Space.com article By Science & Astronomy
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot has swirled for hundreds of years, but the source of its distinctive color remains a mystery. New laboratory experiments are working to produce that color — and others found in Jupiter’s stormy cloud tops — here on Earth, and researchers have found that radiation and temperature play key roles… Read more
By Heidi Toth
NAU Communications
With the brutal weather bearing down on the East Coast, media outlets such as CNN have reported a fun tidbit: it’s colder in parts of the United States than it is on parts of Mars.
Mark Salvatore, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at Northern Arizona University, studies Mars and its most comparable environment on Earth—Antarctica. He talked to NAU News about what martian weather really looks like, why… Read more
By Heidi Toth
NAU Communications
Astronomer David Trilling has a pragmatic perspective on the importance of his research.
“If an asteroid’s going to hit the Earth, you want to know how big it is,” he said.
The Northern Arizona University professor of physics and astronomy measures asteroids that get close to Earth—close being roughly the moon’s distance away, more or less a few hundred thousand miles. However, one can’t simply look at the space rock and estimating its size, though. To… Read more