earthquake in Calif. just now – I felt it!! :

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message2164167/pg1

Monday March 11 2013, 16:56:05 UTC 11 minutes ago Southern California 5.1 0.1 USGS Feed Detail
Monday March 11 2013, 16:55:50 UTC 12 minutes ago Southern California 5.2 12.1 USGS Feed Detail
Monday March 11 2013, 16:55:42 UTC 12 minutes ago Southern California 5.1 0.1 USGS Feed Detail

Lava fountains during March 5th paroxysm.

VolcanoDiscovery reports that another paroxysm occurred from the new SE crater during the night. Following a period of increasing strombolian activity, large lava fountains were rising from vent in the saddle between the old and new SE crater as well its summit vent.

Klik hier om de embedded video te bekijken.

Mount Etna, towering above Catania, Sicily’s second largest city, has one of the world’s longest documented records of historical volcanism, dating back to 1500 BC. Historical lava flows of basaltic composition cover much of the surface of this massive volcano, whose edifice is the highest and most voluminous in Italy. The Mongibello stratovolcano, truncated by several small calderas, was constructed during the late Pleistocene and Holocene over an older shield volcano. The most prominent morphological feature of Etna is the Valle del Bove, a 5 x 10 km horseshoe-shaped caldera open to the east.

Two styles of eruptive activity typically occur at Etna. Persistent explosive eruptions, sometimes with minor lava emissions, take place from one or more of the three prominent summit craters, the Central Crater, NE Crater, and SE Crater (the latter formed in 1978). Flank vents, typically with higher effusion rates, are less frequently active and originate from fissures that open progressively downward from near the summit (usually accompanied by strombolian eruptions at the upper end). Cinder cones are commonly constructed over the vents of lower-flank lava flows. Lava flows extend to the foot of the volcano on all sides and have reached the sea over a broad area on the SE flank.

Bron The Watchers

HOUSTON – Een groot rotsblok uit de ruimte, een zogeheten asteroïde, vliegt vrijdag langs de aarde. Voor ruimtebegrippen gebeurt dat rakelings.

Foto:  ANP

 Bekijk video

Rond half negen ’s avonds (Nederlandse tijd) komt het rotsblok het dichtst in de buurt van onze planeet.

De afstand is dan slechts 27.000 kilometer. Voor het eerst in de moderne geschiedenis komt zo’n grote asteroïde zo dichtbij.

Voor sommige weer- en communicatiesatellieten zouden er misschien wel problemen kunnen ontstaan, omdat die ongeveer op dezelfde afstand rond de aarde draaien. De satellieten vallen hoogstwaarschijnlijk uit als zij worden geraakt.

Materialen

Dat de asteroïde zo dichtbij komt, geeft wetenschappers een zeldzame kans om te weten te komen uit welke materialen zo’n rotsblok bestaat. Ook kunnen ze zijn baan voor de komende eeuwen uitrekenen, om te kijken of hij ooit weer dicht bij de aarde komt.

Volgens de Amerikaanse ruimtevaartorganisatie NASA zijn er naar schatting 500.000 vergelijkbare asteroïden in de omgeving van de aarde, maar minder dan 1 procent daarvan is pas ontdekt.

Er is geen kans om vrijdagavond met het blote oog een glimp van 2012 DA14 op te vangen. Via de NASA-website is de baan van de asteroïde wel goed bij te houden.

Door: ANP ]]> http://sp00kje.nl/2013/02/15/asteroide-scheert-vrijdag-langs-de-aarde/feed/ 0 http://sp00kje.nl/2013/02/14/watch-asteroid-2012-da14-flyby-live/ http://sp00kje.nl/2013/02/14/watch-asteroid-2012-da14-flyby-live/#comments Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:07:16 +0000 Admin http://sp00kje.nl/?p=13985

Asteroid 2012 DA14 was discovered by the La Sagra Sky Survey, Spain on February 23, 2012 and it was about 2.7 million miles (4.3 million kilometers) distant at the time of first observation. It’s flyby is the closest ever predicted Earth approach for an object this large (first estimates 45 m) which makes it such an interesting NEO. It is traveling at about 17,450 miles per hour (28,100 kilometers per hour), or 4.8 miles per second (7.82 kilometers per second) relative to Earth and by latest estimates it is about 65 meters in diameter.

It will be closest to Earth on February 15, 2013 at approximately 19:24 UTC (2:24 p.m. EST/11:24 a.m. PST). At the time of closest approach, the asteroid will be over the eastern Indian Ocean, off Sumatra — approx. latitude: -6 deg South. / longitude: 97.5 deg East. Depending on local weather, it will be visible from parts of Europe, Africa and Asia. 2012 DA 14 will appear to be moving relatively quickly as it crosses the sky from the south to the north, it will be too faint to be visible to the naked eye, but it can be picked up with a good pair of binoculars.

Graphic depicts the trajectory of asteroid 2012 DA14 on Feb 15, 2013. In this view, we are looking down from above Earth’s north pole. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

At the time of closest approach asteroid 2012 DA 14 will be only about 17,200 miles (27,700 kilometers) above Earth’s surface. This distance is well outside Earth’s atmosphere, but it is inside the belt of satellites in geostationary orbit, which is located 22,200 miles (35,800 kilometers) above Earth’s surface. The close-approach distance is only about one-tenth the distance between Earth and moon or about twice the diameter of the Earth.

Klik hier om de embedded video te bekijken.

Where to watch asteroid 2012 DA14 live

• NASA Television will provide commentary starting at 2 p.m. EST Feb 15 (11 a.m. PST, 19:00 UTC). The commentary will be available via NASA TV and streamed live online at: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv and http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2
• In addition to the commentary, near real-time imagery of the asteroid’s flyby before and after closest approach, made available to NASA by astronomers in Australia and Europe, weather permitting, will be streamed beginning at about noon EST (9 a.m. PST, 17:00 UTC) and continuing through the afternoon at the following website:  http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2
• Slooh Space Camera will cover its near-approach on Friday, February 15th, with several live shows on Slooh.com, free to the public, starting at 6 PM PST / 9 PM EST / 02:00 UTC (2/16) – International times here: http://goo.gl/ythGd - accompanied by real-time discussions with Slooh Space Camera’s Paul Cox, astronomer and author Bob Berman, and Prescott Observatory manager, Matt Francis. Viewers can watch live on their PC or IOS/Android mobile device.  https://plus.google.com/u/0/108176209664415419112/posts/TqoA426EhKB
• A Ustream feed of the flyby from a telescope at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., will be streamed for three hours starting at 9 p.m. EST (8 p.m. CST, 02:00 UTC). To view the feed and ask researchers questions about the flyby via Twitter, visit: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-msfc
• Remotely controlled Robotic Telescopes announced their coverage here: http://www.virtualtelescope.eu/webtv/
• Note: Have more links for live coverage of 2012 DA14 flyby? Contact us or post in comments, tnx.

Need help converting times to your local time? – Use this tool.

What would happen if 2012 DA 14 would impact the Earth

It is believed that there are approximately 500,000 near-Earth asteroids the size of 2012 DA14. Of those, less than one percent have been discovered. Scientists at NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office in Pasadena, Calif. estimate that an asteroid the size of 2012 DA14 flies this close every 40 years on average and that one will impact Earth, on average, about once in every 1,200 years.

Asteroid 2012 DA14 will not impact Earth, but if another asteroid of a size similar to that of 2012 DA14 (about 150 feet across) were to impact Earth, it would release approximately 2.5 megatons of energy in the atmosphere and would be expected to cause regional devastation.

A comparison to the impact potential of an asteroid the size of 2012 DA14 could be made to the impact of a near-Earth object that occurred in 1908 in Tuguska, Siberia. Known in the asteroid community as the “Tunguska Event,” this impact of an asteroid just slightly smaller than 2012 DA14 (approximately 100 – 130 feet/30-40 meters across) is believed to have flattened about 750 square miles (1,200 square kilometers) of forest in and around the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia.

More on asteroid 2012 DA14 here.

Bron The Watchers

Recent destructive M 8.0 earthquake that struck Solomon Islands on February 6, 2013, as well as ongoing seismic swarm in the area, is fair reminder that we live in a planet that is undergoing constant change.

According to seismologist’s theories of earthquake cycles. the devastating earthquakes that rocked Tohoku, Japan in 2011, Sumatra in 2004 and Chile in 1960 — all of magnitude 9.0 or greater — should not have happened. And that might mean earthquake prediction needs an overhaul, some researchers say.

All those earthquakes, including the latest at Santa Cruz Islands, struck along subduction zones, where two of Earth’s tectonic plates collide and one dives beneath the other. Scientists had thought that earlier earthquakes had released the pent-up strain along Chile’s master fault, meaning no big quakes were coming. Japan and Sumatra both sat above on old oceanic crust, thought to be too stiff for superquakes. When two tectonic plates collide, they build up strain where a fault sticks, or locks, together. Earthquakes release this strain, which is a form of energy.

Massive Sumatra-Andaman earthquake and tectonic plates (Credit: Colonial.net)

For decades, scientists assumed faults acted like rubber bands, steadily building up strain and then releasing it all at once. Some wide accepted models suggested the longer the time since the last earthquake, the larger the next earthquake would be. And records of past quakes, combined with measurements of the speed of Earth’s tectonic plates, suggested the Tohoku and Sumatra-Andaman regions couldn’t make quakes larger than 8.4, almost nine times smaller than a magnitude 9.0 temblor. .

However, seismic activity in recent years showed that subduction faults were capable of producing some of the most destructive earthquakes in recorded history, suggesting earthquake researchers need to re-think aspects of how they evaluate a fault’s earthquake potential.

Researchers failed to recognize that faults could actually store energy. Now, scientists begin to understand that those faults can discharge energy in small amounts, or all at once. So, if a “small” quake hits, it may not release all of the accumulated energy in a fault. A small subduction quake can still register in the magnitude 8.0 range.

Typical subduction zone components (Credit: le.ac.uk)

Chris Goldfinger, a marine geologist at Oregon State University in Corvallis, and his colleagues propose in a study published in the January/February 2013 issue of the journal Seismological Research Letters, that  a fault can “borrow” stored energy from previous strain-building cycles, generating larger earthquakes than expected, such as those that hit Sumatra and Tohoku.

Goldfinger said scientists’ failure to recognize that faults could store energy comes from a lack of data. Historic earthquake records go back only 100 years, so in fact, geologists are only now getting histories that reach back thousands of years, via techniques that decode evidence of past earthquakes in sediments.

Goldfinger calls these long-term histories supercycles, and the unusually large and rare earthquakes that discharge the battery are superquakes. The sequence, size and location of quakes vary from one supercycle to the next, he said.

Seismologist Marco Cisternas first proposed that faults could store energy in  a 2005′ study that show the magnitude 9.5 Chile earthquake in 1960 (the largest on record) released more energy than had been stored since its most recent quake (in 1837). Data from tsunami deposits in Chile indicate the last superquake occurred in 1575, and smaller quakes since then had only partly released the strain built up on the fault.

And analyses of corals uplifted and killed during Sumatra earthquake, also indicated that the subduction zone undergoes supercycles, according to a 2008 study led by geologists at the Earth Observatory Institute in Singapore. According to that study, each series of quakes in the region lasts between 30 and 100 years, while the supercycles unfold every 200 years or so.

Cascadia Subduction Zone (Credit: USGS)

Goldfinger and his colleagues have evidence that the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which stretches from Northern California to British Columbia, is also in the middle of an earthquake supercycle. Over the past 10,000 years, 19 superquakes and four supercycles have occurred along the zone. There have been 22 additional earthquakes that involved just the southern end of the fault. The force required to shove a piece of ocean crust into Earth’s mantle can produce megaearthquakes along the zone, as in Japan and Sumatra. The Cascadia Subduction Zone has not experienced a major earthquake since 1700, when an estimated 9.0-magnitude earthquake generated an enormous tsunami that killed trees in Puget Sound and traveled across the ocean to Japan.

The model of earthquake energy storage and discharge makes it difficult for scientists to forecast future earthquakes, as there’s no explanation yet for why faults would behave this way. And there is no way to find out how much energy a fault stores.

Bron The Watcher

Kamchatka’s volcanoes continued with ongoing eruptions. KVERT reports that there are currently seven active volcanoes (orange alert) – Kizimen, Karymski , Shiveluch and Plosky Tolbachik at orange level and Bezymianny, Gorely and Klyuchevskoy at yellow level. Explosive-effusive eruption continues at Tolbachik with  fluid lava continues to effuse from the southern fissure and the flows advance on the southwestern flank of the volcano. Plumes of steam and some ash continue to reach up to about 4 km (13,000 ft) altitude. Strong seismicity of the volcano was registered with volcanic tremor amplitude reached 7.6 mcm/s. A big thermal anomaly was observed on satellite images at the northern area of Tolbachinsky Dol. Moderate seismicity was registered at Shiveluch. Moderate seismic activity was also registered at Kizimen volcano. A new lava flow extrudes from the summit on the north-eastern flank of the volcano with incandescence of the volcano summit, hot avalanches and strong gas-steam activity.

KVERT reported that four Kamchatka’s active volcanoes erupted simoultaneously on January 11, 2013 (Credit: LANCE/MODIS)

Shallow M5.1 earthquake occurred 31 km southwest of Tanaga volcano at Aleutian arc on January 21, 2013 at depth of 7km. It is visible as the large event with aftershocks on the attached TAZE seismic record.

INSIVUMEH reported an increase in lava effusion after several days of relatively weak activity at Guatemalan Santa Maria/Santiaguito volcano. The lava flows descending from the dome on the S, SE and NE side are advancing 5-7 meters per day. The SE flow enters the gulley of Rio Nimá I. Some weak to moderate explosions are still going on.

Volcanic earthquakes and small rockfalls continue at Colima volcano in Mexico.  Emissions of gas and ash remain subdued at Popocatepetl volcano, occurring at an average rate of one event every one to two hours.

Numerous small earthquakes continue to plague Colombian volcanoes Nevado Del Ruiz,Machin, and Galeras volcanoes.

After six months of inactivity, Chilean stratovolcano Villarrica seems to have woken again. Weak explosive activity deep within the summit crater has resumed during last 2 weeks as evident in terrestrial and satellite observations. Observations also indicate that magma might have begun to rise again within the volcano. Villarrica rises above the resort town of Pucón.

There were reports about new eruption at Puyehue Cordon-Caulle volcano in Chile, however, the observed ash plume originated from very vigorous remobilization of ash deposits on the volcano due to weather conditions in the area.

Satellite image of remobilized ash from Puyehue-Cordón Caulle taken on January 19, 2013 by MODIS/Terra. Some of this ash has fallen on Osorno in Chile, to the east of the volcano. (Credit: LANCE/MODIS)

PHILVOLC reported an increase in volcanic earthquakes at Taal volcano in Philippines. Ten earthquakes were recorded on January 21/22, 2013.

New explosive activity has caused a closure of the airport near the Tavurvur cone of Rabaul volcano in New Britain region of Papua New Guinea. The ash and volcanic gases with steam plumes rising upwards of 500 meters are reported. Watch the live footage of Tavurvur erupting on January 20, 2013.

Klik hier om de embedded video te bekijken.

The latest report on White Island’s Tongariro volcano in New Zealand mentioned new, vigorous and almost continuous hydrothermal activity in the small crater lake at White Island. This activity is the strongest it has been since the events that lead to the explosive activity in 2000, so GNS Science is concerned about the increasing potential of explosions in the White Island crater. The elevated activity corresponds to the increased tremor signal recently visible. The video bellow was filmed by Brad Scott of GNS Science, on a routine volcano monitoring trip to White Island on January 21, 2013.

Klik hier om de embedded video te bekijken.

Recent satellite imagery show relatively feeble SO2-enriched plumes eminating from Popocatepetl, Santa Maria and Sakurajima (Japan) volcanoes.

Bron The Watchter

During the night of  January 9-10, 2013, vigorous Strombolian activity started within the Bocca Nuova, Etna’s largest summit crater. The source vent is the same that was the site of several episodes of similar activity between July and October 2012.

Klik hier om de embedded video te bekijken.

Bron The Watcher

Since December 23, 2012 there have been repeated overflows of lava from the crater terrace, feeding small flows in the northern and northwestern portions of the Sciara del Fuoco (see end of article for more info on Sciara Del Fuoco). INGV (Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia) announced today that a more detailed report will be published soon.

INGV recently reported that on November 22, 2012 at 13:17 UTC a large seismic signal associated with an explosion occurred. A 3 km high steam plume was recorded. The explosion was around 7 times higher than an average explosion and followed by 10 minutes of high seismicity.

Thermal image of the crater area  - January 10,  2013. Credit: INGV

Check fresh webcam images here.

Mt. Stromboli has been in one almost continuous eruption for the past 2000 years. This pattern of eruption has been maintained, in which explosions occur at the summit craters with mild to moderate eruptions of incandescent volcanic bombs at intervals ranging from minutes to hours. This characteristic Strombolian eruption, as it is known, is also observed at other volcanoes worldwide.

Eruptions from the summit craters typically result in a few second-lasting mild energetic bursts emitting ash, incandescent lava fragments and lithic blocks ranging up to a few hundred meters in height. Mt. Stromboli’s activity is almost exclusively explosive, but lava flows do occur at times when volcanic activity is high: an effusive eruption in 2002 was its first in 17 years and again took place again in 2003 and 2007.

Stromboly, Italy. Satellite image.  Credit: NASA

Stromboli is a small island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, off the north coast of Sicily, containing one of the three active volcanoes in Italy. It is one of the eight Aeolian Islands, a volcanic arc north of Sicily. This name is a corruption of the Ancient Greek name Strongulē which was given to it because of its round swelling form. The island’s population is between 400 and 850. The volcano has erupted many times, and is constantly active with minor eruptions, often visible from many points on the island and from the surrounding sea, giving rise to the island’s nickname “Lighthouse of the Mediterranean”.

Simplified plate tectonics cross-section showing how Stromboli is located above a subduction zone formed where the Eurasian and African plates collide. A three-dimensional view of this cross-section area is shown in Figure 9 of Claudio Faccenna and others, 2007, Slab disruption, mantle circulation, and the opening of the Tyrrhenian basins, Geological Society of America, Special Paper 481, pages 153-169. Source and more info: http://geology.com/volcanoes/stromboli/

Stromboli stands 926 m (3,034 ft) above sea level, but actually rises over 2,000 m (6,500 ft) above the sea floor. There are three active craters at the peak. A significant geological feature of the volcano is the Sciara del Fuoco (“Stream of fire”), a big horseshoe-shaped depression generated in the last 13,000 years by several collapses on the northwestern side of the cone. See 360° panorama view of Sciara del Fuoco here.

The active summit vents are located at the head of the Sciara del Fuoco. The modern volcano has been constructed within this scarp, which funnels pyroclastic ejecta and lava flows to the NW.

Essentially continuous mild strombolian explosions, sometimes accompanied by lava flows, have been recorded at Stromboli for more than a millennium.

The last major eruption was on April 13, 2009.

Bron The Watcher