The crescent Moon has spent the past few mornings planet-hopping from Jupiter to Mars to Mercury. Next up: Venus. The Moon will move past the sun this week and pop up in the evening sky for a loose conjunction with Venus on August 9th and 10th. Browse the gallery for images. www.spaceweather.com
If you wake up before sunrise this week, look east. Three planets are preceding the sun into the dawn sky: Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury. Stephen Mudge photographed the trio (and the visiting crescent Moon) rising over Brisbane, Australia, on August 4th: "I also created a stack of images taken every three and a half minutes as they rose," says Mudge. "All exposures were 4 seconds with a Canon 50D and 15-85mm lens at f/5.6 and 400 iso."
The crescent Moon has spent the past few mornings planet-hopping from Jupiter to Mars to Mercury. Next up: Venus. The Moon will move past the sun this week and pop up in the evening sky for a loose conjunction with Venus on August 9th and 10th. Browse the gallery for images. www.spaceweather.com
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Scientists have discovered that our solar system is very unique. Earth is located in a star system that is by no means the norm in space. As a matter of fact, our solar system appears to be the exception. A stunning exception, in the way it’s laid out to actually foster the very conditions on Earth which makes life possible. In the universe at large, chaos, explosions, and mind-bending collisions between massive celestial bodies appear to be commonplace. After you watch this video, you may never see our little blue planet quite the same again. Last Friday, NASA's Cassini spacecraft photographed Earth through the rings of Saturn. Our planet has been photographed twice before from the outer solar system, but this is the first time it has been recorded in natural color, as human eyes would see it. In the image, just released by NASA, Earth is a pale blue dot: Normally, distant spacecraft cannot photograph Earth because Earth is so close to the sun. Glare prevents imaging. Cassini took advantage of a rare eclipse of the sun by Saturn itself. With the sun blocked by the body of the ringed planet, Earth became visible to Cassini's cameras.
The picture of Earth is only one footprint in a mosaic of 33 footprints covering the entire Saturn ring system. "Seeing the whole mosaic of the backlit rings when it is put together will be incredible," says Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Researchers are working on the ensemble now, and they expect it to be ready in a few weeks. Stay tuned. http://spaceweather.com/ The Hubble space telescope has discovered a new moon orbiting Neptune, Nasa has confirmed. Designated S/2004 N 1, this is the 14th known moon to circle the giant planet. It also appears to be the smallest moon in the Neptunian system, measuring just 20 km (12 miles) across, completing one revolution around Neptune every 23 hours. US astronomer Mark Showalter spotted the tiny dot while studying segments of rings around Neptune. Nasa said the moon was roughly 100 million times dimmer than the faintest star visible to the naked eye. It is so small that the Voyager spacecraft failed to spot it in 1989 when it passed close by Neptune and surveyed the planet's system of moons and rings. Mr Showalter's method of discovery involved tracking the movement of a white fleck appearing over and over again in more than 150 photographs taken of Neptune by Hubble between 2004 and 2009. "The moons and arcs orbit very quickly, so we had to devise a way to follow their motion in order to bring out the details of the system," Mr Showalter explained. "It's the same reason a sports photographer tracks a running athlete - the athlete stays in focus, but the background blurs." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23318301 Published on 16 Jul 2013
How to Watch the Sun: Spaceweather 101 - http://youtu.be/ld5ecZuHECA Energy from Space 2.0: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15b-jx... Original music by NEMES1S : http://www.suspicious0bservers.org/shop/ [Get NEMES1S Music!] http://www.soundclick.com/nemes1s TODAY's New LINKS: Reconnection: http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/t... State of the Climate: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/nationa... Length of Day: http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/... Neptune Moon: http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/fil... 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 Like a comet, the solar system has a tail. NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) has for the first time mapped out the structure of this tail, which is shaped like a four-leaf clover. Credit: NASA Scientists describe the tail, called the heliotail, based on the first three years of IBEX imagery in a paper published in the July 10 edition of the Astrophysical Journal.
While telescopes have spotted such tails around other stars, it has been difficult to see whether our star produced one. The particles found in the tail — and throughout the entire heliosphere, the region of space influenced by our sun — do not shine, so they cannot be seen with conventional instruments. The clover shape does not align perfectly with the solar system. The entire shape is rotated slightly, indicating that as it moves further away from the sun and its magnetic influence, the charged particles begin to be nudged into a new orientation, aligning with the magnetic fields from the local galaxy. Read more - with videos - at : http://www.ascensionnow.co.uk/our-solar-systems-tail-observed-for-the-first-time.html 5 July 2013 : Today, you are farther from the sun than usual. Earth's orbit around the sun is not a perfect circle, it's an ellipse, and on July 5th, Earth is at the most distant end of the curve. Astronomers call this "aphelion." When we are at aphelion, the sun appears smaller in the sky (by 1.7%) and global solar heating is actually a little less (by 3.5%) than the yearly average. This provides scant relief from northern summer heat; click here for reasons why.
July 4, 2013 – SPACE - The Comet ISON shines like a cosmic skyrocket in a new video from the Hubble Space Telescope as the icy wanderer, which some astronomers have billed as a potential “comet of the century,” streaks through our solar system at a staggering 48,000 mph. The new Comet ISON video (see below), which NASA released Tuesday (July 2), is a time-lapse view created from images of the comet obtained using the Hubble telescope on May 8. At the time, the comet was about 403 million miles (648 million kilometers) from Earth and crossing between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. NASA officials likened the comet’s extreme speed to a skyrocket on the Fourth of July. “The movie shows a sequence of Hubble observations taken over a 43-minute span and compresses this into just five seconds,” NASA officials explained in a video description. “The comet travels 34,000 miles in this brief video, or 7 percent of the distance between Earth and the moon. The deep-space visitor streaks silently against the background stars.” The blue hue of ISON in the new video is actually a false-color view of the comet as it appeared through the Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope. Comet ISON was discovered by amateur astronomers in September 2012 and is headed for a close encounter with the sun in late November of this year. The comet’s swing through the inner solar system is much anticipated by professional and amateur astronomers because of its extremely close approach to the sun. On Nov. 28, Comet ISON will swing within 800,000 miles (1.2 million km) of the sun’s surface. That close encounter could cause the comet to flare up into a brilliant night sky sight visible to the unaided eye by November. But the comet could also fizzle out in a fabulous bust, so NASA scientists and astronomers around the world are keeping a close watch on Comet ISON to see if it lives up to its hype. While NASA has likened Comet ISON to a cosmic firework in the new Hubble video, the comet itself is not exploding. “Its skyrocket-looking tail is really a streamer of gas and dust bleeding off the icy nucleus, which is surrounded by a bright star-like-looking coma,” NASA officials wrote. “The pressure of the solar wind sweeps the material into a tail, like a breeze blowing a windsock.” As the comet zooms closer to the sun and warms up, it is expected to grow, NASA officials added. ISON’s tail will also grow longer over time. In April, Comet ISON’s tail stretched across 57,000 miles (92,000 km) in images snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope. At the time, the comet’s nucleus was estimated to be about 4 miles (6.5 km) across. Because of ISON’s potential to be a spectacular night sky object, NASA and astronomers around the world have assembled a Comet ISON Observing Campaign to track the object’s progress across the solar system. –Yahoo Published on 30 Jun 2013
Spaceweather 102: http://youtu.be/JpIuXPmSalk How to Watch the Sun: Spaceweather 101 - http://youtu.be/ld5ecZuHECA 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 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] June 29, 2013 – SPACE – Launched 36 years ago, the Voyager 1 spacecraft speeds at a rate of about a million miles a day, entering a bizarre and mysterious region more than 11 billion miles from Earth that scientists are struggling to make sense of. It’s a region where the fierce solar winds have all but vanished and pieces of atoms blasted across the galaxy by ancient supernovae drift into the solar system.
The NASA probe is causing scientists to question some long-standing theories on the nature of our solar system and life beyond its cold dark edge dubbed the “magnetic highway” –a newly discovered area of the heliosphere, the vast bubble of magnetism that shields the solar system from deadly cosmic rays. Scientists had long envisioned this outermost layer of the solar systems, the heliosheath, to be a curved, distinct boundary separating the solar system from the rest of the Milky Way where three things would happen: The sun’s solar winds would become quiet; galactic cosmic rays would bombard Voyager from every angle; and the direction of the dominant magnetic field would change significantly because it would be coming from interstellar space, not the sun. “The models that have been thought to predict what should happen are all incorrect,” said physicist Stamatios Krimigis of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. The latest readings from Voyager's instruments support none of those suppositions, scientists said. Voyager has reported solar winds suddenly dropped by half, while the strength of the magnetic field almost doubled, and those values then switched back and forth five times before they became fixed. “The jumps indicate multiple crossings of a boundary unlike anything observed previously,” a team of Voyager scientists wrote in one a study. Voyager did detect the expected increase in galactic cosmic rays but found at times the rays were moving in parallel instead of traveling randomly. “This was conceptually unthinkable for cosmic rays,” Stamatios Krimigis, a solar physicist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., told the Los Angeles Times. “There is no cosmic ray physicist I know who ever expected that they would not all be coming equally from all directions.” Whether Voyager 1 — which launched in 1977 — has truly left the solar system has been a matter of some debate, because scientists have come up with competing theories on what constitutes an outermost edge. “We’re not free yet,” Krimigis said. “This is a new region that we didn’t know existed. We have no road map, and we’re waiting to see what’s going to happen next.” –Daily Galaxy http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2013/06/29/great-barriers-do-exist-in-space-and-voyager-may-have-reached-it-now-what/ NASA finds only 10% of potentially threatening near-Earth objects: pleads to public for help27/6/2013 June 27, 2013 – SPACE – NASA said the 10,000th near-Earth object (NEO) has been discovered using the Pan-STARRS-1 telescope in Hawaii. Astronomers spotted asteroid 2013 MZ5 on the night of June 18, marking a significant milestone for the NEO search. The space agency said 90 percent of all NEOs discovered were first detected by NASA-supported surveys. “But there are at least 10 times that many more to be found before we can be assured we will have found any and all that could impact and do significant harm to the citizens of Earth,” said Lindley Johnson, program executive for NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observations Program at NASA Headquarters, Washington. In order to be classified as an NEO, a comet or asteroid must approach Earth at an orbital distance to within about 28 million miles. They range in size from as small as a few feet to as large as 25 miles for the largest NEO. Asteroid 2013 MZ5 is about 1,000 feet across and will never be close enough to Earth to be considered potentially hazardous.
“The first near-Earth object was discovered in 1898,” said Don Yeomans, long-time manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “Over the next hundred years, only about 500 had been found. But then, with the advent of NASA’s NEO Observations program in 1998, we’ve been racking them up ever since. And with new, more capable systems coming on line, we are learning even more about where the NEOs are currently in our solar system, and where they will be in the future.” About 10 percent of the 10,000 NEOs discovered are larger than six-tenths of a mile, which is roughly the size that could produce global consequences if one struck Earth. However, NASA says its program has found that none of these larger NEOs currently pose an impact threat. NASA said scientists predict there to be about 15,000 NEOs that are one-and-a-half football fields in size, or 480 feet. There could be more than a million NEOs that are about one-third of a football field in size. An NEO hitting Earth would need to be about 100 feet or larger in order to cause significant damage in a populated area. The space agency said less than one percent of the 100-foot-sized NEOs have been detected. “These days we average three NEO discoveries a day, and each month the Minor Planet Center receives hundreds of thousands of observations on asteroids, including those in the main-belt,” said Tim Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center. “The work done by the NASA surveys, and the other international professional and amateur astronomers, to discover and track NEOs is really remarkable.” Earlier this month, NASA announced a grand challenge focused on finding all asteroid threats to human populations. This “Great Challenge”is to ask citizen scientists, along with industry professionals, to focus on detecting and characterizing asteroids and learn how to deal with potential threats. “We will also harness public engagement, open innovation and citizen science to help solve this global problem,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver. The space agency also invited industry and potential partners to offer up some ideas on accomplishing NASA’s goals to locate, redirect and explore an asteroid. –Red Orbit This 'Spirit Science' video contains much information which is controversial. Watch the video with an open mind and take from it only what resonates with you. Messenger Spirit Uploaded on 31 Jan 2012
Today we bring you something special! Before you lies the entire collection of the Human History story which was previously spread across 5 episodes of Spirit Science! This special featured video is brought to you by a man named Andrew Golden, who has compiled all of these videos in 1080p for your viewing pleasure! Get out some popcorn and dim the lights, this is gonna be good! - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Our history is not what we think! Over the past few thousand years, we have warped our own history. Our versions of the past has been mistranslated, changed, altered and skewed to fit our understanding of reality, and completely left out many things that we cannot explain. Today, we are going to look at an alternate version of our history, a version that was recorded across many ancient tablets and artifacts throughout time, which have only recently been uncovered. This story may be a little cosmic, it may not even all be true, but you will have to decide that for yourself. Based on the work of Drunvalo Melchizidek in the Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life. Made with Love by many, many beautiful people in the credits of the movie. Enjoy everyone! We love you! 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/ 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 |
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