There's a new room on the International Space Station. NASA inflated it Saturday. The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) was filled with air by astronaut Jeff Williams as the ISS flew over the south Pacific, kicking off an experiment to learn how inflatable habitats perform in a microgravity environment. "I think I am the first amateur astronomer to photograph BEAM from Earth," says Philip Smith, who sends these before-and-after images from Manorville, New York:

"Using a backyard telescope, I tracked the ISS as it passed overhead on May 26th (before inflation) and May 28th (after)," says Smith. "The new addition was clearly visible in my images."

"The Bigelow Aerospace-built BEAM is a prototype space habitat for future space stations, moon colonies and moon bases," he adds. "I am glad to be a small part of that history."
BEAM will remain attached to station for a two-year test period. Astronauts will not occupy the new room, but they will enter from time to time and monitor its performance. For more information about BEAM, visit: www.nasa.gov/beam.                 www.spaceweather.com

Published on Sep 16, 2015, by 'To Scale'
On a dry lakebed in Nevada, a group of friends build the first scale model of the solar system with complete planetary orbits: a true illustration of our place in the universe.

A film by Wylie Overstreet and Alex Gorosh:
alexgorosh.com
wylieoverstreet.com

"It Always Will Be" - From Kryon Live Channeling, "Assumptions" 
January 2016 in San Antonio, TX

Relax. The system of God is part of you and when the cycle is right, solutions will be there. Spirit is not a judging Spirit. The creator of the Universe has seeds within you. You will always be and you always were. This is a phrase that means that your soul awareness is eternal. Death is a Human occurrence, not a spiritual one. The soul is forever. It always was and always will be.
 
~ KRYON, through Lee Carroll, the Original Kryon Channel

On May 23rd, an enormous swarm of sprites flickered and danced across the top of a thunderstorm in Oklahoma. Almost 400 miles away in New Mexico, amateur astronomer Thomas Ashcraft trained his cameras on the display. He captured the sprites--and something more:

"Note the dendritic upward spray in the midst of the sprite cluster," points out Ashcraft. "That is a possible 'pop-through gigantic jet'--a rare event."

Ashcraft has posted a video of the event with VLF-ELF radio emissions he recorded as a soundtrack. Turn up the volume: "The deep bass sound of the lightning stroke sounds like a distant shotgun blast in the night," he says.

What is a pop-through gigantic jet? Lightning scientist Oscar van der Velde of the Technical University of Catalonia explains: "A cluster of sprites can actually warp Earth's ionosphere, bringing it down from its usual altitude of 90 km to only 40 km." This sets the stage for the jet.
"The sprite cluster triggers an upward-directed discharge which in the past received fancy names as 'troll' or 'palm tree'," says van der Velde. "A satellite-based study by Taiwanese researchers in 2012 found them similar to gigantic jets--large isolated discharges reaching from the thundercloud toward the ionosphere. In case of a 'pop-through gigantic jet,' the lowering of the ionosphere is not uniform and the jet may then reach higher than the bottom tendrils of the sprite".

Although sprites have been seen for at least a century, most scientists did not believe they existed until after 1989 when sprites were photographed by cameras onboard the space shuttle. Now "sprite chasers" routinely photograph sprites--and more!--from their own homes. "They are easily detected by certain cameras," says van der Velde, "and if a storm is in the mood, you may record one every few minutes."    www.spaceweather.com

The moons of Mars are so small, some astronomers believe they are captured asteroids. Named Phobos and Deimos (Fear and Dread), the diminutive satellites average 17 km in diameter and are rarely seen in pictures of the Red Planet. On May 24th, astrophotographer Dennis Simmons of Brisbane, Australia, attempted to capture both. Rate of success: 100%.

Mars shines 242,000 times brighter than Phobos and 741,000 times brighter than Deimos. The two moons are easily lost in the glare. "Deimos was relatively easy, but Phobos had to be gently teased out of the data," says Simmons, who used a 9 inch Celestron telescope.
This is a good time for astrophotographers to seek Fear and Dread. Why? Because Mars is unusually close to Earth. On May 30th, the two planets will be only 47 million miles apart--the closest they've been since 2005. This proximity not only boosts the apparent brightness of the tiny moons, but also increases their angular separation from Mars. Browse the gallery for sightings.     www.spaceweather.com

Old souls, let me tell you something. If you are old enough, and many of you are, you have been everything. Do you hear me? All of you. You have been both genders. All of you have been what I will call between genders, and that means that all of you have had gender switches. Do you know what happens when it’s time for you to switch a gender? We have discussed it before. You’ll have dozens of lifetimes as the same gender. You’re used to it.. It’s comfortable. You cannot conceive of being anything else, yet now it’s time to change. It takes approximately three lifetimes for you to get used to it, and in those three lifetimes, you will have what I call “gender confusion”.

It isn’t confusion at all. It’s absolutely normal, yet society often will see it as abnormal. I’m sitting here telling you you’ve all been through it. All of you. That’s what old souls do.
 
~ KRYON, through Lee Carroll, the Original Kryon Channel

Astronomers and stargazers are in for a treat this upcoming weekend with two big celestial events taking place; a full 'Blue Moon' and the opposition of Mars.

Blue Moon

May's Full Moon goes by several names, including the Full Flower Moon, the Full Corn Planting Moon and the Milk Moon. But this year, it will also go by the title of a Blue Moon.  A Blue Moon typically occurs once every few years (hence the term 'once in a Blue Moon') and is commonly the name of the second full moon in a calendar month. However, this weekend's Blue Moon gained its name a different way.

Normally, there are only three full moons in each season, but occasionally there is a season with four full moons. When this happens, like this spring, the third of the four full moons earns the name of a Blue Moon.  Despite their name, blue moons are not actually the color blue and will appear their typical color.  The next 'traditional' Blue Moon does not occur until January 31, 2018.

Mars Opposition

One day after the full moon, Mars will reach opposition, meaning that that Earth will be passing directly between Mars and the sun.  When this happens, Mars will be extremely bright, making it a great time for astronomers to observe the planet.

Mars will be one of the brightest objects in the sky on Sunday night after the Moon and will be visible from dusk to dawn.

According to EarthSky, by the time Mars reaches opposition, it will have quadrupled in brightness since the beginning of April. Additionally, it will shine nearly 80 times brighter than it does when the planet is at its faintest.  Even if clouds block your view of Mars on Sunday night, it should remain bright for several weeks before it slowly and steadily becomes faint.

About a week after opposition, Mars will make its closest approach to Earth in over 10 years.  At a distance of 46.8 million miles (75.3 million km), this will be the closest the Red Planet has been to our planet since 2003!

Although this is the closest the planets have been in years, it does not mean that Mars will be significantly larger in the night sky as some social media hoaxes might suggest. While it is true that Mars does give off a red glow in the night sky, you will not be able to see the planet like you would the Moon

Published on May 12, 2016
Like sending sensors up into a hurricane, NASA has flown four spacecraft through an invisible maelstrom in space, called magnetic reconnection. Magnetic reconnection is one of the prime drivers of space radiation and so it is a key factor in the quest to learn more about our space environment and protect our spacecraft and astronauts as we explore farther and farther from Earth.

MMS is made of four identical spacecraft that launched in March 2015. They fly in a pyramid formation to create a full 3-dimensional map of any phenomena it observes. On October 16, 2015, the spacecraft traveled straight through a magnetic reconnection event at the boundary where Earth’s magnetic field bumps up against the sun’s magnetic field.

This short video outlines the MMS mission and its first results. Since it launched, MMS has made more than 4,000 trips through the magnetic boundaries around Earth, each time gathering information about the way the magnetic fields and particles move. A surprising result was that at the moment of interconnection between the sun’s magnetic field lines and those of Earth the crescents turned abruptly so that the electrons flowed along the field lines. By watching these electron tracers, MMS made the first observation of the predicted breaking and interconnection of magnetic fields in space.

Credit: NASA/GSFC/Genna Duberstein
If you like this video, subscribe to the NASA Goddard YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/NASAExplorer

This video is public domain and along with other supporting visualizations can be downloaded from the Scientific Visualization Studio at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/deta...

Published on Feb 23, 2015  :  www.facebook.com/thejourneyofpurposeTJOP

What if this life is a dream and when we die we wake up?

Source : 07 May 2016

Cosmic rays allow us to slice through the structure of a pyramid, revealing the ancient and fine engineering at its heart.

You may have wondered what the inside of a pyramid looks like. Not the cavities and passages you see on The Mummy - the actual structure of the creation, how it was built to last all these years.

The pyramids of ancient Egypt are around 4,500 years-old. They've stood the test of time, great monuments on the landscape. Dusty gold and majestic.  Now, we can learn a little more about them thanks to cosmic rays. Archeologists have begun to utilise new technology to better refine our understanding of pyramids' internal make up. Cosmic rays allow us to slice through the structure of a pyramid, revealing the ancient and fine engineering at its heart.

The new Scans Pyramids project uses cosmic rays to build 'inside' maps of the Egyptian attractions. The images show the internal crooked chamber of a 4,600-year-old pyramid known as the 'Bent Pyramid'. It's a 345-foot monument 25 miles south of Cairo.

In ancient times, the pointed building was known as the Southern Shining Pyramid. It's believed to be one of Egypt's earliest designs. It looks odd, probably built in a time of transition, when engineering moved from stepped pyramids to smooth.

The cosmic rays used to unlock the secrets of the structure might be compared to X-rays. Scientists are using muon particles, which come from cosmic rays, to penetrate deep into stone.Using these, researchers can gauge how thick the stonework is, and build up a map of the internal organs of a building. It took 40 days of exposure to the particles to garner enough information. Now, there are images that capture the scale of the craftmanship involved.

And this is just the beginning. There are plenty more pyramids to look at...

Earth is entering a stream of debris from Halley's Comet, source of the annual eta Aquariid meteor shower. Forecasters expect the shower to peak on the nights around May 5th and 6th with 30+ meteors per hour. The best time to look, no matter where you live, is probably during the dark hours before sunrise on Friday."Although the shower's peak is still days away, the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar (CMOR) is already detecting strong activity from the eta Aquariid shower," reports physics professor Peter Brown of the University of Western Ontario. The pink "hot spot" in this all-sky radar map from May 3rd shows the location of the shower's radiant (ETA):

"Processing from last night shows more than 200 eta Aquariids with orbits loosely matching that of comet 1P/Halley," Brown says. "The equivalent visible rates are about 40 per hour – almost one per minute! Based on these numbers it is clear that sky watchers are in for a treat over the next few nights."
Got clouds? No problem. You can still experience this meteor shower by listening to it. Meteor radar echoes are being streamed live on Space Weather Radio.
www.spaceweather.com