If you've been looking for Jupiter - stop; the glare could hurt your eyes. Jupiter is approaching the sun for an extremely tight conjunction. Today (14 June 2013) they are only 3.5 degrees apart:

On June 19th, Jupiter will pass directly behind the solar disk, less than a quarter of a degree from disk center. It's a rare total eclipse of Jupiter by the sun. Because of the glare, the event is invisible to human eyes. Coronagraphs, however, block the glare and monitor Jupiter's approach. Join SOHO for a ringside seat.                     www.spaceweather.com

           By Doug Fraser ;  [email protected]

June 15, 2013 FALMOUTH — It was late afternoon Thursday and Jim Limberakis, 60, was working at his Falmouth Harbor waterfront restaurant, The Clam Shack.  Suddenly the harbor water started doing something he'd never seen in his 50 years at that location.

"We noticed this huge surge of water going out of the harbor almost like a riptide with waves building up at the entrance," Limberakis recalled. "Then it suddenly surged back into the harbor."  That back and forth surge of water continued for about an hour, Limberakis said, and then it was gone.

"It was the strangest thing I'd ever seen," he said. "I've been here since I was a kid, and I've never seen anything like it."

It was a tsunami, said U.S. Geological Survey oceanographer Jeff List, whose office is in Woods Hole. It just wasn't the earthquake- or landslide-generated surges people know and fear. This was a fairly rare meteotsunami, which originates with changes in atmospheric pressure.

Think of the intense low pressure in the center of a hurricane, which has a barometric pressure significantly lower than the air around it. The decreased downward force on the water allows water at the center of the storm to rise into a mound that is higher than the level of the surrounding ocean.

When a large front moves out over the sea, like one that moved offshore Thursday, there is a similar difference between the air pressure of the front and the air over the ocean. That drop in air pressure mounds up the water beneath it and, if the speed of the incoming weather system matches that of the deep water waves below, it can generate a tsunami, just like one generated by an earthquake or a landslide.

"Once it's released it's a tsunami," List said. "When it encounters a V-shaped bay on the coast, it can get amplified."

The effect depends on coastal topography, List said. "Someone could have been standing at Falmouth Heights and not even noticed a 2-foot rise and fall."

But Falmouth Harbor does have a long V shape and the effects of the surge were magnified.

List believes that the tsunami, which seems to have extended from Montauk, Long Island, up to Chatham, was probably spawned somewhere between New Jersey and New York. It doesn't appear to have caused any damage. The biggest differential in water height was a little under 2 feet above and below the tide height, according to tidal records kept by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Woods Hole.

A review of NOAA tide data from Thursday clearly shows the repetitive oscillation of a falling tide erupting in peaks and valleys that resemble a seismic readout of an earthquake, as the initial wave bounced off the Cape shoreline, then off other objects in Vineyard Sound and back again.

"It's like throwing a stone into a pool," List said. "They do have the potential to be dangerous."

A meteotsunami hit Boothbay Harbor and the central coast of Maine in 2008 with a surge estimated at between 4 and 12 feet high.

The Great Lakes are actually considered a meteotsunami hot spot.

On Thursday, Bob Boden was coming into Falmouth Harbor at around 4 p.m. from a trip as captain of the ferry Quickwater. "The current in front of our dock usually runs at about a half-knot at most. This was running at 5, 6, 7 knots," he said. The water level in the harbor dropped by more than a foot in 10 minutes, Boden said.

Boden and Limberakis had seen the videos of the water flowing out to sea just before the big tsunamis that hit Indian Ocean beaches in 2004.   "Really, it was kind of spooky. What's next, we asked, a tidal wave?" Limberakis said.

METEOTSUNAMIS:  For more on meteotsunamis go to: http://meteotsunami.weebly.com/history.html

Jon Anderson – Ave Verum Lyrics

See through this teaching
Light shines around my being
Out in the mist of timelessness
I see your face

Hold me closer now
Each and every feeling now is come
At last this Majesty is come

Hear me through your love
See me in the light you are
Hold me closer to the Earth
And All That Is

Now I feel your true light
Now I see your pure light
Now I hold this love within my heart

Is come
God of love, of light, will shine
Is come
Is come
At last

Astronomers in the Netherlands have discovered a world where the sun is square. It is Earth. On June 6th Jan Koeman was watching the sunset from Lauwersoog, and this is what he saw:

"The sunset was a very weird one," says Koeman. "Inversions in the atmosphere gave it some very odd shapes."

UK atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley was in the Netherlands last week. "Conditions were favorable for this kind of mirage," he says. "To see weird miraged suns, look out at sunrise in very cold weather and at sunset when it is hot. We had beautiful hot sunny weather all last week in the Netherlands. The sun heated the land and topmost layers of the sea to generate by early evening strong temperature inversions, layers of unusually warm air beneath cooler air. The setting sun rays slanted through the layers where they were bent to form multiple image slices that combine into outlandish shapes and even stacked pancakes. Sometimes tiny green flashes can be photographed on the topmost pancake."

"I was looking for the green flash," adds Koeman, "but this time no success. More sunsets will follow."
www.spaceweather.com

Sky watchers in North America might see an outburst of meteors during the early hours of June 11th when Earth passes through a stream of cometary debris last seen in 1930. Forecasters Peter Jenniskens (SETI Institute) and Esko Lyytinen (Helsinki, Finland) predict the return of the gamma Delphinid meteor shower this Tuesday morning around 08:30 UT (04:30 am EDT). The shower is expected to last no more than about 30 minutes with an unknown number of bright, fast meteors.

Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office will chat about the shower starting tonight at 11 PM EDT. [Meteor radar]
www.spaceweather.com

June 10, 2013 – CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida – An asteroid the size of a small truck zoomed past Earth four times closer than the moon on Saturday, the latest in a parade of visiting celestial objects that has raised awareness of potentially hazardous impacts on the planet. NASA said Asteroid 2013 LR6 was discovered about a day before its closest approach to Earth, which occurred at 12:42 a.m. EDT (0442 GMT on Saturday) about 65,000 miles over the Southern Ocean, south of Tasmania, Australia. The 30-foot-wide (10-meter-wide) asteroid posed no threat. A week ago, the comparatively huge 1.7-mile-wide (2.7-km-wide) asteroid QE2, complete with its own moon in tow, passed 3.6 million miles (5.8 million km) from Earth. While on February 15, a small asteroid exploded in the atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, Russia, leaving more than 1,500 people injured by flying glass and debris. That same day, an unrelated asteroid passed just 17,200 miles from Earth, closer than the networks of communication satellites that ring the planet. “There is theoretically a collision possible between asteroids and planet Earth,” astronomer Gianluca Masi, with the Virtual Telescope project, said during a Google+ webcast that showed live images of the approaching asteroid. NASA says it has found about 95 percent of the large asteroids, those with diameters 0.65 miles or larger, with orbits that take them relatively close to Earth. An object of that size hit the planet about 65 million years ago in what is now Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, triggering a global climate change that is believed to be responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs and many other forms of life on Earth. The U.S. space agency and other research organizations, as well as private companies, are working on tracking smaller objects that fly near Earth. -NBC
http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2013/06/10/asteroid-the-size-of-a-small-truck-buzzes-earth-nasa/

 "Ten Rules For Being Human"
by Cherie Carter-Scott 

Rule One:
You will receive a body. You may love it or hate it, but it will be yours
for the duration of your life on Earth.

Rule Two:
You will be presented with lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called 'life.'
Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons
or hate them, but you have designed them as part of your curriculum.

Rule Three:
There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of experimentation,
a series of trials, errors, and occasional victories. The failed experiments
are as much a part of the process as the experiments that work.

Rule Four:
A lesson is repeated until learned. Lessons will be repeated to you in various
forms until you have learned them. When you have learned them,
you can then go on to the next lesson.

Rule Five:
Learning does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain lessons.
If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

Rule Six:
'There' is no better than 'here'. When your 'there' has become a 'here,' you will
simply obtain a 'there' that will look better to you than your present 'here'.

Rule Seven:
Others are only mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another
person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself.

Rule Eight:
What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need.
What you do with them is up to you.

Rule Nine:
Your answers lie inside of you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.

Rule Ten:
You will forget all of this at birth.
You can remember it if you want by  unravelling the double helix of inner knowing.
•

- Cherie Carter-Scott,
From "If Life is a Game, These are the Rules"

Suspicious0bservers·792 videos

Published on 8 Jun 2013

How to Watch the Sun
http://youtu.be/ld5ecZuHECA

Original music by Nemes1s : http://www.suspicious0bservers.org/shop/ [Get NEMES1S Music!]
http://www.soundclick.com/nemes1s
Animations and Visual Effects by Xaviar Thunders [Check him out on YouTube]

TODAY's New LINKS:
San Onofre: http://phys.org/news/2013-06-glitch-h...
Amazon Fire: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/feat...
NLCs: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/...
China Sandstorm: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/pho...

Radio Anomaly: http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/maproo...
US TEC: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ustec/images...
US Windmap http://hint.fm/wind/
US Severe Weather: http://www.weather.com/news/tornado-c...
UK/EU MET Office: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/e...
NOAA: http://www.weather.gov/forecastmaps
EU Weather Alerts: http://www.meteoalarm.eu
US Weather Warnings: http://www.weather.gov
India: http://202.54.31.51/nowcast/ http://www.imd.gov.in/section/nhac/dy... http://www.imd.gov.in/section/satmet/...

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

June 7, 2013:  Every summer, something strange and wonderful happens high above the north pole.  Ice crystals begin to cling to the smoky remains of meteors, forming electric-blue clouds with tendrils that ripple hypnotically against the sunset sky.  Noctilucent clouds—a.k.a. "NLCs"--are a delight for high-latitude sky watchers, and around the Arctic Circle their season of visibility is always eagerly anticipated. News flash: This year, NLCs are getting an early start. NASA's AIM spacecraft, which is orbiting Earth on a mission to study noctilucent clouds, started seeing them on May 13th.

"The 2013 season is remarkable because it started in the northern hemisphere a week earlier than any other season that AIM has observed," reports Cora Randall of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado. "This is quite possibly earlier than ever before."

This diagram shows why
NLCs are best seen at
sunset or sunrise.

The early start is extra-puzzling because of the solar cycle.  Researchers have long known that NLCs tend to peak during solar minimum and bottom-out during solar maximum—a fairly strong anti-correlation.  "If anything, we would have expected a later start this year because the solar cycle is near its maximum," Randall says. "So much for expectations."

For sky watchers, this means it's time to pay attention to the sunset sky, where NLCs are most often seen.  An early start could herald brighter clouds and wider visibility than ever before.

Noctilucent clouds were first noticed in the mid-19th century after the eruption of super-volcano Krakatoa. Volcanic ash spread through the atmosphere, painting vivid sunsets that mesmerized observers all around the world.  That was when the NLCs appeared. At first people thought they must be some side-effect of the volcano, but long after Krakatoa's ash settled the noctilucent clouds remained.

"They've been with us ever since," says Randall.  "Not only that, they are spreading."

When AIM was launched in 2007, the underlying cause of NLCs was still unknown. Researchers knew they formed 83 km above Earth's surface where the atmosphere meets the vacuum of space--but that's about all.  AIM quickly filled in the gaps.

"It turns out that meteoroids play an important role in the formation of NLCs," explains Hampton University Professor James Russell, the principal investigator of AIM. "Specks of debris from disintegrating meteors act as nucleating points where water molecules can gather and crystallize."

The above diagram shows why NLCs are best seen at sunset or sunrise.  NLCs appear during summer because that is when water molecules are wafted up from the lower atmosphere to mix with the "meteor smoke." That is also the time when the upper atmosphere is ironically coldest.

Back in the 19th century, NLCs were confined to high latitudes.  You had to go to Alaska or Scandinavia to see them.  In recent years, however, they have been sighted as far south as Utah, Colorado, and Nebraska. Some researchers believe that the spread of NLCs is a sign of climate change.

One of the greenhouse gases that has become more abundant in Earth's atmosphere since the 19th century is methane.  "When methane makes its way into the upper atmosphere, it is oxidized by a complex series of reactions to form water vapor," says Russell. "This extra water vapor is then available to grow ice crystals for NLCs."

The early start of the 2013 season appears to be caused by a change in atmospheric “teleconnections.”

“Half-a-world away from where the northern NLCs are forming, strong winds in the southern stratosphere are altering global circulation patterns,” explains Randall. "This year more water vapor is being pushed into the high atmosphere where NLCs love to form, and the air there is getting colder."

"All of this has come as an interesting surprise for us," notes Russell.  "When we launched AIM, our interest was in the clouds themselves.  But now NLCs are teaching us about connections between different layers of the atmosphere that operate over great distances. Our ability to study these connections will surely lead to new understanding about how our atmosphere works."

Credits:  Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Production editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

'The Importance of a Good Attitude' By Charles Swindoll

http://tomruff.com/blog/?p=185

June 6, 2013 – HONOLULU — Part of what makes living in Hawaii so pleasant is the gentle breeze. Arriving from the northeast, it’s light enough that it is barely noticeable but strong enough to chase away the humidity. It’s a natural draw to the outdoors. It is not uncommon to show up at a house to find its residents relaxing out in the covered porch or in the car port, not their living room, and enjoying the cooling winds — and a cool drink. Nowadays, experts say, these breezes, called trade winds, are declining, a drop that’s slowly changing life across the islands. The effects can be seen from the relatively minor, such as residents unaccustomed to the humidity complaining about the weather and having to use their fans and air conditioning more often, to the more consequential, including winds being too weak to blow away volcanic smog.

The winds also help bring the rains, and their decline means less water. It’s one reason officials are moving to restore the health of the mountainous forests that hold the state’s water supply and encourage water conservation. Scholars are studying ways for farmers to plant crops differently.

It’s not clear what’s behind the shift in the winds. “People always try to ask me: ‘Is this caused by global warming?’ But I have no idea,” said University of Hawaii at Manoa meteorologist Pao-shin Chu, who began to wonder a few years ago about the winds becoming less steady and more intermittent. Chu suggested a graduate student look into it. The resulting study, published last fall in the Journal of Geophysical Research, showed a decades-long decline, including a 28 per cent drop in northeast trade wind days at Honolulu’s airport since the early 1970s. The scientists used wind data from four airports and four ocean buoys as well as statistical data analysis for their study. Now, they are working to project future trade winds using the most recent data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a scientific body of the United Nations.

Luke Evslin is already noticing the dip. The 28-year-old has paddled outrigger canoes — boats long used around the Pacific for fishing, travel and racing — for most of his life. In Hawaii, this means he rides waves generated by trade winds. These days, though, there are fewer waves to surf because the winds are arriving less often. “You show up and the wind is blowing in the wrong direction. So instead of a 3-hour-45-minute race, it turns into a 5 1/2-hour race,” Evslin said. “So instead of testing your surfing ability, it’s testing your endurance. It’s a different type of paddling.” He’s thinking he’ll now have to start training for races in canals and rivers to better prepare for flat water conditions.

Sometimes the winds are too weak to blow away the volcanic smog, or vog, created by sulfur dioxide erupting from Kilauea volcano on the Big Island, leaving a white or brownish haze hanging over Honolulu. This aggravates asthma and other respiratory problems. For now, Chu said the most important consequence will be declining rainfall and a drop in the water supply, particularly as Hawaii’s population grows and uses more water. Trade winds deliver rain to Hawaii when clouds carried from the northeast hit mountainous islands built by millions of years of volcanic eruptions. These rains, together with rainfall from winter storms, are the state’s primary sources of water. On Oahu, the rain feeds ground aquifers that supply water to about 950,000 people in Honolulu and surrounding towns. Barry Usagawa, the water resources program administrator for Honolulu’s water utility, said residents are reporting streams near their homes are flowing lower than before. “What we don’t know is if this is truly a downward trend or just the lower leg of a long-term cycle. Is it going to go back up?” he said. The utility has contracted Chu to develop rainfall forecasts to plan for the decades ahead. –CTV News
http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2013/06/06/hawaiis-gentle-breezes-are-disappearing-and-scientists-dont-know-why/

DAYLIGHT METEOR SHOWER: This week, Earth is passing through a stream of debris from asteroid Icarus, source of the annual Arietid meteor shower. The strange thing about this shower is that it occurs mainly during daylight hours. At its peak on June 7-8, as many as 60 Arietids per hour will streak invisibly across the blue sky after sunrise. The best way to observe the Arietids is via radar. Listen to their echoes on Space Weather Radio.

SOLAR FLARE AND CME: (Updated: June 6, 2013) Southern sunspot AR1762 erupted on June 5th, producing a long-duration M1-class solar flare that peaked around 0900 UT. The explosion hurled a bright coronal mass ejection (CME) into space, shown here in a coronagraph image from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory:

Although the blast was not Earth-directed, the CME might still affect our planet. Forecast tracks prepared by analysts at NOAA suggest that the CME could deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field during the late hours of June 8th. NOAA: 65% chance of polar geomagnetic storms.

ALBERT EINSTEIN ORBITS EARTH: On the afternoon of June 5th, the European Space Agency launched a robotic spaceship named "Albert Einstein" into Earth orbit. Also known as "ATV-4" (Automated Transfer Vehicle 4), the Albert Einstein is a cargo carrier laden with supplies for the International Space Station. Marco Langbroek saw it flying over Leiden, the Netherlands, just two hours after launch:

"The ATV-4 was very bright (mag +1 to +0.5) and easily visible to the naked eye, even from Leiden center," Langbroek. "Still in a low orbit, it was very fast."

To resupply the space station, the Albert Einstein is carrying the most dry cargo ever launched by a European spacecraft--2,480 kilograms, and the most diverse cargo mix--1400 different items. It will catch up to and dock with the ISS on June 15th. As that date approaches, the ATV-4 and the ISS will become visible in the night sky at the same time.

NOCTILUCENT CLOUDS IN MOTION: The northern season for noctilucent clouds (NLCs) is underway. Since the middle of May, NASA's AIM spacecraft has been seeing banks of electric-blue NLCs circling Earth's north pole on a regular basis. Now, observers report that the clouds are spreading south. Pete Lawrence of Selsey UK photographed this apparition on June 3th (go to: http://spaceweather.com/gallery/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=82871 to set the clouds in motion):

"I witnessed this fine NLC display on the morning of June 3rd," says Lawrence. "My location is 50.75N so it was amazing to see the clouds so far from the poles. As dawn approached, fingers of NLC spread until they were virtually overhead!"

Noctilucent clouds (NLCs) form near the top of Earth's polar atmosphere when water vapor from the planet below mixes with meteor debris from space. They appear during summer because that is when the mesosphere is coldest and most humid. This year, NLCs appeared early, more than a full month before the solstice, setting the stage for an unusually good NLC-watching season.

High latitude sky watchers should be alert for NLCs in the evenings ahead. In recent years they have been sighted as far south as Utah, Colorado, and Nebraska. Observing tips: Look west 30 to 60 minutes after sunset when the sun has dipped 6o to 16o below the horizon. If you see luminous blue-white tendrils spreading across the sky, you've probably spotted a noctilucent cloud.                        www.spaceweather.com