Feb. 28, 2013:  Earth's radiation belts were one of the first discoveries of the Space Age. A new finding published in today's issue of Science shows that we still have much to learn about them.  NASA's twin Van Allen Probes, launched just last August, have revealed a previously unknown third radiation belt around Earth.

"Even 55 years after their discovery, Earth's radiation belts still are capable of surprising us," said Nicky Fox, Van Allen Probes deputy project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics  Laboratory in Laurel, Md. "We thought we knew the radiation belts, but we don't."

Previous observations of the Van Allen belts dating back to the late 1950s have documented two distinct regions of trapped radiation surrounding our planet, known as the inner and outer radiation belts. Particle sensors aboard the twin Van Allen Probes quickly revealed to scientists the existence of a transient, third radiation belt.  Scientists observed the third belt for four weeks before a powerful interplanetary shock wave from the sun annihilated it.

Back in the 1950s when the radiation belts were discovered, they had little effect on ordinary people. Today the radiation belts are crucial to our high-tech society.  Hundreds of satellites used for everything from weather prediction to GPS to television routinely skim the belts, subjecting themselves to energetic particles that can damage solar panels and short-circuit sensitive electronics.  During geomagnetic storms when the belts are swollen by solar activity, whole fleets of satellites can be engulfed, imperiling the technological underpinnings of daily life on the planet below. The Van Allen Probes directly address these down-to-Earth problems.

Read the whole story at: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/28feb_thirdbelt/

Comet Pan-STARRS, now visible in the southern hemispherre, is brightening as it plunges toward the sun, Amateur astronomer Ian Cooper sends this report from Glen Oroua, New Zealand: "Despite lingering evening twilight and the glare from a nearly full Moon, Comet Pan-STARRS is a 3rd-magnitude object with a fine orange dust tail visible in both binoculars and small telescopes." A 30-second exposure with his Canon 450D digital camera easily revealed the comet in the not-quite-dark sky:

In early March, the comet will pass about 100 million miles from Earth as it briefly dips inside the orbit of Mercury. At that time it is expected to brighten another three-fold to 2nd magnitude, about as bright as the stars in the Big Dipper. Whether Pan-STARRS will actually be visible to the naked eye through the glow of the nearby sun remains to be seen; this NASA video explores the possibilities. Whatever happens, observers in the northern hemisphere will have a front row seat as the comet crosses the celestial equator on March 12th. Stay tuned!

More about Comet Pan-STARRS: 3D orbit, ephemeris, light curves.                  www.spaceweather.com

Suspicious0bservers·676 videos

Published on 25 Feb 2013

The REAL Climate Changer: http://youtu.be/_yy3YJBOw_o
Ice Age Soon? http://youtu.be/UuYTcnN7TQk
An Unlikely but Relevant Risk - The Solar Killshot: http://youtu.be/X0KJ_dxp170

TODAY's LINKS:
Drought Report: http://www.weather.com/news/drought/d...
Ice Boulders: http://www.weather.com/video/ice-boul...

The Moon is waxing full, and that means now is the time to be alert for Moon halos. Photographer Steve Nilsen points out this specimen over the shore of Kvæfjord in Troms, northern Norway:

Moon halos are caused by ice crystals in high, thin clouds. The angled faces of the six-sided crystals bend moonlight into circles 22o in radius. (Sunlight can be bent in the same way.) Generally, the brighter the Moon, the better the halo, which is why tonight is a good time to look. The Moon will be full on Feb. 25th at 20:26 UTC.

Note: According to folklore, tonight's full Moon is the "Snow Moon," so-called to mark the heavy snows of February.
www.spaceweather.com

February 25, 2013 – AFRICA – Scientists believe they’ve discovered the remains of a lost continent on the floor of the Indian Ocean, off Africa. The research team from Norway, South Africa, Germany and the UK identified the ancient “microcontinent” after analysing beach sands from the island of Mauritius. They believe Mauritius was split from the larger island of Madagascar, 900 kilometres to the west, by volcanic eruptions between 61 and 84 million years ago. The beach sands were deposited by subsequent eruptions within the last nine million years. But the analysis found a smattering of zircon grains up to 2 billion years old, suggesting the recent volcanoes had spewed out fragments of an ancient continental crust.

They believe the microcontinent, which they have christened “Mauritia”, may also lie beneath Réunion Island and the Seychelles.The discovery helps explain the origin of the Seychelles, which have “long been considered a geological peculiarity”, the team reports in the journal Nature Geoscience.   “The Indian Ocean could be littered with continental fragments, but the extent of continental crust remains speculative because these fragments have been obscured by hotspot-related volcanism.”

While the study involved modern techniques – including plate tectonic reconstructions and analysis of gravity and marine geophysical data – it reflects an ancient fascination with lost continents. The story of Atlantis, which supposedly lay in the Atlantic Ocean west of Spain and Morocco, has its origins in two dialogues by the philosopher Plato in 355 BC. Rumours of new lands abounded from the 15th century, as Portuguese, Spanish and Italian navigators pushed the boundaries of the known world. “Hi-Brazil,” which reportedly lay west of Ireland and was inhabited by large black rabbits, survived on maps for centuries. The scientists in the latest study promise a more rigorous approach. “Critical to furthering our tale of lost continents are deep drilling, acquisition of high-quality seismic refraction data … coupled with geochemistry, geochronology and plate reconstructions,” they report. –The Australian
http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/scientists-find-remnants-of-lost-continent-off-the-coast-of-africa/

3MIN News February 24, 2013: Australian Cyclone,
Major Earthquake Uptick Watch [Feb25-March7]

Suspicious0bservers·675 videos

Published on 24 Feb 2013
The REAL Climate Changer: http://youtu.be/_yy3YJBOw_o
Ice Age Soon? http://youtu.be/UuYTcnN7TQk
An Unlikely but Relevant Risk - The Solar Killshot: http://youtu.be/X0KJ_dxp170

TODAY's LINKS:
Next Winter Storm: http://www.weather.com/news/weather-w...
Local Alerts: http://www.weather.com/newscenter/ale...
Quake Watch Recap: http://youtu.be/rMyXwYHiHCk [Last Watch Feb1-11]

Coronal Hole:  A dark gap in the sun's atmosphere--a "coronal hole"--has opened up, and it is spewing a stream of solar wind into space. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) photographed the opening during the early hours of Feb 24th:

Coronal holes are places where the sun's magnetic field opens up and allows the solar wind to escape. A stream of solar wind flowing from this particular coronal hole is expected to reach Earth on or about March 2nd. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras on that date.

FARSIDE HOTSPOT:  The image also shows the magnetic canopy of a sunspot group approaching just beyond the sun's northeastern limb. The active region should emerge in the next 24 to 48 hours. 

As big sunspot AR1678 departs, another active region is approaching. NASA's STEREO-B probe, stationed over the farside of the sun, is monitoring a significant ultraviolet hotspot. It is circled in this 360-degree Stoneyhurst projection of the entire solar surface:

In the projection, longitudes between +90 and -90 degrees are on the Earthside of the sun; other longitudes are on the farside. The image shows that the farside active region is poised to rotate from farside to Earthside within the next ~24 hrs. Perhaps it will bring some flares with it. Stay tuned!                      www.spaceweather.com

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Herschel space observatory has detected a cool layer in the atmosphere of Alpha Centauri A, the first time this has been seen in a star beyond our own Sun. The finding is not only important for understanding the Sun’s activity, but could also help in the quest to discover proto-planetary systems around other stars.

The Sun’s nearest neighbors are the three stars of the Alpha Centauri system. The faint red dwarf, Proxima Centauri, is nearest at just 4.24 light-years, with the tight double star, Alpha Centauri AB, slightly further away at 4.37 light-years.

Alpha Centauri B has recently been in the news after the discovery of an Earth-mass planet in orbit around it. But Alpha Centauri A is also very important to astronomers: almost a twin to the Sun in mass, temperature, chemical composition and age, it provides an ideal natural laboratory to compare other characteristics of the two stars.

One of the great curiosities in solar science is that the Sun’s wispy outer atmosphere – the corona – is heated to millions of degrees while the visible surface of the Sun is ‘only’ about 6000ºC. Even stranger, there is a temperature minimum of about 4000ºC between the two layers, just a few hundred kilometres above the visible surface in the part of Sun’s atmosphere called the chromosphere.  Now, using ESA’s Herschel space observatory, scientists have made the first discovery of an equivalent cool layer in the atmosphere of the Sun-like star, Alpha Centauri A.

Credit:  ESA

Both layers can be seen during a total solar eclipse, when the Moon briefly blocks the bright face of the Sun: the chromosphere is a pink-red ring around the Sun, while the ghostly white plasma streamers of the corona extend out millions of kilometres.

The heating of the Sun’s atmosphere has been a conundrum for many years, but is likely to be related to the twisting and snapping of magnetic field lines sending energy rippling through the atmosphere and out into space – possibly in the direction of Earth – as solar storms. Why there is a temperature minimum has also long been of interest to solar scientists.

Now, by observing Alpha Centauri A in far-infrared light with Herschel and comparing the results with computer models of stellar atmospheres, scientists have made the first discovery of an equivalent cool layer in the atmosphere of another star.

Read more at:  http://beforeitsnews.com/space/2013/02/our-sun-has-a-twin-esa-reveals-a-second-sun-alpha-centauri-a-2454868.html                

February 22, 2013 – SPACE - During a chance encounter with what appears to be an unusually strong blast of solar wind at Saturn, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft detected particles being accelerated to ultra-high energies. This is similar to the acceleration that takes place around distant supernovas. “Cassini has essentially given us the capability of studying the nature of a supernova shock in situ in our own solar system, bridging the gap to distant high-energy astrophysical phenomena that are usually only studied remotely,” said Adam Masters of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Sagamihara, Japan.

Scientists are particularly interested in “quasi-parallel” shocks, where the magnetic field and the “forward”-facing direction of the shock are almost aligned, as may be found in supernova remnants. The new study, led by Masters describes the first detection of significant acceleration of electrons in a quasi-parallel shock at Saturn, coinciding with what may be the strongest shock ever encountered at the ringed planet. Since we can’t travel out to the far-off stellar explosions right now, the shockwave that forms from the flow of solar wind around Saturn’s magnetic field provides a rare laboratory for scientists with the Cassini mission — a partnership involving NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency — to observe this phenomenon up-close.

The findings, published this week in the journal Nature Physics, confirm that certain kinds of shocks can become considerably more effective electron accelerators than previously thought. Shock waves are commonplace in the universe, for example in the aftermath of a stellar explosion as debris accelerates outward in a supernova remnant, or when the flow of particles from the sun – the solar wind – impinges on the magnetic field of a planet to form a bow shock. Under certain magnetic field orientations and depending on the strength of the shock, particles can be accelerated to close to the speed of light at these boundaries. These may be the dominant source of cosmic rays, high-energy particles that pervade our galaxy. –Daily Galaxy
http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/saturns-shockwaves-reach-supernova-force/

At the moment there are three significant comets plunging toward the sun: Comet ISON, Comet Pan-STARRS, and Comet Lemmon. The most beautiful so far is this one:

"Comet Lemmon has a beautiful tail with lovely fine structure," says Phil Hart of Lake Eppalock, Victoria, Australia, who photographed it on Feb. 17th.

The comet is now slightly closer to the sun than Earth. Solar heating has turned it into a binocular object (magnitude +5.5 to +6) barely visible to the human eye, but dazzling through backyard telescopes, as shown in Hart's photo above.

Comet Lemmon's verdant color comes from two of the gases boiling off its nucleus: cyanogen (CN: a poisonous gas found in many comets) and diatomic carbon (C2). Both substances glow green when illuminated by sunlight in the near-vacuum of space.

The combination of its colorful atmosphere and filamentary tail make this comet visually striking. Ultimately, Comet Pan-STARRS and especially Comet ISON could surpass it, but for now the most beautiful comet in the solar system appears to be a green Lemmon. More about Comet Lemmon: 3D orbit, ephemeris, light curves.      www.spaceweather.com

Two comets are now visible in the skies of the southern hemisphere: "Comet Lemmon and Comet PanSTARRS got close enough together on the morning of Feb. 17th to fit into single image with a 35mm lens," reports Alex Cherney of Flinders, Victoria, Australia. "A brief but reasonably strong aurora was a welcome bonus."

"Both comets were faint but visible to the naked eye, C/2011 L4 (PanSTARRS) slightly brighter than C/2012 F6 (Lemmon)," says Cherney. "I would guestimate the visual magnitude of Comet Lemmon at +5.5 and PanSTARRS at +5." Also visible in Cherney's images are the Small Magellanic Cloud and the 47 Tuc globular star cluster.

Comet Pan-STARRS is heading for a close encounter with the sun just inside the orbit of Mercury that could significantly boost its visibility in early March. At that time, the comet will be visible to northern-hemisphere observers as well. A video from NASA explores the possibilities.                     www.spaceweather.com

More about Comet Lemmon: 3D orbit, ephemeris, light curves; and Comet Pan-STARRS: 3D orbit, ephemeris, light curves.

Who are you really? An amazing lecture given by Alan Watts, a British philosopher, writer, and speaker. He wrote more than 25 books and numerous articles on subjects such as personal identity, the true nature of reality, higher consciousness, meaning of life.

“When you’re ready to wake up, you’re going to wake up, and if you’re not ready you’re going to stay pretending that you’re just a ‘poor little me.’ And since you’re all here and engaged in this sort of inquiry and listening to this sort of lecture, I assume you’re all in the process of waking up. Or else you’re teasing yourselves with some kind of flirtation with waking up which you’re not serious about. But I assume that maybe you are not serious, but sincere – that you are ready to wake up.

So then, when you’re in the way of waking up, and finding out who you really are, what you do is what the whole universe is doing at the place you call here and now. You are something that the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is something that the whole ocean is doing… The real 'you' is not a puppet which life pushes around; the real, deep down 'you' is the whole universe.” – Alan Watts

Suspicious0bservers·669 videos

Published on 19 Feb 2013
Suspicious0bservers   -   Development of sunspot 1678: "This took about 100 minutes from start of event to stabilization and covered an area larger than Jupiter."

Important Video: http://youtu.be/_yy3YJBOw_o

TODAY's LINKS:
Moon Water: http://phys.org/news/2013-02-moon.html
Less Snow, More Blizzards: http://phys.org/news/2013-02-climate-...
Mercury: http://www.universetoday.com/100084/t...

Solar Data:
Helioviewer: http://delphi.nascom.nasa.gov
SDO: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/

An Unlikely but Relevant Risk: The Solar Killshot: http://youtu.be/X0KJ_dxp170

Less than a day ago, sunspot AR1678 didn't exist. Now it is three times wider than our entire planet. NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the sunspot's rapid development: [go to www.spaceweather.com to watch sunspot developing]

Sunspots are islands of magnetism that float on the surface of the sun. This one is emerging from depth and changing at such a rapid pace that its magnetic field is likely unstable. A reconnection event in AR1678's magnetic canopy could lead to a significant solar flare. Stay tuned!                    www.spaceweather.com