceInsider. But the certificate stipulates that the vaccine cannot be used widely until 1 January 2021, presumably after larger clinical trials have been completed.

Scientists around the world immediately denounced the certification as premature and inappropriate, as the Gamaleya vaccine has yet to complete a trial that convincingly shows it is safe and effective in a large group of people. Even some within Russia challenged the move. "It's ridiculous," says Svetlana Zavidova, a lawyer who heads the Association of Clinical Research Organizations in Russia. "I feel only shame for our country." Zavidova, who has worked on clinical trials for 20 years and anticipated the approval, yesterday sent an appeal to the Ministry of Health to postpone registering the vaccine until proper efficacy trials are completed. "Accelerated registration will no longer make Russia a leader in this race, it will only expose end users of the vaccine, citizens of the country of the Russian Federation, to unnecessary danger," she wrote on behalf of the clinical research group.
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Sun

Massive sunspot turning towards Earth could be bad news as we enter new solar cycle 25


Indian Express
Mon, 10 Aug 2020 09:20 UTC
sunspots
© NASA
Solar flares are the result of changes in magnetic fields on the sunspots that cause a huge explosion
If you think the year 2020 is through with its share of bad news, there is a massive sunspot on the Sun that will be turning towards our planet which could result in major strong flares. According to a report by spaceweather.com, the sunspot AR2770, which was deducted earlier this week is expected to grow in size. Few minor space flares have been emitted by this particular sunspot already which has not caused anything major other than "minor waves of ionization to ripple through Earth's upper atmosphere".

However, if this sunspot which can be up to 50,000 kilometres in diameter may release a huge amount of energy which in turn will lead to solar flares. These eruptions may lead to solar flares and storms. This phenomenon is called Coronal Mass Ejections (CME). These flares can have a major effect on affect radio communications, Global Positioning Systems (GPS) connectivity, power grids, and satellites.

Comment: Space Weather reports:
SOLAR CYCLE 25 ACTIVE REGIONS

The sun's southern hemisphere is undergoing an outbreak of Solar Cycle 25 active regions. Take a look at this Aug. 12th magnetic map of the sun from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory:
sun spot august 2020
Each patch of yellow and green is a place where magnetic fields are intensifying, creating islands of magnetism on the sun's surface. In one case (AR2771), the fields have intensified enough to form a cluster of dark sunspots. The other two are still weakly-organized regions of magnetic froth. They might turn into sunspots, but haven't yet.

We know that all of these regions belong to Solar Cycle 25 because of their +/- polarity. See Hale's Law for details. Their emergence is yet another sign that Solar Cycle 25 is coming to life.
While it remains to be seen what happens with the sun spot, what is clear is that due to the decreasing strength in Earth's electro-magnetic field solar activity is being felt with an increased intensity, and it's in the transition between cycles that we see an increase in potentially disruptive solar events: 'Terminator' events on the Sun trigger plasma tsunamis and new solar cycles - Expect them next year

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Telescope

Modelling Main Belt asteroid Psyche's impact crater formations aids in planning exploratory mission


PhysOrg
Wed, 12 Aug 2020 16:37 UTC
asteroid psyche artist conception
© Peter Rubin and Arizona State University
Artist's conception of asteroid Psyche, whose composition has been proposed as a porous metallic body hurtling through space, thanks to computer modeling of its largest crater.
New 2-D and 3-D computer modeling of impacts on the asteroid Psyche, the largest Main Belt asteroid, indicate it is probably metallic and porous in composition, something like a flying cosmic rubble pile. Knowing this will be critical to NASA's forthcoming asteroid mission, Psyche: Journey to a Metal World, that launches in 2022.

"This mission will be the first to visit a metallic asteroid, and the more we, the scientific community, know about Psyche prior to launch, the more likely the mission will have the most appropriate tools for examining Psyche and collecting data," said Wendy K. Caldwell, Los Alamos National Laboratory Chick Keller Postdoctoral Fellow and lead author on a paper published recently in the journal Icarus. "Psyche is an interesting body to study because it is likely the remnant of a planetary core that was disrupted during the accretion stage, and we can learn a lot about planetary formation from Psyche if it is indeed primarily metallic."

Modeling impact structures on Psyche contributes to our understanding of metallic bodies and how cratering processes on large metal objects differ from those on rocky and icy bodies, she noted.
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Telescope

Dwarf planet Ceres is an ocean world: study

Patrick Galey
phys.org
Mon, 10 Aug 2020 22:48 UTC
Ceres

Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and has its own gravity
The dwarf planet Ceres — long believed to be a barren space rock — is an ocean world with reservoirs of sea water beneath its surface, the results of a major exploration mission showed Monday.

Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, enabling the NASA Dawn spacecraft to capture high-resolution images of its surface.

Now a team of scientists from the United States and Europe have analysed images relayed from the orbiter, captured around 35 kilometres (22 miles) from the asteroid.

They focused on the 20-million-year-old Occator crater and determined that there is an "extensive reservoir" of brine beneath its surface.
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