vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
Education News & Blogs – NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
This layer of the atmosphere warms as altitude increases, making the top of the stratosphere warmer than the bottom. The colder air at the bottom and warmer air at the top prevents mixing and air turbulence, making the air very stable and providing a great place to observe space. You may have noticed this stability if you’ve seen a flat-topped anvil-shaped storm cloud. That flat top is the cloud reaching the bottom of the stratosphere, where the stable air prevents the cloud from mixing upward.
But why fly GUSTO above Antarctica? Even though balloons can be launched from all over the planet, the 24 hours of sunlight per day provided by the Antarctic summer make the south polar region an ideal launch location for a solar-powered mission like GUSTO. But more important is a weather phenomenon known as an anticyclone. This weather system is an upper-atmosphere counter-clockwise wind flow that circles the South Pole about every two weeks. The Antarctic anticyclone allows for long balloon flights of missions that can be recovered and potentially reflown.
Preparing for Liftoff
To launch a balloon mission in Antarctica, weather conditions have to be just right. The anticyclone typically forms in mid-December but can arrive a little earlier or a little later. Even with the anticyclone started, winds on the ground and in the first few hundred feet of the atmosphere need to be under six knots (seven miles per hour) for GUSTO to launch. A NASA meteorologist provides daily updates on the cyclone and the ground.
Once weather conditions are good and the balloon is launched, it will circle Antarctica about once every 14 days with the wind. The anticyclone typically lasts one to two months. Because GUSTO may be in the air for more than two months, it’s possible that the mission will continue after the anticyclone ends, causing the balloon to drift northward as winter progresses.
Bring GUSTO Into the Classroom
The GUSTO mission is a great opportunity to engage students with hands-on learning opportunities. Students can build a planetary exploration balloon and model how interstellar dust forms into planets. Explore these lessons and resources to get students excited about the STEM involved in the mission.
Resources for Educators

 Lesson
Sun-Earth Days 2013: Articles
And ironically, the rotation of the sun is responsible for the sun having sunspots! Make a mental note of this for later.
Electromagnetism
To understand the role of solar rotation (and so, sunspots) in our story, we go back to the 1820's where Michael Faraday, impressed with the work of Hans Christian Oersted who discovered that a magnetic needle (compass) was deflected when placed near a wire with a current flowing through it, developed a theory of electromagnetic induction. Basically, the movement of charge generates a magnetic field and a moving magnetic field generates charge or electrical current. This is the principle behind all electric motors, transformers, and generators today and is the principle that allows the sun to generate a magnetic field. It is also a most central concept in understanding how the solar wind and solar storms impact the rest of the solar system.

TRY IT!

Figure 4: The sun's magnetic field. Blue and yellow field lines correspond to north and south polarities

Figure 6: Sunspots often occur in pairs with opposite magnetic polarities

Figure 5: Large starspot observed on HD12545. Notice size comparison with the sun

Figure 7: Hot, glowing plasma flows between sunspots creating a solar prominence

Figure 8: The sun near solar maximum (left) and solar minimum (right)

Back To The Sun
The high pressure in the sun's core heats matter to very high temperatures (around 15 million K) resulting in an abundance of charged/ionized particles (plasma). The sun's rotation combined with convection from the heated material transports this charge around the sun. Now remembering Michael Faraday's discovery that moving charge generates a magnetic field, this is how the sun's magnetic field is generated - electromagnetic induction within a star. When this process operates within a star or planet, we call it a dynamo. Because the sun is composed of plasma and not solid material, its rotation rate is not constant. Therefor, the motion of ionized gas around the sun is not constant. The sun rotates slower at high latitudes (near the poles) than at the equator.
Stars in an Exoplanet World - NASA Science
Red dwarfs make up the bulk of the Milky Way's population, about 73%. Sunlike stars are merely 6% of the population, and K dwarfs are at 13%.NASA, ESA and Z. Levy (STScI)How are stars born?Stars are born from vast clouds of gas and dust, known as nebulae, that are scattered throughout most galaxies. Over thousands to millions of years, gravity can cause denser pockets within a nebula to collapse under their own weight. As a cloud – which is mostly hydrogen – collapses, the material at its center begins to heat up. Known as a “protostar,” this hot core of the collapsing cloud will is a star in the making. Some of these spinning clouds of collapsing gas and dust break up into two or three blobs that each form stars. This would explain why most of the stars in the Milky Way come in pairs or in multiples. Not all of this material ends up as part of the star, however – the remaining dust can become planets and moons, asteroids, and comets – or may simply remain as dust.What is a main sequence star?As millions of years pass, the core temperature of a protostar reaches a point at which nuclear fusion can begin. The star then begins the longest stage of its life, called the “main sequence.” Most stars in the galaxy, including our Sun, are categorized as main sequence. This is a state in which nuclear fusion in the star is stable and hydrogen is converted to helium. This process releases a lot of energy that keeps the star hot and bright, and it supplies an outward pressure against the incredible mass of material that would otherwise cause the star to collapse on itself. Ninety percent of a star’s life is spent in the main sequence phase.What does a star's color mean?When you look at the night sky, you may notice that some stars shine more brightly than others. The brightness of a star is related to how much energy it puts out, as well as how close it is to Earth.Stars also vary in color – because they vary in temperature. Hotter stars appear blue or white, while cooler stars look orange or red.
Stars - NASA Science
Our Milky Way alone contains more than 100 billion, including our most well-studied star, the Sun.Stars are giant balls of hot gas – mostly hydrogen, with some helium and small amounts of other elements. Every star has its own life cycle, ranging from a few million to trillions of years, and its properties change as it ages.BirthStars form in large clouds of gas and dust called molecular clouds. Molecular clouds range from 1,000 to 10 million times the mass of the Sun and can span as much as hundreds of light-years. Molecular clouds are cold which causes gas to clump, creating high-density pockets. Some of these clumps can collide with each other or collect more matter, strengthening their gravitational force as their mass grows. Eventually, gravity causes some of these clumps to collapse. When this happens, friction causes the material to heat up, which eventually leads to the development of a protostar – a baby star. Batches of stars that have recently formed from molecular clouds are often called stellar clusters, and molecular clouds full of stellar clusters are called stellar nurseries.The edge of a nearby stellar nursery called NGC 3324, found at the northwest corner of the Carina Nebula, forms the “mountains” and “valleys” spanning this image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScILifeAt first, most of the protostar’s energy comes from heat released by its initial collapse. After millions of years, immense pressures and temperatures in the star’s core squeeze the nuclei of hydrogen atoms together to form helium, a process called nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion releases energy, which heats the star and prevents it from further collapsing under the force of gravity.Our Sun, a main sequence star, emits a strong solar flare flashes in this image captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.NASA/SDOAstronomers call stars that are stably undergoing nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium main sequence stars. This is the longest phase of a star’s life. The star’s luminosity, size, and temperature will slowly change over millions or billions of years during this phase.
Transit of Venus, Sun-Earth Days 2013
Between May 10-12, 1999, the solar wind nearly vanished, causing Earth's magnetosphere to expand in volume by over 100 times!
A typical CME can be millions of kilometers in size, but have the mass of only a small mountain!
Some sunspots are cool enough that water vapor can form at a temperature of 1,550 C.
The most powerful aurora can generate over 1 trillion watts of power.
The March 13, 1989 Quebec blackout, the result of a major geomagnetic storm, caused a $6 billion loss to the Canadian economy.
During intense solar flares, astronauts see bright flashing streaks of light as a result of high-energy particles zipping through their eyeballs.
The largest, single, challenge for astronauts traveling to Mars will be to overcome exposure to solar storms and radiation.
Space Weather Forecasting costs only $5 million a year, but supports over $500 billion in annual revenue from the satellite and electrical power industries.
Over $2 billion in satellite technology was damaged or destroyed during the last sunspot cycle.
A major solar 'superstorm' such as the one in 1859 could cost $30 billion a day to the US electrical power grid, and up to $70 billion to the satellite industry.
The August 4, 1972 solar flare was so powerful that, by some estimates, a spacesuited astronaut would have received a lethal does of radiation.
Earth's climate was seriously chilled during the Maunder Minimum (1645-1715) when no 11-year sunspot cycles were detected.
During a single second, the sun converts 4 million tons of matter into pure energy.
The core of the sun is nearly as dense as lead, and has a temperature of 15 million C.
During a severe solar storm, Earth loses about 100 tons of its atmosphere into space.
Toy 'rare-earth' magnets can be 5 times stronger than a sunspot magnetic field.

Magnetism Facts

All magnetic fields are produced by moving or spinning charged particles...somewhere
Lines of magnetic force do not actually exist.
Magnetic poles always come in pairs.
The strongest magnetic field in nature is from the magnetar star SGR 1806-20, which has been estimated as 800 trillion Gauss.
ASTER | Terra
Posted on May 8, 2018 by Tassia Owen 
	Posted in News and Events 

When volcanoes erupt, ASTER turns its attention to documenting the changes to the landscape as they happen. ASTER is uniquely capable of turning to see areas where volcanoes are erupting in very high resolution (between 15 in the thermal bands – 90 meter spatial resolution in the visible light spectral bands).
As Hawaii’s Kilauea continues to erupt, ASTER continues to monitor the eruption from space. This image from May 6, 2018 shows the sulfur dioxide being released from the volcano in yellow and yellow-green.
Read more:
Satellite View of Kilauea Eruption from NASA JPL

 

Terra on the Earth Observatory: July

Posted on July 29, 2016 by Tassia Owen 
	Posted in News and Events 

Cloud Streets over Timor Sea
July 24, 2016
These “streets of the sky” called cloud streets are long parallel bands of cumulus clouds. On July 15, 2016, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite aquired these images of cloud streets off the northern coast of Australia. Read more on NASA’s Earth Observatory.

Swirls of Ice in the Labrador Sea

July 21, 2016
What first appeared to be a storm wasn’t a low pressure system in the clouds, but a swirling mass of ice in the sea. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites acquired views of an ice eddy off the coast of Labrador, Canada, on July 2, 2016. Read more on NASA’s Earth Observatory.

Caterpillars Take Bite Out of Rhode Island Forests
July 15, 2016
Gypsy moth caterpillars damaged parts of New England’s forests and the damage is extensive enough to be seen from space. The Moderate Imaging Spectroradiomenter on NASA’s Terra satellite captured images of the damage over Rhode Island, Massachussetts and Connecticut during the pests’ population boom in the summer of 2016. Read more on  NASA’s Earth Observatory.

Making Waves in the Sky off of Africa
July 14 , 2016
NASA Launches Small Climate Satellite to Study Earth’s Poles - NASA
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Imagine the Universe!
An emission nebula shines by emitting light as electrons recombine with protons to form hydrogen. The electrons were made free by the ultraviolet light of a nearby star shining on a cloud of hydrogen gas. A planetary nebula results from the explosion of a solar-like type star. 
neutrino
A fundamental particle produced in massive numbers by the nuclear reactions in stars; they are very hard to detect because the vast majority of them pass completely through the Earth without interacting.
neutron
A particle with approximately the mass of a proton, but zero charge, commonly found in the nucleus of atoms .
neutron star
The imploded core of a massive star produced by a supernova explosion. (typical mass of 1.4 times the mass of the Sun, radius of about 5 miles, density of a neutron.) According to astronomer and author Frank Shu, "A sugar cube of neutron-star stuff on Earth would weigh as much as all of humanity!" Neutron stars can be observed as pulsars.

 Tell me about X-rays from neutron stars

Newton, Isaac 1642 - 1727
English cleric and scientist; discovered the classical laws of motion and gravity; the bit with the apple is probably apocryphal.

 Show me a picture of Isaac Newton!

Newton's law of universal gravitation (Sir I. Newton)
Two bodies attract each other with equal and opposite forces; the magnitude of this force is proportional to the product of the two masses and is also proportional to the inverse square of the distance between the centers of mass of the two bodies.

Newton's laws of motion (Sir I. Newton)
Newton's first law of motion
	A body continues in its state of constant velocity (which may be zero) unless it is acted upon by an external force.
Newton's second law of motion
	For an unbalanced force acting on a body, the acceleration produced is proportional to the force impressed; the constant of proportionality is the inertial mass of the body.
	Newton's third law of motion
	In a system where no external forces are present, every action force is always opposed by an equal and opposite reaction.

noise
The random fluctuations that are always associated with a measurement that is repeated many times over.
Why Citizen Science for Precipitation? | Terra
Monitoring Precipitation: How Citizen Scientists Can Help
Scientists use computer models to learn about precipitation patterns and the conditions, both on the land and in the atmosphere, that control them. Models not only allow forecasters to tell you how much rain to expect in tomorrow’s storm, but they also allow scientists to understand how precipitation changes over time.
To check on the models’ accuracy, scientists compare model results to rainfall measurements from ground-based weather stations and satellite measurements. The measurements reveal large- and moderate-scale precipitation patterns such as the anomalies that occur during El Nino and La Nina, when changes in ocean temperatures cause droughts and floods throughout the world.
Models, combined with satellite and ground measurements, have revealed interesting new understandings of precipitation patterns. For example, more rain falls downwind of large cities, and the timing of rainfall can be influenced by weekly commuter cycles. (See Urban Rain, a feature article on the Earth Observatory)
The more information scientists have to both observe patterns and refine the models, the better they understand the processes that control rain. Ground-based measurements provide the most accurate record of rainfall, but ground stations only record rain at a single location, leaving a gap between stations. Since rainfall totals can vary within a small area, these data gaps make it difficult for scientists to learn about the mechanisms that cause small-scale variations in rainfall.
Satellites, on the other hand, provide a “snapshot” of rainfall over a wide area at a given point in time. Satellites don’t have the spatial data gaps that ground stations have, but they do have a time gap-they only see rainfall when they fly over it. Because satellites pass a region only once every 15-30 minutes, precipitation that is light or short-lived is hard to catch accurately. In fact the best rain measuring satellite, which uses radar, passes over every 2-4 hours.
Satellites also have limitations in their monitoring ability over certain geophysical regions. Over land, errors in estimates are generally higher near coastal areas and in regions covered in snow and ice. Precipitation that occurs in relatively shallow clouds, such as ones that occur due to wind flow over hills, valleys and mountains are also likely to have more errors in estimation.
NASA Scientists Gear Up for Solar Storms at Mars - NASA
During solar maximum, the Sun is especially prone to throwing fiery tantrums in a variety of forms — including solar flares and coronal mass ejections — that launch radiation deep into space. When a series of these solar events erupts, it’s called a solar storm.
Earth’s magnetic field largely shields our home planet from the effects of these storms. But Mars lost its global magnetic field long ago, leaving the Red Planet more vulnerable to the Sun’s energetic particles. Just how intense does solar activity get on Mars? Researchers hope the current solar maximum will give them a chance to find out. Before sending humans there, space agencies need to determine, among many other details, what kind of radiation protection astronauts would require.

Learn how NASA’s MAVEN and the agency’s Curiosity rover will study solar flares and radiation at Mars during solar maximum – a period when the Sun is at peak activity. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC/SDO/MSSS/University of Colorado
“For humans and assets on the Martian surface, we don’t have a solid handle on what the effect is from radiation during solar activity,” said Shannon Curry of the University of Colorado Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. Curry is principal investigator for NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) orbiter, which is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “I’d actually love to see the ‘big one’ at Mars this year — a large event that we can study to understand solar radiation better before astronauts go to Mars.”
Measuring High and Low
MAVEN observes radiation, solar particles, and more from high above Mars. The planet’s thin atmosphere can affect the intensity of the particles by the time they reach the surface, which is where NASA’s Curiosity rover comes in. Data from Curiosity’s Radiation Assessment Detector, or RAD, has helped scientists understand how radiation breaks down carbon-based molecules on the surface, a process that could affect whether signs of ancient microbial life are preserved there. The instrument has also provided NASA with an idea of how much shielding from radiation astronauts could expect by using caves, lava tubes, or cliff faces for protection.
Virtual Vocabulary | NASA eClips
topastronomers - An astronomer is a person who studies objects in space. topastronomy - Astronomy is the scientific study of the universe. topat rest - At rest is a state of motionlessness or inactivity. topAtacama Desert - The Atacama Desert is a cool, dry region in northern Chile that is approximately 600 to 700 miles long. It runs from the south bend of the Loa River to the mountains separating the Salado-Copiap? drainage basins. It is one of the driest places on Earth. topatmosphere - The atmosphere is the envelope of gases that surrounding Earth or other planets. Earth's atmosphere is composed of nitrogen (78%), oxygen (21%), other gases (1%), water vapor (the amount varies greatly), and tiny particles of dust, sand, and/or salt). topatom - Atoms are the smallest part of an element that maintains the chemical properties of that element. topattitude - Attitude describes the position of a spacecraft relative to the direction of motion. topattitude control motor - The attitude control motor helps to stabilize and reorient the Orion crew module before the crew module is released from the abort system to begin its controlled descent. topattract - To attract is to pull together. topattraction - A force between particles of matter that draws them together and resists their separation. topaxis - An axis is an imaginary straight line around which an object spins. The Earth's axis runs from the North Pole to the South Pole. topbbalanced - Balanced comes from the verb "balance" meaning to "be equal with." topbalanced forces - Balanced forces are forces that act together on an object without changing its motion. topballast - Material inside a vehicle that give it additional mass for stability or other purposes. This material gives the vehicle more weight, a force pulling down toward the center of the Earth. Ballast is sometimes designed to be disposable. topbase - Bases are corrosive materials that produce negatively charged hydroxide ions when placed into water. Examples of bases include bleach and ammonia.
Weather | Terra
By tracking how water vapor and clouds move between orbits, scientists can determine wind speed and direction. Such measurements increase the accuracy of numerical weather models used to make 10-day forecasts.
See Polar wind data blow new life into forecasts.
Wind Fields
MISR’s multi-angle stereo view can be used to track cloud motion and deduce wind speed and direction. In particular, MISR measurements provide insight into how wind speeds vary inside hurricanes of different sizes.
Terra Science on Weather in the News

 

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