Meteor Shower Unleashes Bright Fireball

Image via Wikipedia

Perseid Meteor Shower Unleashes Bright Fireball
Tariq Malik
SPACE.com Managing Editor
SPACE.com tariq Malik
space.com Managing Editor
space.com Mon Aug 9, 11:33 pm ET

The Perseid meteor shower is peaking this week and announced its annual August arrival with a bright fireball over Alabama, NASA officials say.

A small 1-inch (2.5-cm) wide meteor caused the fireball when it met a fiery demise Aug. 3 while streaking through Earth's atmosphere, according to officials at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. The fireball was observed by skywatching cameras operated by the space center.

"It's a very good start to this year's Perseid meteor shower, which will peak on the night of Aug. 12-13 between midnight and dawn," explained NASA spokesperson Janet Anderson in a statement from the space center.

The fireball occurred at about 9:56 p.m. local time and was low in the sky when it entered Earth's atmosphere about 70 miles (112.6 km) above the town of Paint Rock. It appeared about 9.5 degrees above the horizon. For comparison, your fist held at arm's length is equal to roughly 10 degrees of the night sky.

NASA observations found the meteor to be hurtling through the atmosphere at a phenomenal 134,000 mph (215,652 kph).

"At such a tremendous velocity, the meteor cut a path some 65 miles [104.6 km] long, finally burning up 56 miles [90 km] above Macay Lake, just northeast of the town of Warrior," Anderson wrote. "The meteor was about six times brighter than the planet Venus and would be classified as a fireball by meteor scientists."

Because of its relatively low approach in the sky and its long, shallow path, the meteor qualified as a so-called Earth-grazing meteor, NASA officials said. Earth-grazing meteors are space rocks that enter the Earth's atmosphere at a low angle, from the point of view of a given skywatcher, and appear to scoot slowly and dramatically along the horizon.

The Perseid meteor shower is an annual event that occurs in mid-August when Earth passes close to the orbit of the Comet Swift-Tuttle.

Material left behind by the comet rams into the Earth's atmosphere during the pass at about 37 miles per second (60 km/second), creating a regular show of "shooting stars" that has become known as the Perseid meteor shower. Comet Swift-Tuttle was discovered in 1862 and most recently observed in 1992. It takes about 130 years to orbit the sun.

(This SPACE.com Perseid meteor shower viewing guide shows how to observe the event. This sky map shows where to look to see the meteor shower.)

SPACE.com skywatching columnist Joe Rao has said the 2010 Perseid meteor shower promises to be one to remember for skywatchers with clear skies. Under good conditions, skywatchers could see about one meteor per minute depending on observing conditions, he said in a recent column.

"The August Perseids are among the strongest of the readily observed annual meteor showers, and at maximum activity nominally yields 90 to 100 meteors per hour," Rao explained. "Anyone in a city or near bright suburban lights will see far fewer."

* Galleries: Perseids in 2005 and 2006
* Meteor Shower Viewer's Guide
* Top 10 Perseid Facts

* Original Story: Perseid Meteor Shower Unleashes Bright Fireball

SPACE.com offers rich and compelling content about space science, travel and exploration as well as astronomy, technology, business news and more. The site boasts a variety of popular features including our space image of the day and other space pictures,space videos, Top 10s, Trivia, podcasts and Amazing Images submitted by our users. Join our community, sign up for our free newsletters and register for our RSS Feeds today!

PR: wait... I: wait... L: wait... LD: wait... I: wait... wait... Rank: wait... Traffic: wait... Price: wait... C: wait...

Mammals Breath Causes Aphids to Keel Over

By Jennifer Viegas
As appeared in http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38630807/ns/technology_and_science-science/

A whiff of danger prompts insects to keel over
Response to mammals’ breath helps aphids avoid being eaten

People may feign falling over backwards after smelling bad breath, but new research shows some insects actually do keel over when they detect warm, humid mammal breath.

It turns out the dramatic instinct, which causes insects living on plants to fall to the ground, is a life-saving strategy that often prevents the bugs from being eaten by potent breath-releasing mammals as they feast on the plant.

The study, published in the latest issue of Current Biology, is the first to show that any kind of defensive behavior exists against incidental predation by herbivores.

"Tiny insects like aphids are not helpless when facing large animals that rapidly consume the plants they live on," said lead author Moshe Inbar of the University of Haifa. "They reliably detect the danger and escape on time."

For the first part of the study, Inbar and his team allowed a goat to feed on potted alfalfa plants infested with aphids. The researchers were amazed to see that 65 percent of the aphids dropped to the ground just seconds before they would have been eaten along with the plant.

"As soon as we started to work on this problem, we suspected that the aphids responded to our own breath," said Inbar, who added that he and his colleagues later wore snorkels to prevent their own breath from affecting the experiment results.

The mass dropping of bugs might have been caused by other factors, however, such as shaking of the plant by the goat while it ate or rubbed against the alfalfa, and shadows produced by the goat's presence. So the researchers invented a special leaf-picking device that shook the plant, without, of course, emitting breath. The aphids didn't keel over.

Shadows also had no effect on the aphids' dropping behavior. Even shadows created by ladybugs, an enemy of aphids, didn't inspire that kind of synchronous response.

The scientists next allowed a restrained lamb to approach aphid infested broad bean seedlings. The breath of the lamb did the trick: aphids dropped off the seedlings left and right.

"It was now obvious that herbivore breath is the key player in conveying to the aphids the message of imminent obliteration," according to the researchers.

To further investigate what qualities in mammal breath cause this bug reaction, the team constructed an artificial breath apparatus that they tested out on the aphids. Carbon dioxide and isolated volatile organic compounds in the produced breath led to no bug response.

When the airstream was warm and humid, however, aphid drop off rates shot up to 87 percent, suggesting that the aphid's sensory system on ambient humidity might be key in their breath detection abilities.

"We predict that this sort of escape behavior in response to mammalian breath may be found among other invertebrates that live on plants and face the same threat," the researchers concluded.

Other insects pay attention to our breath too.

Scientists at the University of California at Riverside, for example, recently did extensive work on how mosquitoes use carbon dioxide, emitted in human breath, to find blood meal targets.

Project leader Anandasankar Ray, an assistant professor in the university's Department of Entomology, and his team hope to foil the mosquitoes by developing repellents that he said will "block mosquitoes' ability to detect carbon dioxide in our breath, thereby dramatically reducing mosquito-human contact."

The aphid work may also pave the way for the development of non-toxic insect repellents.

Copyright © 2010 Discovery Communications, LLC. The leading global real world media and entertainment company.

PR: wait... I: wait... L: wait... LD: wait... I: wait... wait... Rank: wait... Traffic: wait... Price: wait... C: wait...

CRP Offers Pollinator Habitat Incentives

For Immediate Release

August 2, 2010

CONSERVATION RESERVE PROGRAM OFFERS POLLINATOR HABITAT INCENTIVES

New rules passed by the USDA now offer financial incentives for the establishment of pollinator habitat through the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). The limited time program sign-up, which opens today to new enrollment, provides one of the largest pollinator conservation opportunities ever in the United States.

The CRP program, first established in 1985, is the largest private landowner conservation effort in the United States with up to 32 million acres eligible for enrollment through the USDA’s Farm Service Agency. Program participants take highly erodible land out of crop production, and establish permanent vegetation to protect topsoil and provide wildlife cover. Contracts which run 10 to 15 years provide annual rental payments on enrolled land, and cost-share assistance for establishing vegetative cover.

New rules which go into effect today offer priority ranking for land enrollment that include pollinator-friendly wildflowers and shrubs. Under the current CRP enrollment system, landowners who want to participate are ranked against one another to prioritize enrollment that offer the most conservation benefits. To receive a higher score on the pollinator ranking criteria, participating farmers must plant at least 10% of the CRP acres in wildflower parcels (or at least one acre for CRP enrollment less than 10 acres in size).

The addition of a pollinator habitat incentive for CRP has been promoted by numerous wildlife and pollinator conservation groups in recent years, and the new ranking system now offers one of the largest potential habitat creation opportunities of its kind ever for native bees, butterflies, and managed honey bees, all of which have experienced significant decline in recent years due to habitat loss and other factors.

In developing the new CRP technical requirements, the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) worked closely with Dr. Marla Spivak, a leading honey bee researcher based at the University of Minnesota, and the California-based advocacy group, Partners for Sustainable Pollination. Now, as the enrollment period for new CRP contracts begins, the NRCS is working with the non-profit Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation to develop wildflower seeding recommendations for states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Oregon. Those recommendations will focus on selecting native wildflower species that are abundant pollen and nectar sources, and that are most likely to thrive in their respective regions.

Rural landowners interested in more information about CRP, including the current sign-up period which ends August 27th, should contact their local Farm Service Agency office. For location information, visit their web site at http://www.fsa.usda.govhttp://www.fsa.usda.gov/> .

---

Iowa Insects Mailing List
IOWA-INSECTS@LIST.UIOWA.EDU
http://atmos.cgrer.uiowa.edu/herbarium/MailingList.htm
IOWA-INSECTS@LIST.UIOWA.EDU

The Iowa Insects Mailing List provides a forum for those interested in Iowa’s insects and,
more generally, invertebrates, their identification and ecology. Its purpose is to encourage
novices who are trying to expand their knowledge about the incredible world of insects.
Another objective is to support the Iowa Native Plant Society.