This Week in Science: June 8, 2014

Godzilla planets? 12 billion year old gamma rays? Evidence of the planet that crashed into Earth and caused our moon to form?

This is the kind of stuff scientists were doing last week!

Here are the links to the articles.  Please check them out!

Godzilla planet: http://bit.ly/RZCW46
Autism: http://bit.ly/1oTnkOb
Cancer: http://bit.ly/1i9qaqZ
Theia: http://bit.ly/1xfn7HB
Hybrid star: http://bit.ly/SbvliX
Hubble deep field: http://bit.ly/1pRBFbi
Gamma ray burst: http://bit.ly/1kD36oV
Plastic rocks: http://bit.ly/SdukXM

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Thanks once again to the gang over at IFLS.

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Equinox on a Spinning Earth

Equinox on a Spinning Earth 

Explanation: When does the line between day and night become vertical? Tomorrow. Tomorrow is an equinox on planet Earth, a time of year when day and night are most nearly equal. At an equinox, the Earth’s terminator — the dividing line between day and night — becomes vertical and connects the north and south poles. The above time-lapse video demonstrates this by displaying an entire year on planet Earth in twelve seconds. From geosynchronous orbit, the Meteosat satellite recorded these infrared images of the Earth every day at the same local time.

Image: NASA, Meteosat, Robert Simmon

The video started at the September 2010 equinox with the terminator line being vertical. As the Earth revolved around the Sun, the terminator was seen to tilt in a way that provides less daily sunlight to the northern hemisphere, causing winter in the north. As the year progressed, the March 2011 equinox arrived halfway through the video, followed by the terminator tilting the other way, causing winter in the southern hemisphere — and summer in the north. The captured year ends again with the September equinox, concluding another of billions of trips the Earth has taken — and will take — around the Sun.

Thanks, as always, to NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day.

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Dueling Crescents

Daytime Moon Meets Morning Star

The NASA site ‘Astronomy Picture of the Day‘ continues to blow me away.

This is the photo for this morning, February 27, 2014.

(Image Credit & Copyright: Cui Yongjiang and Shi Zexing)

Here is NASA’s blurb…

Explanation: Venus now appears as planet Earth’s brilliant morning star standing above the eastern horizon before dawn. For most, the silvery celestial beacon rose in a close pairing with an old crescent Moon on February 26. But seen from locations in western Africa before sunrise, the lunar crescent actually occulted or passed in front of Venus, also in a crescent phase. Farther to the east, the occultation occurred during daylight hours. In fact, this telescopic snapshot of the dueling crescents was captured just before the occultation began under an afternoon’s crystal clear skies from Yunnan Province, China. The unforgettable scene was easily visible to the naked eye in broad daylight.

If you don’t already do so, please consider making NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day part of your daily online routine.

You won’t regret it.

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This Week in Science (January 24, 2014)

Yes, boys and girls, geeks and nerdlings… scientists the world over have come up with some pretty neato stuff this week!

Excellent stuff, for sure!

Read more at the links below!

Black holes: http://bit.ly/M1dPva
Mantis shrimps: http://bit.ly/1n2GT3N
Cancer genome: http://bit.ly/1ggGtGv
Dolphin: http://bit.ly/1e7ZB6l
Cosmic web: http://bit.ly/M1eeh9
Supernova: http://bit.ly/M1e610
Shark extinction: http://bit.ly/1cj0TLp
Ceres: http://bit.ly/1fghjF4

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Awe-Inspiring Trees (22): North Celestial Tree, Spain

North Celestial Tree

Sometimes I run into a photograph where it is not so much the tree itself that is so awesome but the way the photographer uses the tree to create a spectacular image.

Such is the case with the photo below, taken from NASA’s wonderful site, Astronomy Picture of the Day.

(Image Credit: Jerónimo Losada)

Explanation: If you climbed this magnificent tree, it looks like you could reach out and touch the North Celestial Pole at the center of all the star trail arcs. The well-composed image was recorded over a period of nearly 2 hours as a series of 30 second long, consecutive exposures on the night of October 5. The exposures were made with a digital camera fixed to a tripod near Almaden de la Plata, province of Seville, in southern Spain, planet Earth. Of course, the graceful star trails reflect the Earth’s daily rotation around its axis. By extension, the axis of rotation leads to the center of the concentric arcs in the night sky. Convenient for northern hemisphere night sky photographers and celestial navigators alike, the bright star Polaris is very close to the North Celestial Pole and so makes the short bright trail in the central gap between the leafy branches.

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