* Astronomy

On an August day 15 years ago, a dozen people crowded around a computer in Fairbanks and saw what they hoped to see-islands and ice rafts north of Hudson Bay, Canada, transmitted to them from a satellite 500 miles overhead. After letting out a collective whoop, they compared the snapshot from above to maps of northern Canada, marveling at the view Alaska's newest scientific tool provided them.

From that beginning in 1991, the Alaska Satellite Facility at the University of Alaska Fairbanks has received millions of data bits from orbiting satellites, and scientists have used the view from space to study things that are hard to view any other way. Those things include the amount of sea ice that forms on the northern oceans, or the slight inflation of an Aleutian volcano that may hint of an eruption.

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