Tag Archive for 'Ammonia'

Ammonia gas infalling into an accretion disk feeding the protostar HW2. Image credit: NSF / AUI / NSF / NRAO / B. Saxton.

New Observations Shed More Light on Formation of Massive Stars

May 6, 2025 by News Staff

Astronomers using NSF’s Very Large Array (VLA) have spotted the huge flow of gas near HW2 — a massive protostar located 2,283 light-years away...

A view of the outside of the OSIRIS-REx sample collector. Sample material from asteroid Bennu can be seen on the middle right. Image credit: NASA / Erika Blumenfeld / Joseph Aebersold.

Scientists Find Amino Acids, Salts and Other Compounds in Samples from Asteroid Bennu

Jan 29, 2025 by News Staff

Asteroid Bennu is thought to be made of rubble fragments from a 4.5-billion-year-old parent body, containing materials that originated beyond Saturn, which...

Hubble’s photo of Jupiter displays the ever-changing landscape of its turbulent atmosphere. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Amy Simon, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Michael H. Wong, University of California, Berkeley / Joseph DePasquale, STScI.

Jovian Clouds Consist of Ammonium Hydrosulfide, Study Suggests

Jan 13, 2025 by News Staff

Astronomers have long thought that the upper clouds of Jupiter, which create the planet’s iconic pale brown belts, are made of frozen ammonia. But a...

This schematic shows the process by which the smart mask can detect chemicals in the breath, such as nitrite, which is an indicator of airway inflammation. Image credit: Wei Gao & Wenzheng Heng, Caltech.

EBCare: New Smart Mask Can Be Used to Assess Metabolic and Respiratory Conditions

Aug 30, 2024 by News Staff

Recent respiratory outbreaks have garnered substantial attention, yet most respiratory monitoring remains confined to physical signals. Exhaled breath...

Representation of Cassini’s orbits used to calculate Titan’s gravity; the colored part of the orbits shows the distance from Cassini to Titan with the smallest distance in red; the cross-section of Titan shows the moon’s different layers with the ocean in blue; Saturn with rings and ring shadows can be seen in the background. Image credit: Britt Griswold, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Cassini Observations Suggest Underground Ocean on Titan

May 10, 2024 by News Staff

Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, harbors an internal low-density ocean of water or ammonia, according to an analysis of archival data from NASA’s Cassini...

An artist’s impression of the K2-18 planetary system. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / J. Olmsted, STScI / N. Madhusudhan, University of Cambridge.

Astronomers Detect Carbon Dioxide and Methane in Super-Earth’s Atmosphere

Sep 11, 2023 by Natali Anderson

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have discovered carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere of the habitable zone exoplanet...

For most of the time, Saturn’s atmosphere looks hazy and featureless to the naked eye in contrast to Jupiter’s colorful and vibrant atmosphere. This picture changes when we look at Saturn using a radio eye. Despite bland looking at the visible wavelengths, different latitudes on Saturn show dramatic contrast in the radio emission. In 2015, Li et al. found substantial brightness temperature variations -- greater than the temperature increase caused by the 2010 storm -- as a function of latitude and radio wavelength based on spatially resolved radio images of Saturn, as obtained from the VLA. Via a spectral inversion study, they created a latitude-altitude map of ammonia concentration anomalies from these images and correlate the anomalies to the occurrences of past giant storms in the northern hemisphere. Image credit: S. Dagnello / NRAO / AUI / NSF / Li et al., doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adg9419.

VLA Reveals Megastorm-Centric Disruptions in Saturnian Atmosphere

Aug 14, 2023 by News Staff

Planetary-scale giant storms erupt on Saturn periodically. There have been at least six recorded occurrences of past eruptions, and the most recent one...

This Webb image features the central region of the Chameleon I dark molecular cloud, which resides 630 light-years away in the constellation of Chamaeleon; the cold, wispy cloud material (blue, center) is illuminated in the infrared by the glow of the young, outflowing protostar Ced 110 IRS 4 (orange, upper left); the light from numerous background stars, seen as orange dots behind the cloud, can be used to detect ices in the cloud, which absorb the starlight passing through them. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / M. Zamani, ESA & Webb / F. Sun, Steward Observatory / Z. Smith, Open University / Ice Age ERS Team.

Webb Reveals Rich Composition of Interstellar Molecular Cloud Ices

Jan 23, 2023 by News Staff

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have detected water ice as well as frozen forms of carbonyl sulfide, ammonia, methane, and...

The volcano-laced surface of Jupiter’s moon Io was captured in infrared by the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) imager aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft as it flew by at a distance of was about 80,000 km (50,000 miles) on July 5, 2022. Brighter spots indicate higher temperatures in this image. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / ASI / INAF / JIRAM.

Trace Gas Detection Sheds New Light on Atmospheres of Jupiter and Its Volcanic Moon Io

Dec 28, 2022 by Natali Anderson

Using data from NSF’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and NASA’s Juno spacecraft, two...

An artist’s conception of the aerial biosphere in the cloud layers of Venus. In this picture, hypothetical microbial life in the clouds of Venus resides inside protective cloud particles and is carried by winds around the planet. Image credit: J. Petkowska.

Clouds of Venus May Be More Habitable than Previously Thought

Dec 21, 2021 by News Staff

Possible lifeforms in the Venusian clouds could be setting off a cascade of chemical reactions that is making the environment much more habitable, according...

This image, taken by the Large Monolithic Imager on the 4.3-m Lowell Discovery Telescope on October 14, 2020, shows C/2014 OG392 (PANSTARRS) and its extensive coma; the dashed lines are star trails caused by the long exposure. Image credit: Northern Arizona University.

Cometary Activity Spotted on Distant Centaur

Oct 29, 2020 by News Staff

A team of astronomers from Northern Arizona University and Lowell Observatory has discovered cometary activity on 2014 OG392, a distant centaur object...

This image captured by NASA’s Juno orbiter shows a multitude of magnificent, swirling clouds in Jupiter’s North North Temperate Belt. The image was taken at 4:58 p.m. EDT on October 29, 2018 (1:58 p.m. PDT) as the spacecraft performed its 16th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, Juno was about 4,400 miles (7,000 km) from the planet’s cloud tops, at a latitude of approximately 40 degrees north. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstaedt / Sean Doran.

Jupiter’s Violent Storms May Form Ammonia-Water Hailstones

Aug 7, 2020 by News Staff

A new study suggests that during Jupiter’s violent storms, hailstones form from a cooled mixture of water and ammonia gas, similar to the process in...

This illustration uses data obtained by NASA’s Juno mission to depict high-altitude electrical storms on Jupiter. Juno’s Stellar Reference Unit camera detected unusual lightning flashes on Jupiter’s dark side during the spacecraft’s close flybys of the planet. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstädt.

Juno Discovers ‘Shallow Lightning’ on Jupiter

Aug 6, 2020 by News Staff

An unexpected form of electrical discharge, ‘shallow lightning’ originates from Jovian clouds containing an ammonia-water solution, according to a...

Astronomers Peer Deep into Turbulent Atmosphere of Jupiter

Aug 23, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers has managed to peer deep into the Jovian atmosphere using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)...

An old man diagnosed as suffering from senile dementia. Color lithograph, 1896, J. Williamson, Byrom Bramwell. Image credit: Wellcome Images / CC BY 4.0.

Scientists May Have Discovered Major Cause of Dementia

Dec 12, 2017 by News Staff

The build-up of urea, also known as carbamide, in the brain to toxic levels can cause brain damage — and eventually dementia, according to new research. An...

A ribbon of ammonia -- a tracer of star-forming gas -- in the Orion Molecular Cloud as seen with the GBT (orange); background in blue is an infrared image from NASA’s WISE telescope showing the dust in the region. Image credit: R. Friesen, Dunlap Institute / J. Pineda, MPIP / GBO / AUI / NSF / NASA.

Astronomers Spot Vast Filament of Star-Forming Gas in Orion Molecular Cloud

Jun 16, 2017 by News Staff

Dr. Rachel Friesen of the University of Toronto and colleagues have captured a detailed image of a 50-light-year-long filament of star-forming gas in the...

Distribution of the atmospheric ammonia concentration in June, July, and August 2008 at 9.3 mile (15 km) height as observed by MIPAS. Bright areas are measurement gaps due to high cloud cover. Image credit: Michael Höpfner / Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

Ammonia Detected in Earth’s Upper Troposphere

Dec 5, 2016 by Enrico de Lazaro

Ammonia, a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the formula NH3, has been found for the first time in the upper troposphere of our planet. Distribution...