aurora

Earth's atmosphere lights up with airglow in time-lapse video

A little known fact about the Earth is that its atmosphere generates its own light. Lines and clouds in hues of yellow, green, blue, and red reach 60 miles above the surface of the planet.

This light is created in what's known as a chemiluminescent process and is called "airglow" or "night glow," according to videographer and scientist Alex Rivest. "The colors are not reflected light, and not pollution, but rather are light generated from the components in the atmosphere itself," he wrote in a blog post.

Rivest has just released a new … Read more

Firefox Aurora slightly tightens security

Following the release of Firefox 12 earlier this week, Mozilla's latest browser build for developers shows off some new security tweaks and implements some game-centric APIs.

Firefox 14 Aurora (download for Windows, for the Mac, and for Linux) also brings native full-screen support to Macs, and the location bar can finally autocomplete URLs.

The security tweaks involve some minor interface adjustments. The Site Identity Manager, which is the block of color on the left of the location bar, has been changed so that it's easier to understand. Going forward, gray globe will be the default icon for a … Read more

What's going on with Firefox for Android?

The new year started strong for Firefox on Android, as it relaunched with a completely new interface native to Android. Three months on, though, and it's still not ready for prime time.

The decision came toward the end of 2011: in order to create a more seamless Firefox on Android experience, Mozilla would scrap its then-current Android browser, built in XUL, and rebuild it with native Android code. The look and basic functionality debuted on January 3, but since then the new interface has missed two ship dates on Mozilla's six-week rapid-release cycle. So where does it stand … Read more

Firefox is about to get SPDY

Faster and more secure browsing is coming to Firefox in a big way, as the first Aurora build of Firefox 13 gets the SPDY protocol activated by default, capping off more than four months of work putting SPDY into Firefox.

Firefox 13 Aurora (download for Windows, Mac, and Linux,) doesn't include many other new features or changes that affect Firefox fans directly, but there are many under-the-hood tweaks. One is a user agent change in Firefox for Android, so that Web sites can recognize when a person is running Firefox for Android on a phone or a tablet. This … Read more

Stunning auroras sparked by solar flare

A spectacular show of auroras could be visible over the next couple of days as far south as Minnesota, Wisconsin, the Dakotas, and Washington State in the U.S. as well as parts of the U.K., New Zealand, and Iceland, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

These auroras are being caused by a solar flare that burst off the sun last night causing a massive solar storm of charged particles to hurtle toward Earth and crash into the planet's magnetic field. When the particles hit Earth's protective shell they light up the atmosphere wherever they … Read more

Massive solar storm headed toward Earth

A massive solar storm is hurtling toward Earth, threatening to disrupt communications, GPS, power grids, and airline flights.

A solar flare last night (see video below) created a coronal mass ejection, or the release of a burst of charged particles, from the sun's atmosphere. The storm--the largest in five years--is expected to rain a torrent of charged particles on the Earth early tomorrow morning, mostly in northern areas, according to forecasters at the federal government's Space Weather Prediction Center.

The storm, which has produced a radiation event that rated an S3, or strong, designation on the NOAA's … Read more

The view from up there: An astronauts' Aurora Borealis (video)

Oftentimes I'm perfectly happy being in the cheap seats when witnessing life's spectacular moments. (Well, not perfectly happy. I'm always searching for a better view.)

Take the Northern Lights. In recent weeks, some people who normally might not be able to gaze at the Aurora Borealis from their own back yard got treated to quite the light show, thanks to a solar radiation storm late last month.

But what would the Northern Lights look like from the real nosebleeds (though not cheap)? What would they look like from, say, the International Space Station? NASA has released video … Read more

Firefox finally enriches New Tab page

Chrome's got it. Internet Explorer's got it. Safari's got it. And Opera was the first to debut it. Finally, and currently available in the developer's Aurora build, Firefox users will be able to get a personalized New Tab experience.

Much like the competition, Firefox's version bases the sites shown to you in the New Tab page by the most commonly visited sites in your location bar. Previously, Firefox could only show a visual representation of favorite or recently visited sites in a New Tab through third-party add-ons.

You must be running Firefox 12 Aurora (download for Windows | … Read more

Firefox 11 to get add-on sync

Following the update to Firefox stable earlier this week, Mozilla released yesterday updates to its Aurora and Beta versions that introduce some pretty hefty changes for Firefox on PCs.

Firefox 11 beta (download for Windows | Mac | Linux) presages some hefty changes for the browser. The biggest one, which wasn't present in the Firefox 11 Aurora release, is add-on sync. You'll now be able to mirror the same add-on installations and settings across multiple desktops. Though Google Chrome has been able to sync add-ons for some time, its implementation has been notably uneven, so it'll be interesting to … Read more

Solar storm fuels stunning auroras (video)

High in the northern hemisphere was the place to be for stargazers this week as a solar radiation storm created spectacular auroras.

Chad Blakely of Lights Over Lapland took this time-lapse video Tuesday night when the blast of matter from the sun's atmosphere was most intense on Earth.

A specialist in aurora photography, he told CNET that he shot the video at the Abisko National Park in Sweden and that it was an incredible show. He shot this video over the course of three hours with a group of other photographers along with a few others this week.

The … Read more