the horse's mouth

Oh, Oh! It Looks The Aliens Are Here.

A strange light appeared in the sky over northern Norway. No one seems to know what caused it to appear. Could it be a beckon from Santa or the Russians playing with a new toy?

"The mystery began when a blue light seemed to soar up from behind a mountain in the north of the country. It stopped mid-air, then began to move in circles. Within seconds a giant spiral had covered the entire sky. Then a green-blue beam of light shot out from its centre - lasting for ten to 12 minutes before disappearing completely.

Onlookers describing it as 'like a big fireball that went around, with a great light around it' and 'a shooting star that spun around and around'."

Science Of Big Waves. [Video]

QUEST on KQED Public Media.

Look In The Sky, It's A Giant Donut Hole! [Astro Pic]

Actually, its a dark molecular cloud also known as dark absorption nebulae. "What's that Joe?"
It huge mass of dust and molecular gas which when mixed (not stirred) creates a combination that zaps out all the visible light. Hence, you can't see stars hiding in the background. Our friend above is called Barnard 68 and it is located in the Ophiuchus constellation.

Technorati Tags: barnard 68, dark absorption nebulae, bok globule, the universe, astronomy

Fish On Fridays.

Have you ever eaten a dolphin?
Not Flipper, but the fish above. You do see the fish?

From the Ichthyology Department at the Florida Museum of Natural History:
The common English name for this fish causes much confusion. The fish known as the "dolphin" is not related to the marine mammal of the same common name (family Delphinidae). Additionally, two species of dolphinfish exist, the common dolphinfish (Coryphaena hippurus) and the pompano dolphin (Coryphaena equiselis). Both these species are commonly marketed by their Pacific name, mahi-mahi.

Common English language names include dolphinfish, dolphin, common dolphin, common dolphin fish, common dolphinfish, dolphin fish, green dolphin, mahi mahi, and mahi-mahi.

Other common names are ailai (Tamil), anfalous (Arabic), avlis (Tamil), badahlen (Tamil), bakhti bakhti (Arabic), belitong (Malay), cabishot (Papiamento), chapeau gouverneur (French), clic (French), corado (Spanish), corifena (Rumanian), coryphene commune (French), dakaunomoutas (Greek), dauphin (French), delfim (Portuguese), delfinka (Slovene), dhiya vannava (Sinhalese), doirado (Portuguese), doirado-de-topete (Portuguese), doirado macho (Portuguese), dolfiini (Finnish), dolfijn (Dutch), dolfijnvis (Dutch), dorad (French), dorade (Afrikaans), dorade coryphene (French), dorado (Spanish), dorado delfin (Spanish), dourada (Portuguese), dourade (Spanish), dourado (Portuguese), dourado comum (Portuguese), drader (Papiamento), dradu (Papiamento), ersuuch (Paluan), fei niau fu (Mandarin Chinese), fulusi (Swahili), galvannava (Sinhalese), goldmakrele (German), golok (Malay), goudmakreel (Dutch), guldmakrel (Danish), guldmakrill (Swedish), gullmakrell (Norwegian), ikan lumadang (Malay), ikan lumba (Malay), ili koni (Gela), kadapangan (Makassarese), kal vanna (Tamil), koko (Marshallese), koppurai-kula (Tamil), korifene (Albanian), koryfena (Polish), lambouqa (Arabic), lambuka (Arabic), lampuga (Italian), lampuka (Maltese), lemadang (Malay), llampuga (Spanish), lobo (Portuguese), mahi mahi lapa (Hawaiian), mahi mahi oma (Hawaiian), mahihi (Hawaiian), man-sae-gi (Korean), masimasi (Samoan), mladang (Javanese), msi'a amerikano (Arabic), ngau tau yue (Cantonese), pandje (Komoro), parang (Malay), raaman (Hebrew), rad hava (Sinhalese), radheva (Sinhalese), sapatorra (Portuguese), scubaan (Somali), shiira (Japanese), te masimasi (Tuvaluan), te takua (Kiribati), tepoar (Carolinian), ti klik (Creole), tolofine (Niuean), toohyaku (Japanese), vanna (Tamil), and vannava (Sinhalese).

Technorati Tags: fish on fridays, fishing, wahines, dolphin, can you say mahi-mahi?, fish education

Solar Plasma Balls. Warning Will Robinson, The End Is Near!

From The New Scientist:
IT IS midnight on 22 September 2012 and the skies above Manhattan are filled with a flickering curtain of colourful light. Few New Yorkers have seen the aurora this far south but their fascination is short-lived. Within a few seconds, electric bulbs dim and flicker, then become unusually bright for a fleeting moment. Then all the lights in the state go out. Within 90 seconds, the entire eastern half of the US is without power.

A year later and millions of Americans are dead and the nation's infrastructure lies in tatters. The World Bank declares America a developing nation. Europe, Scandinavia, China and Japan are also struggling to recover from the same fateful event - a violent storm, 150 million kilometres away on the surface of the sun. Continue reading.

Technorati Tags: solar plasma, solar event, the sun, watch out, the end is near

Jason-2. Surveying The Earth's Oceans.

PASADENA, Calif. -- A new NASA-French space agency oceanography satellite launched on June 20th from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on a globe-circling voyage to continue charting sea level, a vital indicator of global climate change. The mission will return a vast amount of new data that will improve weather, climate and ocean forecasts.

With a thunderous roar and fiery glow, the Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason 2 satellite arced through the blackness of an early central coastal California morning at 12:46 a.m. PDT, climbing into space atop a Delta II rocket. Fifty-five minutes later, OSTM/Jason 2 separated from the rocket's second stage, and then unfurled its twin sets of solar arrays. Ground controllers successfully acquired the spacecraft's signals. Initial telemetry reports show it to be in excellent health.

"Sea-level measurements from space have come of age," said Michael Freilich, director of the Earth Science Division in NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. "Precision measurements from this mission will improve our knowledge of global and regional sea-level changes and enable more accurate weather, ocean and climate forecasts."

Measurements of sea-surface height, or ocean surface topography, reveal the speed and direction of ocean currents and tell scientists how much of the sun's energy is stored by the ocean. Combining ocean current and heat storage data is key to understanding global climate variations. OSTM/Jason 2's expected lifetime of at least three years will extend into the next decade the continuous record of these data started in 1992 by NASA and the French space agency Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, or CNES, with the TOPEX/Poseidon mission. The data collection was continued by the two agencies on Jason 1 in 2001. Continue reading here.

Photo credit: Carleton Bailie/United Launch Alliance
June 20, 2008

Technorati Tags: jason-2, ocean surface topography, ocean survey, satellite

Buzz Lightyear Aboard The Space Station. No Joke Dudes. [Video]

That was unexpected. It's good to see our tax dollars hard at work for the betterment of mankind.

Technorati Tags: silly, buzz lightyear in orbit, buzz lightyear hanging out aboard the space station, nasa

Crab Cakes Anyone?

The Crab Nebula, Messier 1 (M1, NGC 1952), is the most famous and conspicuous known supernova remnant, the expanding cloud of gas created in the explosion of a star as supernova which was observed in the year 1054 AD. It shines as a nebula of magnitude 8.4 near the southern "horn" of Taurus, the Bull.

Credit: NASA, ESA and Allison Loll/Jeff Hester (Arizona State University). Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble)

Technorati Tags: astronomy, the crab nebula, messier 1

Weird Science.

Sharon of course you are right, China was wacked because of karma and not the sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust.
Pour me a tall one barkeep!

Technorati Tags: sharon stone video, sharon stone, china earthquake

Global Warming Is A Bitch!

More here.

Technorati Tags: ships, ships in ice, global warming satire

What Is This A 3D Model Of?

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Goodness, Gracious, Great Balls Of Fire!! In Stereo.

Here is one of many images sent back from NASA's twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatories (STEREO).
Hot, hot, hot baby!

If you are wondering why I'm showing you an image of the Sun on a goof ball sailing, surfing, paddling blog;
it's because that big ball in the sky is what powers our planet's weather ... think wind ...waves.
The God's honest truth, I love astronomy.

Hat tip to .sNIPEOUT.

Tags: astronomy, NASA, sun, STEREO

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