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The Summer Triangle’s Hidden Treasures
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
These maps of Prince George’s County, MD, show surface temperatures collected a few hours apart on July 30, 2023 from the Landsat 9 satellite and the ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS) instrument. The dark blue spots in the right hand image are likely clouds that formed in the afternoon.Credit: Stephanie Schollaert Uz, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Thousands of Americans are impacted each summer by excessive heat and humidity, some suffering from heat-related illnesses when the body can’t cool itself down. Data from NASA satellites could help local governments reduce the sweltering risks, thanks to a collaboration between NASA scientists and officials in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The effort demonstrates how local officials in other communities could turn to NASA data to inform decisions that provide residents with relief from summer heat.
NASA researchers and their Prince George’s County collaborators reported in Frontiers in Environmental Science that they used the Landsat 8 satellite, jointly operated by NASA and the US Geological Survey, and NASA’s Aqua satellite, to gain insight into surface temperature trends across the county over the past few decades. The data also show how temperatures have responded to changing land use and construction. It is information that county planners and environmental experts hope can aid them in their attempts to remediate and prevent heat dangers in the future. The collaboration may also help the county’s first responders anticipate and prepare for heat-related emergencies and injuries.
Cooperation with Prince George’s County expands on NASA’s historic role, said Stephanie Schollaert Uz, an applications scientist with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and one of the study authors. “Applying government satellite data to county-level problems is new here. We’re trying to make it easier for people outside of NASA to use our data, in part by including how-to guides referenced at the end of our paper,” Schollaert Uz said.
In the long run, county officials hope to use NASA satellites to track the negative health impacts that arise from land use and modification. Removal of tree cover and the construction of non-permeable roads, parking lots, and structures that lead to water runoff are among the factors that create heat islands, where temperatures in localized areas soar relative to the surrounding landscape. In addition to the direct dangers of heat for county residents and workers, areas with higher-than-normal temperatures can drive intense local weather events.
“There’s potentially a greater incidence of microbursts,” said Mary Abe of Prince George’s County’s sustainability division. “The atmosphere can become supercharged over hot spots,” causing high winds and flood-inducing rains.
Prince George’s County planners anticipate relying on NASA satellites to determine where residents and county employees are at greater risk, predict how future construction could impact heat dangers, and develop strategies to moderate heat in areas currently experiencing elevated summer temperatures. Efforts might include protecting existing trees and planting new ones. It could include replacing impermeable surfaces (cement, pavement, etc.) with alternatives that let water soak into the ground rather than running off into storm drains. To verify and calibrate the satellite observations crucial for such planning, county experts are considering enlisting residents to act as citizen scientists to collect temperature and weather data on the ground, Abe said.
Eventually, the NASA satellite temperature data could also lead to strategies to curb insect-borne diseases, said Evelyn Hoban, associate director for the Prince George’s County division of environmental health and communicable disease. “Once we know where the higher temperatures are, we can check to see if they create mosquito or tick breeding grounds,” said Hoban, who coauthored the study. “We could then focus our outreach and education, and perhaps prevention efforts, on areas of greater heat and risk.”
A NASA guide is available to aid other communities who hope to duplicate the Prince George’s County study. The guide provides introductions on a variety of NASA satellite and ground-based weather station data. Instructions for downloading and analyzing the data are illustrated in an accompanying tutorial that uses the Prince George’s County study as an example for other communities to follow on their own.
One of the greatest benefits of the collaboration, Abe said, is the boost in credibility that comes from incorporating NASA resources and expertise in the county’s efforts to improve safety and health. “It’s partly the NASA brand. People recognize it and they’re really intrigued by it,” she said. “Working with NASA builds confidence that the decision-making process is based firmly in science.”
By James Riordon
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Media contact: Elizabeth Vlock
NASA Headquarters
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Last Updated Aug 28, 2025 EditorJames RiordonLocationNASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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By NASA
3 min read
Summer Triangle Corner: Altair
A map of the asterism known as the Summer Triangle. This asterism is made up of three stars: Vega in the Lyra constellation, Altair in the Aquila constellation, and Deneb in the Cygnus constellation. Stellarium Web Altair is the last stop on our trip around the Summer Triangle! The last star in the asterism to rise for Northern Hemisphere observers before summer begins, brilliant Altair is high overhead at sunset at the end of the season in September. Altair might be the most unusual of the three stars of the Triangle, due to its great speed: this star spins so rapidly that it appears “squished.”
Altair is the brightest star in the constellation of Aquila, the Eagle. A very bright star, Altair holds a notable place in the mythologies of cultures around the world. As discussed in a previous article, Altair represents the cowherd in the ancient tale “Cowherd and the Weaver Girl.” While described as part of an eagle by ancient peoples around the Mediterranean, it was also seen as part of an eagle by the Koori people in Australia. They saw the star itself as representing a wedge-tailed eagle, and two nearby stars as his wives, a pair of black swans. More recently, one of the first home computers was named after the star: the Altair 8800.
A rapidly spinning star darkens and exhibits a bulge at the equator, as shown by the model at left. At right, an actual CHARA interferometer image of the star Altair. NASA/NSF/Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy/Zina Deretsky Altair’s rapid spinning was first detected in the 1960s. The close observations that followed tested the limits of technology available to astronomers, eventually resulting in direct images of the star’s shape and surface by using a technique called interferometry, which combines the light from two or more instruments to produce a single image. Predictions about how the surface of a rapidly spinning massive star would appear held true to the observations; models predicted a squashed, almost “pumpkin-like” shape instead of a round sphere, along with a dimming effect along the widened equator, and the observations confirmed this!
This equatorial dimming is due to a phenomenon called gravity darkening. Altair is wider at the equator than it is at the poles due to centrifugal force, resulting in the star’s mass bulging outwards at the equator. This results in the denser poles of the star being hotter and brighter, and the less dense equator being cooler and therefore dimmer. This doesn’t mean that the equator of Altair or other rapidly spinning stars are actually dark, but rather that the equator is dark in comparison to the poles; this is similar in a sense to sunspots. If you were to observe a sunspot on its own, it would appear blindingly bright, but it is cooler than the surrounding plasma in the Sun and so appears dark in contrast.
As summer winds down, you can still take a Trip Around the Summer Triangle with this activity from the Night Sky Network. Mark some of the sights in and around the Summer Triangle at: bit.ly/TriangleTrip.
Originally posted by Dave Prosper: August 2020
Last Updated by Kat Troche: July 2025
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By USH
In March 2025, a perfectly smooth metallic sphere crashed near the city of Buga, Colombia, setting in motion a chain of revelations that could rewrite the story of human history. Weighing just 4.5 pounds, the object has no visible seams, joints, or welds. It remains icy cold to the touch and shows no sign of conventional propulsion or manufacturing methods known to science.
Buga Sphere
Its surface is etched with intricate markings eerily similar to symbols from ancient Mesopotamia, as well as other civilizations separated by oceans and thousands of years. AI-assisted analysis suggests the glyphs carry profound themes—unity, transformation, and the origins of consciousness, concepts that cannot easily be reconciled within the framework of standard physics.
Advanced scans have revealed hidden internal structures and an unusually dense core. Even more unsettling, researchers have detected the sphere emitting very low frequency (VLF) and low frequency (LF) radio waves—signals capable of traveling hundreds of kilometers over terrain and far beyond the horizon, often used in navigation, communications, and precise timing synchronization.
Whispers are now spreading about the discovery of a second, even older sphere, quietly stored in a forgotten museum collection. Meanwhile, the glyphs on the Buga sphere appear to be slowly evolving, forming what some believe are coordinates pointing toward remote and mysterious sites: deep within the Amazon, along the shores of Lake Titicaca, and in the highlands of Peru.
This has led to a question, is it just an elaborate hoax or are these spheres fragments of a hidden planetary network, and if so… what happens when it awakens?
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