Dust - Blog Posts

New use for doll houses, Dust Feast. My cat likes eating dust. Idk why

Yeah Ik Father's day is already done but still, a little late Father's day post, because I wanna remind everyone with these idiots that your dad doesnt has to be from the same blood, in fact, sometimes you dont even have to be adopted by them. Being a father is built on them loving and supporting you unconditionaly :)

Anyways here is Nightmare and his 7 mortal hanchmans who he decided would be his kids ^^

I decided to put more people into the bad sanses because other characters are underrated af. Pretty sure I cant even call them "bad sanses" anymore lol. I gotta explain my multiverse sometime for sure🤔

(The quilty is shit isnt it😑)

by ursulazrich on Flickr.Remote saharian landscape in Republic of Chad.

the title of the last song you listened to is the epitaph on your tombstone

No matter what the quiz says. I know that I am a light-weaver. (Even if we discount the artistic ability and multiple voices in the head that we brought into existence. As part of a mental excercise suggested by my therapist)

Because couple of weeks ago, without realizing, swore the first ideal to myself. (Journy before destination is the hardest to put into practice.)

And couple of days ago, admitted the 1st and 2nd truth In a space of couple of days.

Tho the 2nd truth is realized but have yet to put into practice. So more like 1.5 truths?

Stay tuned.

Heres a sh1tty drawing i made of Dust!Sans <3

sorry its blurry i took a picture of it off of my laptop :>

Infra/Mapache/Zellen

InfraZellen

Infra/Mapachellen :u xd

Bete Noire from the episode Dust of Glitchtale. I was really expecting Sans to say something like take care of Papyrus for me but enjoy the future suits well too.. My heart is shattered but I love it :’). This is fanart the characters are owned by Toby Fox and Camila Cuevas. If you see this Cami I hope you like it a bit and keep up your awsome animations :3.

And Killer would be the magician and would name himself the "Mad hatter" and Cross would be his assistant just to make sure he doesn't do dumb shit and hurt himself

And Horror would be some kind of polymorph, and Dust would be the tamer

And Ink would be the clown

And Error would be the stage master

And Blue and Lust would give out the tickets

And they would call themselfs "The Sansircus"

GUYS HEAR ME OUT

Dream and Nightmare part of a circus and theyre both trapeze artists

art trade

Seeing Saharan Dust from Space

Last year, Godzilla made its way across the Atlantic Ocean. No, it wasn’t a giant lizard monster, but a cloud of dust so large it could be seen from a million miles away in space.

The plume of dust blowing from the Sahara Desert broke records and was nicknamed the “Godzilla plume.”

This year, another massive dust plume is traveling across the Atlantic.

The transport of dust from the Sahara to the Americas isn’t unusual: every year, winds pick up more than 180 million tons of dust particles from the Sahara Desert, move them over the African continent and carry them all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, depositing much of the dust along the way.

What’s remarkable about the past two years is the size of the plumes. Last year, the “Godzilla plume” was the largest dust storm in our two decades of observations.

Although this year’s plume has yet to complete its journey across the Atlantic, dust plumes from the Sahara often have important impacts on the Americas.

So, why do the dust plumes matter?

Before the Sahara was a desert, it was a lakebed, where nutrients like phosphorous and iron were deposited before the lake dried up. As a result, winds pick up these nutrients in the dust plumes. Some of these nutrients get deposited in the Atlantic Ocean, feeding marine life – iron, for example, is critical for marine life. Phosphorus is also a much-needed nutrient that fertilizes vegetation in the Amazon rainforest. The amount of phosphorus deposited by Saharan dust plumes into the Amazon every year – around 22,000 tons – is roughly equivalent to the amount that gets removed from the rainforest’s soil by weather conditions. In other words, long term, the dust plumes provide an essential nutrient to the Amazon’s vegetation.

Both the dust plumes themselves and the conditions associated with them can also influence the formation of tropical storms during hurricane season. As climate change appears to be strengthening the strongest storms, understanding the relationship between dust plumes and hurricanes has only grown more important.

The dust plumes can carry microbes that can be deadly and can worsen air quality, creating potentially dangerous conditions for sensitive populations. The iron in the plumes can also kick off blooms of toxic algae off the coast of Florida that result from the increase in nutrients in the ocean.

What comes next for Saharan dust? We’re still looking into it!

Some research suggests dust plumes will intensify with higher temperatures and dryer conditions, creating more loose dust to be picked up. However, other research shows that rising ocean temperatures and changing wind speeds would result in more rainfall and vegetation in the desert, reducing how much dust blows across the Atlantic. Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

Be Glad You Don’t Have to Dust in Space!

Throw open the windows and break out the feather duster, because spring is here and it’s time to do a little cleaning! Fortunately, no one has to tidy up the dust in space — because there’s a lot of it — around 100 tons rain down on Earth alone every day! And there’s even more swirling around the solar system, our Milky Way galaxy, other galaxies and the spaces in between. 

By studying the contents of the dust in your house — which can include skin cells, pet fur, furniture fibers, pollen, concrete particles and more — scientists learn a lot about your environment. In the same way, scientists can learn a lot by looking at space dust. Also called cosmic dust, a fleck of space dust is usually smaller than a grain of sand and is made of rock, ice, minerals or organic compounds. Scientists can study cosmic dust to learn about how it formed and how the universe recycles material.

“We are made of star-stuff,” Carl Sagan famously said. And it’s true! When a star dies, it sheds clouds of gas in strong stellar winds or in an explosion called a supernova. As the gas cools, minerals condense. Recent observations by our SOFIA mission suggest that in the wake of a supernova shockwave, dust may form more rapidly than scientists previously thought. These clouds of gas and dust created by the deaths of stars can sprawl across light-years and form new stars — like the Horsehead Nebula pictured above. Disks of dust and gas form around new stars and produce planets, moons, asteroids and comets. Here on Earth, some of that space dust eventually became included in living organisms — like us! Billions of years from now, our Sun will die too. The gas and dust it sheds will be recycled into new stars and planets and so on and so forth, in perpetuity!

Astronomers originally thought dust was a nuisance that got in the way of seeing the objects it surrounded. Dust scatters and absorbs light from stars and emits heat as infrared light. Once we started using infrared telescopes, we began to understand just how important dust is in the universe and how beautiful it can be. The picture of the Andromeda galaxy above was taken in the infrared by our Spitzer Space Telescope and reveals detailed spirals of dust that we can’t see in an optical image.

We also see plenty of dust right here in our solar system. Saturn’s rings are made of mostly ice particles and some dust, but scientists think that dust from meteorites may be darkening the rings over time. Jupiter also has faint dusty rings, although they’re hard to see — Voyager 1 only discovered them when it saw them backlit by the Sun. Astronomers think the rings formed when meteorite impacts on Jupiter’s moons released dust into orbit. The Juno spacecraft took the above picture in 2016 from inside the rings, looking out at the bright star Betelgeuse.

Copyright Josh Calcino, used with permission

And some space dust you can see from right here on Earth! In spring or autumn, right before sunrise or after sunset, you may be able to catch a glimpse of a hazy cone of light above the horizon created when the Sun’s rays are scattered by dust in the inner solar system. You can see an example in the image above, extending from above the tree on the horizon toward a spectacular view of the Milky Way. This phenomenon is called zodiacal light — and the dust that’s reflecting the sunlight probably comes from icy comets. Those comets were created by the same dusty disk that that formed our planets and eventually you and the dust under your couch!

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Take a deep breath. Even if the air looks clear, it is nearly certain that you will inhale millions of solid particles and liquid droplets. These ubiquitous specks of matter are known as aerosols, and they can be found in the air over oceans, deserts, mountains, forests, ice, and every ecosystem in between.

If you have ever watched smoke billowing from a wildfire, ash erupting from a volcano, or dust blowing in the wind, you have seen aerosols. Satellites like Terra, Aqua, Aura, and Suomi NPP “see” them as well, though they offer a completely different perspective from hundreds of kilometers above Earth’s surface. A version of one of our models called the Goddard Earth Observing System Forward Processing (GEOS FP) offers a similarly expansive view of the mishmash of particles that dance and swirl through the atmosphere.

The visualization above highlights GEOS FP model output for aerosols on August 23, 2018. On that day, huge plumes of smoke drifted over North America and Africa, three different tropical cyclones churned in the Pacific Ocean, and large clouds of dust blew over deserts in Africa and Asia. The storms are visible within giant swirls of sea salt aerosol(blue), which winds loft into the air as part of sea spray. Black carbon particles (red) are among the particles emitted by fires; vehicle and factory emissions are another common source. Particles the model classified as dust are shown in purple. The visualization includes a layer of night light data collected by the day-night band of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on Suomi NPP that shows the locations of towns and cities.

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Solar System 10 Things: Dust in the Wind, on Mars & Well Beyond

To most of us, dust is an annoyance. Something to be cleaned up, washed off or wiped away. But these tiny particles that float about and settle on surfaces play an important role in a variety of processes on Earth and across the solar system. So put away that feather duster for a few moments, as we share with you 10 things to know about dust.

1. "Dust" Doesn't Mean Dirty, it Means Tiny

Not all of what we call "dust" is made of the same stuff. Dust in your home generally consists of things like particles of sand and soil, pollen, dander (dead skin cells), pet hair, furniture fibers and cosmetics. But in space, dust can refer to any sort of fine particles smaller than a grain of sand. Dust is most commonly bits of rock or carbon-rich, soot-like grains, but in the outer solar system, far from the Sun's warmth, it's also common to find tiny grains of ice as well. Galaxies, including our Milky Way, contain giant clouds of fine dust that are light years across – the ingredients for future generations of planetary systems like ours.

2. Some Are Big, Some Are Small (and Big Ones Tend to Fall)

Dust grains come in a range of sizes, which affects their properties. Particles can be extremely tiny, from only a few tens of nanometers (mere billionths of a meter) wide, to nearly a millimeter wide. As you might expect, smaller dust grains are more easily lifted and pushed around, be it by winds or magnetic, electrical and gravitational forces. Even the gentle pressure of sunlight is enough to move smaller dust particles in space. Bigger particles tend to be heavier, and they settle out more easily under the influence of gravity.

For example, on Earth, powerful winds can whip up large amounts of dust into the atmosphere. While the smaller grains can be transported over great distances, the heavier particles generally sink back to the ground near their source. On Saturn's moon Enceladus, jets of icy dust particles spray hundreds of miles up from the surface; the bigger particles are lofted only a few tens of miles (or kilometers) and fall back to the ground, while the finest particles escape the moon's gravity and go into orbit around Saturn to create the planet's E ring.

3. It’s EVERYWHERE

Generally speaking, the space between the planets is pretty empty, but not completely so. Particles cast off by comets and ground up bits of asteroids are found throughout the solar system. Take any volume of space half a mile (1 kilometer) on a side, and you’d average a few micron-sized particles (grains the thickness of a red blood cell).

Dust in the solar system was a lot more abundant in the past. There was a huge amount of it present as the planets began to coalesce out of the disk of material that formed the Sun. In fact, motes of dust gently sticking together were likely some of the earliest seeds of the planet-building process. But where did all that dust come from, originally? Some of it comes from stars like our Sun, which blow off their outer layers in their later years. But lots of it also comes from exploding stars, which blast huge amounts of dust and gas into space when they go boom.

4. From a Certain Point of View

Dust is easier to see from certain viewing angles. Tiny particles scatter light depending on how big their grains are. Larger particles tend to scatter light back in the direction from which it came, while very tiny particles tend to scatter light forward, more or less in the direction it was already going. Because of this property, structures like planetary rings made of the finest dusty particles are best viewed with the Sun illuminating them from behind. For example, Jupiter's rings were only discovered after the Voyager 1 spacecraft passed by the planet, where it could look back and see them backlit by the Sun. You can see the same effect looking through a dusty windshield at sunset; when you face toward the Sun, the dust becomes much more apparent.

5. Dust Storms Are Common on Mars

Local dust storms occur frequently on Mars, and occasionally grow or merge to form regional systems, particularly during the southern spring and summer, when Mars is closest to the Sun. On rare occasions, regional storms produce a dust haze that encircles the planet and obscures surface features beneath. A few of these events may become truly global storms, such as one in 1971 that greeted the first spacecraft to orbit Mars, our Mariner 9. In mid-2018, a global dust storm enshrouded Mars, hiding much of the Red Planet's surface from view and threatening the continued operation of our uber long-lived Opportunity rover. We’ve also seen global dust storms in 1977, 1982, 1994, 2001 and 2007.

Dust storms will likely present challenges for future astronauts on the Red Planet. Although the force of the wind on Mars is not as strong as portrayed in an early scene in the movie "The Martian," dust lofted during storms could affect electronics and health, as well as the availability of solar energy.

6. Dust From the Sahara Goes Global

Earth's largest, hottest desert is connected to its largest tropical rain forest by dust. The Sahara Desert is a near-uninterrupted brown band of sand and scrub across the northern third of Africa. The Amazon rain forest is a dense green mass of humid jungle that covers northeast South America. But after strong winds sweep across the Sahara, a dusty cloud rises in the air, stretches between the continents, and ties together the desert and the jungle.

This trans-continental journey of dust is important because of what is in the dust. Specifically, the dust picked up from the Bodélé Depression in Chad -- an ancient lake bed where minerals composed of dead microorganisms are loaded with phosphorus. Phosphorus is an essential nutrient for plant proteins and growth, which the nutrient-poor Amazon rain forest depends on in order to flourish.

7. Rings and Things

The rings of the giant planets contain a variety of different dusty materials. Jupiter's rings are made of fine rock dust. Saturn's rings are mostly pure water ice, with a sprinkling of other materials. (Side note about Saturn's rings: While most of the particles are boulder-sized, there's also lots of fine dust, and some of the fainter rings are mostly dust with few or no large particles.) Dust in the rings of Uranus and Neptune is made of dark, sooty material, probably rich in carbon.

Over time, dust gets removed from ring systems due to a variety of processes. For example, some of the dust falls into the planet's atmosphere, while some gets swept up by the planets' magnetic fields, and other dust settles onto the surfaces of the moons and other ring particles. Larger particles eventually form new moons or get ground down and mixed with incoming material. This means rings can change a lot over time, so understanding how the tiniest ring particles are being moved about has bearing on the history, origins and future of the rings.

8. Moon Dust is Clingy and Might Make You Sick

So, dust is kind of a thing on the Moon. When the Apollo astronauts visited the Moon, they found that lunar dust quickly coated their spacesuits and was difficult to remove. It was quite abrasive, causing wear on their spacesuit fabrics, seals and faceplates. It also clogged mechanisms like the joints in spacesuit limbs, and interfered with fasteners like zippers and Velcro. The astronauts also noted that it had a distinctive, pungent odor, not unlike gunpowder, and it was an eye and lung irritant.

Many of these properties apparently can be explained by the fact that lunar dust particles are quite rough and jagged. While dust particles on Earth get tumbled and ground by the wind into smoother shapes, this sort of weathering doesn't happen so much on the Moon. The roughness of Moon dust grains makes it very easy for them to cling to surfaces and scratch them up. It also means they're not the sort of thing you would want to inhale, as their jagged edges could damage delicate tissues in the lung.

9. Dust is What Makes Comets So Pretty

Most comets are basically clods of dust, rock and ice. They spend most of their time far from the Sun, out in the refrigerated depths of the outer solar system, where they're peacefully dormant. But when their orbits carry them closer to the Sun -- that is, roughly inside the orbit of Jupiter -- comets wake up. In response to warming temperatures, the ices on and near their surfaces begin to turn into gases, expanding outward and away from the comet, and creating focused jets of material in places. Dust gets carried away by this rapidly expanding gas, creating a fuzzy cloud around the comet's nucleus called a coma. Some of the dust also is drawn out into a long trail -- the comet's tail.

10. We're Not the Only Ones Who're So Dusty

Dust in our solar system is continually replenished by comets whizzing past the Sun and the occasional asteroid collision, and it's always being moved about, thanks to a variety of factors like the gravity of the planets and even the pressure of sunlight. Some of it even gets ejected from our solar system altogether.

With telescopes, we also observe dusty debris disks around many other stars. As in our own system, the dust in such disks should evolve over time, settling on planetary surfaces or being ejected, and this means the dust must be replenished in those star systems as well. So studying the dust in our planetary environs can tell us about other systems, and vice versa. Grains of dust from other planetary systems also pass through our neighborhood -- a few spacecraft have actually captured and analyzed some them -- offering us a tangible way to study material from other stars.

Read the full version of ‘Solar System: 10 Things to Know’ article HERE. 

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For scientists watching the Red Planet from our orbiters, the past month has been a windfall. "Global" dust storms, where a runaway series of storms create a dust cloud so large they envelop the planet, only appear every six to eight years (that’s 3-4 Mars years). Scientists still don't understand why or how exactly these storms form and evolve.

Read the full story HERE. 

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10 Things to Know: Massive Dust Storm on Mars

Massive Martian dust storms have been challenging—and enticing—scientists for decades. Here’s the scoop on Martian dust:

1: Challenging Opportunity

Our Opportunity rover is facing one of the greatest challenges of its 14 ½ year mission on the surface of Mars--a massive dust storm that has turned day to night. Opportunity is currently hunkered down on Mars near the center of a storm bigger than North America and Russia combined. The dust-induced darkness means the solar-powered rover can’t recharge its batteries.

2: One Tough Robot

This isn’t the first time Opportunity has had to wait out a massive storm. In 2007, a monthlong series of severe storms filled the Martian skies with dust. Power levels reached critical lows, but engineers nursed the rover back to health when sunlight returned.

3: Windswept

Martian breezes proved a saving grace for the solar-powered Mars rovers in the past, sweeping away accumulated dust and enabling rovers to recharge and get back to science. This is Opportunity in 2014. The image on the left is from January 2014. The image on the right in March 2014.

4: Dusty Disappointment

Back in 1971, scientists were eager for their first orbital views of Mars. But when Mariner 9 arrived in orbit, the Red Planet was engulfed by a global dust storm that hid most of the surface for a month. When the dust settled, geologists got detailed views of the Martian surface, including the first glimpses of ancient riverbeds carved into the dry and dusty landscape.

5: Dramatic License

As bad as the massive storm sounds, Mars isn’t capable of generating the strong winds that stranded actor Matt Damon’s character on the Red Planet in the movie The Martian. Mars’ atmosphere is too thin and winds are more breezy than brutal. The chore of cleaning dusty solar panels to maintain power levels, however, could be a very real job for future human explorers.

6: Semi-Regular Visitors

Scientists know to expect big dust storms on Mars, but the rapid development of the current one is surprising. Decades of Mars observations show a pattern of regional dust storms arising in northern spring and summer. In most Martian years, nearly twice as long as Earth years, the storms dissipate. But we’ve seen global dust storms in 1971, 1977, 1982, 1994, 2001 and 2007. The current storm season could last into 2019.

7: Science in the Dust

Dust is hard on machines, but can be a boon to science. A study of the 2007 storm published earlier this year suggests such storms play a role in the ongoing process of gas escaping from the top of Mars' atmosphere. That process long ago transformed wetter, warmer ancient Mars into today's arid, frozen planet. Three of our orbiters, the Curiosity rover and international partners are already in position to study the 2018 storm.

8: Adjusting InSight

Mission controllers for Mars InSight lander--due to land on Mars in November--will be closely monitoring the storm in case the spacecraft’s landing parameters need to be adjusted for safety. 

Once on the Red Planet, InSight will use sophisticated geophysical instruments to delve deep beneath the surface of Mars, detecting the fingerprints of the processes of terrestrial planet formation, as well as measuring the planet's "vital signs": Its "pulse" (seismology), "temperature" (heat flow probe), and "reflexes" (precision tracking).

9: Martian Weather Report

One saving grace of dust storms is that they can actually limit the extreme temperature swings experienced on the Martian surface. The same swirling dust that blocks out sunlight also absorbs heat, raising the ambient temperature surrounding Opportunity.

Track the storm and check the weather on Mars anytime.

10: Dust: Not Just a Martian Thing

A dust storm in the Sahara can change the skies in Miami and temperatures in the North Atlantic. Earth scientists keep close watch on our home planet’s dust storms, which can darken skies and alter Earth’s climate patterns.

Read the full web version of this article HERE. 

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Astronaut Journal Entry - Alarms

Currently, six humans are living and working on the International Space Station, which orbits 250 miles above our planet at 17,500mph. Below you will find a real journal entry, written in space, by NASA astronaut Scott Tingle.

To read more entires from this series, visit our Space Blogs on Tumblr.

The smoke detectors have been setting off alarms. This happens routinely due to dust circulating in the modules, but every alarm is taken seriously. This is the third time that the alarm has sounded while I was using the Waste & Hygiene Compartment (toilet). I am starting to think that my actions are causing the alarms…. maybe I should change my diet?

Find more ‘Captain’s Log’ entries HERE.

Follow NASA astronaut Scott Tingle on Instagram and Twitter.

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This animation blinks between two images of our Mars Phoenix Lander. The first – dark smudges on the planet’s surface. The second – the same Martian terrain nearly a decade later, covered in dust. Our Mars orbiter captured this shot as it surveyed the planet from orbit: the first in 2008. The second: late 2017.

In August 2008, Phoenix completed its three-month mission studying Martian ice, soil and atmosphere. The lander worked for two additional months before reduced sunlight caused energy to become insufficient to keep the lander functioning. The solar-powered robot was not designed to survive through the dark and cold conditions of a Martian arctic winter.

Read the full story HERE.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

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Black Hole Sculpts an Hourglass Galaxy

When it comes to galaxies, our home, the Milky Way, is rather neat and orderly. Other galaxies can be much more chaotic. For example, the Markarian 573 galaxy has a black hole at its center which is spewing beams of light in opposite directions, giving its inner regions more of an hourglass shape. 

Our scientists have long been fascinated by this unusual structure, seen above in optical light from the Hubble Space Telescope. Now their search has taken them deeper than ever — all the way into the super-sized black hole at the center of one galaxy.

So, what do we think is going on? When the black hole gobbles up matter, it releases a form of high-energy light called radiation (particularly in the form of X-rays), causing abnormal patterns in the flow of gas. 

Let’s take a closer look.

Meet Markarian 573, the galaxy at the center of this image from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, located about 240 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Cetus. It’s the galaxy’s odd structure and the unusual motions of its components that inspire our scientists to study it.

As is the case with other so-called active galaxies, the ginormous black hole at the center of Markarian 573 likes to eat stuff. A thick ring of dust and gas accumulates around it, forming a doughnut. This ring only permits light to escape the black hole in two cone-shaped regions within the flat plane of the galaxy — and that’s what creates the hourglass, as shown in the illustration above.

Zooming out, we can see the two cones of emission (shown in gold in the animation above) spill into the galaxy's spiral arms (blue). As the galaxy rotates, gas clouds in the arms sweep through this radiation, which makes them light up so our scientists can track their movements from Earth.

What happens next depends on how close the gas is to the black hole. Gas that’s about 2,500 light-years from the black hole picks up speed and streams outward (shown as darker red and blue arrows). Gas that’s farther from the black hole also becomes ionized, but is not driven away and continues its motion around the galaxy as before.

Here is an actual snapshot of the inner region of Markarian 573, combining X-ray data (blue) from our Chandra X-ray Observatory and radio observations (purple) from the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array in New Mexico with a visible light image (gold) from our Hubble Space Telescope. Given its strange appearance, we’re left to wonder: what other funky shapes might far-off galaxies take?

For more information about the bizarre structure of Markarian 573, visit http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12657  

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