A cloud that took the form of a 'hand of God' holding a fireball dominated the skyline above the north coast of the Portuguese island of Madeira.  And weather blogger Rogerio Pacheco, 32, could not believe his luck when he looked up at the clouds while commuters made their way to work in the morning rush hour. 

The awe-inspiring snaps have since been shared online after Rogerio opted to post them on his blog. Amazed onlookers have compared the bright orange cloud to everything from a flaming fist of fury to the iconic comet featured in the classic video game Final Fantasy VII. 

Rogerio said: "As soon as I saw the sky, I was immediately intrigued and I just had to grab my camera to take a photo. For me, the cloud looks like an outstretched hand with a fireball. I was not the only one who seemed to notice it and I could see other people also looking up at the sky.  A lot of people seemed pleasantly surprised when they looked up at the sky and saw the cloud."

The mainstream media is buzzing with news about astronomy: From now until Feb. 20th, anyone who wakes up before sunrise can see Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter all at once, no telescope required. These are the five brightest planets, and they are a beautiful sight lined up from east to west in the predawn sky.

Although the planets can be seen any morning for the next 4 weeks, there are some dates of special interest. As January ends and February unfolds, the Moon will hop from planet to planet, acting as a can't-miss guide for novice sky watchers. The action begins on Jan. 27th when the waning full Moon passes less than 5o from Jupiter: sky map. Next, on Feb. 1st, the half Moon is only a few degrees from the red planet Mars in the constellation Libra: sky map. Two mornings later, on Feb. 3rd, a fat crescent Moon passes by Saturn, only a few degrees away: sky map. And finally, best of all, on Feb. 6th, the slender cresent Moon forms a lovely triangle with Venus and Mercury just ahead of the morning twilight: sky map.

Circle these dates on your calendar--and set your alarm for dawn. The Great Naked-eye Planet Show is a great way to start the day.             www.spaceweather.com

This beautiful heart-shaped fallstreak hole appeared in the sky of Houston, Texas on January 17, 2016 and baffled many skywatchers.  The love message in the sky was spotted on Houston's northwest side. Fallstreak holes are also called hole punch clouds. They occur when clouds composed of supercooled water droplets suddenly turn into ice and fall through the sky.

A passing plane is usually the catalyst that sets off the chain reaction leading to this beautiful sight in the sky. Is it a message or a sign that it's almost Valentine's? Well I doubt this one was made by an airplane.
Source

Every activist has read the increasing number of stories where homelessness is being criminalized, as if simply being homeless isn't punishment enough. However, there is a rising tide among all walks of life that is beginning to view homelessness in a very different light.

As a sinking economy and the criminal actions of the banking elite are leading many middle class, stable families into abject poverty, it is becoming much easier to identify with the less fortunate the closer their plight appears to be. Defenders of the homeless are becoming much more vocal now. We have seen some amazing examples recently of people moved to help those in need through programs such as an artist who paints and sells portraits of the homeless and gives them the profits; a former homeless man who gives back to the homeless by selling book reviews and buying food to share; or the inspiring story of a community organizer who used his own faith to connect with those from other faiths in a common cause of feeding those in need.

We are even seeing people of conscience openly defying oppressive laws to draw a line in the sand that says: if it becomes illegal to help one another on our own terms, we simply have no freedom left to celebrate.

Feeding the homeless has also gone from the concept of a "handout" of money to allow people to buy whatever meager sustenance they can find, to realizing that if people are going to have any chance of turning their financial situation around, they must be physically and mentally fit to do so. A key cornerstone to building oneself back up again is nutrition ... and if it's "free" nutrition, then all the better!

An organization in Atlanta is calling themselves Task Force For the Homeless and should be highlighted for their message and their tactics to restore dignity and prosperity to those who have fallen on hard times. They have chosen to combine two essential approaches to reverse the conditions which afflict the homeless the most: not having access to healthy food, and not being able to connect with others who are working in structured way to engage in practical solutions.
Enter the organic community rooftop garden.

The rest of this article can be read here.

For the first time in a decade, all five planets visible with the naked eye form a line across the sky this morning, in a rare celestial event expected to continue until February 20.

Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were visible early this morning, high in the north to low in the east, Museum Victoria astronomer Dr Tanya Hill said.  The remaining planets Neptune and Uranus and the dwarf planet Pluto are not visible with the naked eye, but Dr Hill said the five bright planets have been observed since ancient times.  "There are only a few amazing things in the night sky that can be seen without any equipment," Dr Alan Duffy from Swinburne University said.

The viewing window this morning was between 5:30am and 5:40am (AEDT), however stargazers in Melbourne reported a cloudy sky made planet spotting difficult.  The times will expand to an hour-long opportunity between 5:00am and 6:00am until February 20.

Dr Duffy suggested finding a clear horizon and a dark sky to witness the celestial arrangement, which will be easiest outside cities, and to try on more than one morning to get the best view.  
Dr Hill said Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn have been visible together since the beginning of the year and will now be joined by Mercury, which is transitioning from an evening to a morning object.  "At first it will appear quite low to the eastern horizon and of all the planets it is also the faintest, so it will be hard to see to begin with," Dr Hill said. "However, Mercury will continue to rise higher each morning and by early February it will sit just below bright Venus."

The order of the planets will not be the same as their order from the Sun.  Starting from the eastern horizon, Mercury (1) and Venus (2) will appear in order, then Saturn (6) followed by reddish Mars (4), with the solar system's largest planet, Jupiter (5) the last one in line.

The line formed by the planets closely follows the path of the sun across the sky, a line called the ecliptic, Dr Hill explained.  "This path marks the plane of our solar system, visual proof that the planets, including Earth, all orbit the Sun on roughly the same plane," she said.  However, each planet has a different yearly cycle, from Mercury's 88 Earth days to Saturn's 29.7 Earth years, so an alignment is reasonably rare and "essentially a quirk" of the universe, Dr Duffy said.

To help in identifying the planets, Dr Hill said the Moon will travel past each one in turn, beginning with Jupiter on January 28 and ending with Mercury on February 7.  The Moon will pass by Mars on February 1 and 2, Saturn on February 4 and Venus on February 6.

Dr Hill said the five planets will be together again in the evening sky in August, but then not until October 2018.

This strange figure of the sun creating a figure-eight shape in the sky is an awesome sight, but required a year of patience by a dedicated photographer to create.

Veteran astrophotographer Giuseppe Petricca took the image from Sulmona, Abruzzo, Italy using a Nikon Coolpix P90 Bridge. The dots forming a curved figure-eight pattern in the sky mark where the sun appeared every day at the same time. A composite causes the pattern called a solar analemma.

"If we take a picture day by day, always at the same hour, the sun is not in a fixed position, but it slowly climbs up and then down the curve," Petricca wrote in an email. [See more amazing sun photos from space]

Today, planetary scientists, Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown of Caltech announced intriguing evidence for a Neptune-sized planet orbiting the sun beyond Pluto. Sedna and five other objects in the outer solar system are grouped together as if they are being shepherded by a larger body. That body, say Batygin and Brown, is a planet at least 10 times as massive as Earth traveling along an elliptical orbit more than 200 AU from the sun. This is the most persuasive argument so far for the existence of a "Planet X." Until someone actually sees the planet in a telescope, however, it's just a hypothesis. So let the hunt begin! The full story was published in the Jan. 20th edition of Science Magazine.      www.spaceweather.com

It appears the uses of hemp are endless. In addition to myriad industrial products such as paper, construction material, clothing, food and fuel, hemp is also known to draw out toxic substances from the soil. In other words, not only does hemp provide humans with innumerable products, it also helps to clean the environment of the mistakes we have made in the past. It has already been discovered that hemp may be extremely useful in the removal of cadmium from the soil and other toxic metals, as well as radiation.

In fact, hemp has been seen as so successful in removing radiation from the soil that it is even being considered for use in Fukushima for the purposes of drawing out radiation. the process by which hemp cleans polluted soil is called phytoremediation - a term given to the process of using green plants to clean up the environment or "remediate" soil or water that has been contaminated with heavy metals and excess minerals. Two plants that are members of the mustard family as well as sunflowers have been known to do the same for many years. And hemp is now finding itself in the same category.

The whole article can be read here.

Discovered in 2013 by the Catalina Sky Survey, Comet Catalina (C/2013 US10) is making a one-time trip through the inner solar system. It swung around the sun last November and is now making its closest approach to Earth: 67 million miles away on Jan. 17th. Dr. Fritz Helmut Hemmerich sends this picture from Tenerife, Canary Islands:

"This is Comet Catalina (C2013US10) during a cloudy morning session on Jan. 16th," says Hemmerich. "I thought the photo could be useful as a finder chart. As the inset shows, the comet is located near the handle of the Big Dipper."

The 6th magnitude comet is too dim for the naked eye, but it is an easy target for backyard telescopes and digital cameras. In fact, Hemmerich's photo was taken using no telescope, just a Sony A7s camera set at ISO3200 for a 45 second exposure.

This is Comet Catalina's first visit to the inner solar system--and its last. The comet's close encounter with the sun in mid-November has placed it on a slingshot trajectory toward interstellar space. Enjoy it now. Once it recedes from Earth, we may never see it again. Browse the realtime comet gallery for more sightings.     www.spaceweather.com

As winter deepens in the northern hemisphere, the Arctic atmosphere is filling with crystals of ice. This is producing some beautiful ice halos around the midday sun. But that's not all. Travelers are also seeing halos around the beams of headlights at night. Pekka Lähteenmäki photographed samples of both in Jalasjärvi, Finland:

These luminous shapes are caused by light shining through jewel-like crystals called "diamond dust.' Lähteenmäki notes that "You can see individual ice crystals glinting in my photos--especially the night shot."
Atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley has seen halos like these before. He finds the night halos most interesting: "Artificial light halos can have strange forms compared with those made by the sun or moon. The difference is because, unlike sun rays, those from nearby lights are not parallel. The equivalents of sundogs become long streaks. There are even super sundogs. The trumpet-shaped night halo Lähteenmäki photographed was made by hexagonal column crystals floating nearby with their long axes horizontal.  It is a cousin of the familiar upper tangent arc--similar, but not the same. Look out at night for a whole new world of halos!"
www.spaceweather.com

© www.wakingtimes.com
In one of the great tragedies of our age, indigenous traditions, stories, cultures and knowledge are winking out across the world.  Whole languages and mythologies are vanishing, and in some cases even entire indigenous groups are falling into extinction.

This is what makes the news that a tribe in the Amazon—the Matsés peoples of Brazil and Peru—have created a 500-page encyclopedia of their traditional medicine all the more remarkable. The encyclopedia, compiled by five shamans with assistance from conservation group Acaté, details every plant used by Matsés medicine to cure a massive variety of ailments.  "The [Matsés Traditional Medicine Encyclopedia] marks the first time shamans of an Amazonian tribe have created a full and complete transcription of their medicinal knowledge written in their own language and words," Christopher Herndon, president and co-founder of Acaté, told Mongabay in an interview .

The Matsés have only printed their encyclopedia in their native language to ensure that the medicinal knowledge is not stolen by corporations or researchers as has happened in the past. Instead, the encyclopedia is meant as a guide for training new, young shamans in the tradition and recording the living shamans' knowledge before they pass. "One of the most renowned elder Matsés healers died before his knowledge could be passed on so the time was now. Acaté and the Matsés leadership decided to prioritize the Encyclopedia before more of the elders were lost and their ancestral knowledge taken with them," said Herndon.

Acaté has also started a program connecting the remaining Matsés shamans with young students. Through this mentorship program, the indigenous people hope to preserve their way of life as they have for centuries past.

"With the medicinal plant knowledge disappearing fast among most indigenous groups and no one to write it down, the true losers in the end are tragically the indigenous stakeholders themselves," said Herndon. "The methodology developed by the Matsés and Acaté can be a template for other indigenous cultures to safeguard their ancestral knowledge."

From Kryon Live Channel, "The Letter D in the Word Kundalini"
October 2012 in Santiago, Chile

"You are the essence of what created the planets, all of them…the ones you know about and the ones you don’t. They all have your energy. You might even say God is the very parent of your energy. We are a piece of you and you are a piece of us.  There is a light, which is God, and this light is in each of you. It doesn’t matter what you do, you can never lose it. Indeed you come into the planet with a test at hand, because you don’t know you are part of God. The test is whether you can discover it while you are here, and change the Earth or not."

 ~ KRYON,  through Lee Carroll, the original Kryon Channel.  www.kryon.com