Earth & Environmental Sciences Blogs

Figure 1  A massive dark storm [top centre] and the emergence of a smaller dark spot nearby [top right] are visible in this Hubble Space Telescope image of the dynamic blue-green planet Neptune. Credits: NASA Neptune's weather is among the strangest in the solar system. The sun's eighth planet has the fastest winds of any planet, cutting through the atmosphere at speeds of up to 1,100 miles per hour, or 1.5 times the speed of sound. Scientists are still baffled as to why its atmosphere is so turbulent. Their most recent sighting of Neptune added to their confusion. In 2018, the Hubble Space Telescope discovered a storm with a diameter of 4,600 miles. According to the most recent Hubble observations, it appears to have drifted toward the equator but then swooped back up north. It also has a smaller companion storm, dubbed Dark Spot Jr., which scientists believe is a piece of the main storm that broke off. These inky vortexes stand out against the planet's dizzying cerulean...

Maat Mons is a massive shield volcano that erupts every few thousand years. On Venus, it is the planet's second-highest mountain, as well as its highest volcano. At 0.5°N 194.6°E, it rises 8 kilometers (5.0 miles) above the mean planetary radius and nearly 5 kilometers above the plains around it. Ma'at, the Egyptian goddess of truth and justice, is the inspiration for the name. Maat Mons has a large summit caldera with a diameter of 28×31 kilometers. There are at least five smaller collapse craters within the large caldera, each measuring up to 10 kilometers in diameter. A 40-kilometer-long chain of small craters measuring 3–5 km in diameter runs along the volcano's southeast flank, but instead of indicating a large fissure eruption, they appear to have been formed by collapse: full-resolution imagery from the Magellan probe shows no evidence of lava flows from these craters. On Maat Mons, at least two large-scale structural collapse events appear to have occurred in the ...

  In a complicated way, the Moon's long-term variation of 18.61 years in rising points overlaps with the cycle of phases. As a result, a standstill can occur even at a new Moon and thus go unnoticed. However, during the lunistice year, the Moon will have monthly maximal and minimal declinations that are all very close to the lunistices, despite the fact that they only correspond to them once. An interesting phenomenon occurs now as a result of the characteristics of the Moon's motion. In fact, the full moon closest to the summer solstice is always at the minimum declination, and the full moon closest to the winter solstice is always at the maximum declination. In the lunistice year, both spectacles are well worth seeing. The full moon near the winter solstice – the year's longest night – rises very high in the sky (higher than the Sun at the summer solstice, in particular) and stays there the longest; at high latitudes, it can even become circumpolar. The full Moon near t...

Moon of Jupiter With hundreds of volcanoes, some spouting lava fountains dozens of miles (or kilometers) high, Io is the most volcanically active planet in the Solar System. Io is caught in a tug-of-war between Jupiter's huge gravity and the lesser but perfectly timed gravitational pulls of two nearby moons, Europa and Ganymede, which orbits farther from Jupiter. Io is a mortal lady who was turned into a cow in Greek mythology amid a dispute between the Greek god Zeus (Jupiter in Roman mythology) and his wife, Hera (Juno to the Romans). Size and Distance Io, Jupiter's third largest moon and the fifth in distance from the planet is somewhat larger than Earth's Moon. Orbit and Rotation The massive moons Europa and Ganymede cause Io's orbit to become unusually elliptical, despite the fact that it always points the same side toward Jupiter in its orbit around the giant planet. As a result, Io is subjected to immense tidal forces at various distances from Jupiter. ...

  Community Water Treatment Drinking water sources can be contaminated, and disease-causing substances must be removed with proper treatment. To supply safe drinking water to their communities, public drinking water systems employ a variety of water treatment processes. The following are the most frequent water treatment steps employed by community water systems today (mostly surface water treatment): Coagulation and Flocculation The first processes in water treatment are usually coagulation and flocculation. The water is treated using chemicals that have a positive charge. These compounds' positive charge cancels out the negative charge of dirt and other dissolved particles in water. When this happens, the particles bind to the chemicals and create floc, which is bigger particles. Sedimentation Floc settles to the bottom of the water supply during sedimentation because of its weight. Sedimentation is the term for the process of settling. Filtration The clean water on...

The world's largest and most powerful hurricanes have ever occurred across 1000 miles with winds up to 200 mph. This is wide enough to spread almost around the world. But the Great Red Spot, a giant Jupiter storm, is still diluting that sort of storm. Gigantic means there double the width of Earth. The Great Red Spot has stirred violently over Jupiter's skies for the last 150 years – perhaps far longer than this – with chaotic winds peaking at 400 mph. While individuals have seen a large place in Jupiter as early as the beginning of a telescope in the 1600s, the question of a distinct storm is still uncertain. Scientists today know that the Great Red Spot is there and has been there for some time, but still, strive to discover what generates its rotten tones. Figure 1 Jupiter great red spots, image capture on June 2008. The great red spot is not easy to comprehend, and this is mainly the fault of Jupiter. Jupiter contains mainly gas, a thousand times as large as Earth. The ce...

History Ceres is the only dwarf planet in the inner solar system and the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. When Giuseppe Piazzi discovered it in 1801, it was the first member of the asteroid belt to be discovered. Ceres became the first dwarf planet to have a spacecraft visit when Dawn arrived in 2015. Ceres was previously classed as an asteroid, but astronomers classified it as a dwarf planet in 2006 because it is so much larger and different from its rocky neighbor’s. Even though Ceres makes up 25% of the overall mass of the asteroid belt, Pluto is 14 times more massive. Ceres is named after Ceres, the Roman god of corn and harvests. The word cereal is derived from the same word. Size & Distance  Ceres is 1/13 the radius of Earth, with a radius of 296 miles (476 kilometers). Ceres would be around the size of a poppy seed if Earth were the size of a nickel. Ceres is 2.8 astronomical units distant from the sun, at a distance of 257 million m...