Category Archives: Imaging

Spotting Fracking and Pumping Effects from Space

2011-2014 Hydraulic Fracturing Water Use (square meters/well)
Map by U. S. Geological Survey.

Using a technique called satellite radar interferometry, researchers have spotted millimeter-scale ground uplift surrounding four high-pressure injection wells near the eastern Texas city of Timpson. Two of the wells were located directly above a spate of record quakes that struck Timpson in 2012, topping out with a 4.8 magnitude quake on May 17. The other two were located within six miles of the quakes.

Read/listen to my full story at KJZZ’s Arizona Science Desk:
ASU Researcher: Satellite Radar Links Wastewater Pumping To Earthquakes

Thermal Camera Will Narrow Search for Water, Life on Europa

Image of Europa's chaotic surface.
Image courtesy NASA/JPL/DLR.

NASA’s recent news that the Hubble Space Telescope had spotted liquid water plumes on Jupiter’s moon Europa has raised interest in a planned mission that will study the icy world to confirm the ocean’s presence and search for signs of life.

An instrument being built by Arizona State University will show experts where to start looking.

Read/listen to my full story at KJZZ’s Arizona Science Desk:
ASU Thermal Camera Will Guide Europa Mission’s Search For Water, Life

Press Release: New Imaging Method Reveals Cellular Secrets

Sacharomyces cerevisiae cells. Image courtesy Wikipedia Photo/Masur.
Sacharomyces cerevisiae cells. Image courtesy Wikipedia Photo/Masur.

Researchers from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research and the University of Colorado Boulder have combined two optical systems to get around the natural limits of optical microscopes, which usually cannot see objects smaller than the wavelengths of light. Using this method, the team found that spindle pole bodies in yeast — tiny, tube-shaped structures essential to cell division — duplicate and form some structures at different times than once thought.

(This is one of a series of press releases I am writing for Stowers. They are a bit more technical than my usual articles, but each includes a more widely accessible summary at the end. I hope you’ll check them out!)

Innovative Imaging Technique Reveals New Cellular Secrets

What Holds Dead Galaxies Together?

Seven to 10 billion years ago, a bunch of galaxies fell in with a bad crowd at the Coma cluster — a galactic group comprising thousands of their ilk. That crash “quenched” the ill-fated galaxies. They’d never again burn with hot, young stars. But the crash should have done more than shut down the unfortunate galaxies’ stellar birth rate. It should have strewn their stars across space.

So what kept these cosmic corpses intact? Read on, if you dare (OK, so the title is a bit of a hint …).

Dead Galaxies Indebted to Dark Matter

The James Webb Space Telescope Prepares to Peer Past Hubble

Artist's rendering of JWST
Artist’s rendering. Image courtesy NASA.

For two decades, the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope helped pierce the veil of time, image stellar nurseries and prove that galaxies collide. Now, the James Webb Space Telescope stands poised to take those observations to the next level, making the delicate observations possible only in the cold, dark spaces beyond the moon.

Slated for a 2018 launch date and team-built by 14 countries, 27 states and the District of Columbia, Webb will take astronomers closer to the beginning of time than ever before, granting glimpses of sights long hypothesized but never seen, from the birth of galaxies to light from the very first stars. Join us as we explore…

How the James Webb Space Telescope Will Work