Before and After: the Southwest drought from space

Dead Trees in Memorial Park, Houston, Texas
Before (left): May 3, 2010 | After (right): September 26, 2011

The Southwest drought has had a devastating impact on the state’s trees. The Texas Forest Service estimates more than 500 million trees were killed by the drought. The trees that were under the most stress were actually urban trees, when local governments restricted watering public landscapes. These pictures from the Texas Forest Service show Memorial Park in Houston, where trees turned brown and died over the course of a year.

Move the slider over to see before and after shots of this image and more here. 

(Image from USGS)

-KC

The most massive, hottest, brightest galaxy cluster ever seen has been discovered 7 billion light years away. Nickname? El Gordo — Spanish for “the fat one.” Photo here

The above photo is the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy in infrared light.

The ribbons seen in the image are giant ripples of dust spanning tens or hundreds of light-years. Color indicates temperature. The coolest areas appear in red; the hottest in blue. PHOTO: ESA/NASA/JPL-CALTECH/STSCI.

More NASA photos

‎”GRAIL A and GRAIL B — washing-machine sized satellites designed to map the surface and interior of the moon — are now zipping around the moon in an elliptical orbit after a three-month, 2.5-million-mile journey.”

These NASA satellites may help answer some fundamental questions about the moon. 

(Artist’s rendering. Image by NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Scientists used color data obtained by the Dawn spacecraft to show the asteroid Vesta’s southern hemisphere in color.

Vesta is the second-most massive object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

(PHOTO: NASA/JPL-CALTECH/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA)

Researchers have discovered a monster black hole that is possibly the biggest found to date, weighing as much as 21 billion times the mass of our sun. 

(Photo credit: An artist’s conception of stars moving in the central regions of a giant elliptical galaxy that harbors a supermassive black hole. Image by Gemini Observatory/AURA artwork by Lynette Cook)

A satellite designed to study the Earth’s weather and climate launched into space aboard a Delta II rocket early Friday.

(Photo credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)

A supermassive black hole has been found shredding and swallowing a sun-sized star that wandered too close.

It has been five years since the solar system lost a planet when Pluto was demoted to dwarf planet.

Atlantis lands at Kennedy Space Center early Thursday morning, ending the final mission of the NASA space shuttle program.

(PHOTO: NASA TV)