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Must-See Geminid Meteor Shower Peaks This Weekend: An Observer’s Guide

December 16, 2014 / / 0 Comments



2014 Geminid Meteor Shower Sky Map


Excerpt from
space.com

 The spectacular Geminid Meteor shower hits peak activity this weekend. Though competing with some unfortunate moonlight, the shower still should make for a must-see astronomical event.

While moonlight will somewhat hinder this year's Geminid meteor shower, intrepid observers with good weather and low light pollution should still be able to catch a good meteor show Saturday (Dec. 13) night.

"If you have not seen a mighty Geminid fireball arcing gracefully across an expanse of sky, then you have not seen a meteor," note astronomers David Levy and Stephen Edberg. 


Even if you can't see the meteor display from your part of the world, you can watch them online. The online Slooh Community Observatory will host a live webacst of the Geminid meteor display on Saturday night beginning at 8 p.m. EST (0100 Dec. 14 GMT).You can also watch the Slooh webcast directly:http://live.slooh.com/. NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke will also host a live Geminids webchat on Saturday night from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. EST (0400 to 0800 GMT), as well as a live webcast.
You can watch the webcasts of the Geminid shower live on Space.com, starting at 8 p.m. EST, courtesy of Slooh and NASA. The Italy-based Virtual Telescope Project will also host a Geminds webcast, beginning at 9 p.m. EST (0200 GMT).

Although the bright moon will be high in the sky by 11:30 p.m. local time Saturday (Dec. 13) (during the shower's peak), skywatchers can still catch a potentially incredible show before the moon creeps above the horizon, washing out the sky. Stargazers might be able to see an average of one or two Geminid meteors per minute Saturday before the moon rises.

By around 9 p.m., the constellation Gemini — the part of the sky where the meteors seem to emanate from — will have climbed more than one-third of the way up from the horizon. Meteor sightings should begin to really increase noticeably thereafter. By around 2 a.m., the last-quarter moon will be low in the east-southeast, but Gemini will stand high overhead. So you might still see a good number of meteors in spite of the moon's presence.

A brilliant shower

The Geminids are, for those willing to brave the chill of a December night, a very fine winter shower, and usually the most satisfying of all the annual showers. They can even surpass the brilliant August Perseid meteor shower.

Studies of past displays show that the Geminid shower is rich both in slow, bright, graceful meteors and fireballs, as well as in faint meteors, with relatively fewer objects of medium brightness. Many Geminids appear yellowish in hue; some even appear to form jagged or divided paths.     

These meteors travel at a medium speed and appear to emanate, specifically, from near the bright star Castor, in the constellation of Gemini, the Twins, hence the name "Geminid." In apparent size, that's less than half the width of the moon. As such, this is a rather sharply defined radiant as most meteor showers go. It suggests the stream is "young," perhaps only several thousand years old.

Generally speaking, depending on your location, Castor begins to come up above the east-northeast horizon right around the time evening twilight comes to an end. As the Gemini constellation begins to climb the eastern sky just after darkness falls, there is a fair chance of perhaps catching sight of some "Earth-grazing" meteors. Earthgrazers are long, bright shooting stars that streak overhead from a point near to even just below the horizon. Such meteors are so distinctive because they follow long paths nearly parallel to the Earth's atmosphere. 

Because Geminid meteoroids are several times denser than the comet dust that supply most meteor showers and because of the relatively slow speed with which the Geminids encounter Earth (22 miles or 35 kilometers per second), these meteors appear to linger a bit longer in view than most. As compared to an Orionid or Leonid meteor that can whiz across your line of sight in less than a second, a Geminid meteor moves only about half as fast. Personally, their movement reminds me of field mice scooting from one part of the sky to another.

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Homeless Stars? Well, Galaxy-less Stars Anyway ~ Greg Giles

November 6, 2014 / / 0 Comments


Lonesome Stars
Time-lapse photograph of the CIBER rocket launch, taken from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia

In Friday’s issue of the journal Science, conclusions from the Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment or CIBER, suggest that as many as half of all stars in our universe may lie outside the home of galaxies. Not visible through Earth-bound telescopes due to their faint glow, these lone stars may be the points that connect galaxies together in a far spanning web of light.   

These 'homeless' stars are believed by astronomers to have been evicted by their galaxies by mergers and collisions.

NASA program scientist Michael Garcia said this dim glow between galaxies is as bright as all the known galaxies combined, and is redefining previous understandings of galactic structure. Instead of being defined by sharpened borders, galaxies may span further outward, thinning like a morning mist over a darkened pond.  
Greg Giles



Read more here: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2014/11/06/3958751/half-of-all-stars-may-lie-outside.html?sp=/99/101/235/#storylink=cpy

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Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo Crashes: 1 Dead, 1 Injured

October 31, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Image: Wreckage from Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo is shown in this still image captured from KNBC video footage from Mojave California
Crash site of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo





Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane exploded and crashed during a test flight on Friday, killing one crew member and seriously injuring another, authorities said.
The explosion came after the plane dropped away from its WhiteKnightTwo carrier airplane and fired up its hybrid rocket engine, said Stuart Witt, CEO and general manager of the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. The blast scattered debris across a two-mile swath of the desert floor north of Mojave, which is about 95 miles (150 kilometers) outside Los Angeles.
One of the two test pilots aboard the plane was killed, said Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood, who was among the officials dealing with the crash's aftermath.
The other parachuted to the ground and was injured. That pilot was transferred to Antelope Valley Hospital in Lancaster, California, according to Kern County Deputy Fire Chief Michael Cody. 

"We hope that the survivor will be just fine," Youngblood said during a news briefing.
The pilots have not yet been identified, but both of them worked for Mojave-based Scaled Composites, according to Scaled's president, Kevin Mickey. Scaled has played a key role in developing and testing SpaceShipTwo for Virgin Galactic.
Virgin Galactic had planned to use this SpaceShipTwo to fly passengers on suborbital trips to the edge of space, beginning as early as next year. A nearly identical rocket plane is already under construction inside a Mojave hangar. More than 700 customers, including celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher and Justin Bieber, have paid as much as $250,000 to take a ride.
George T. Whitesides, Virgin Galactic's CEO, said the company would press on despite the setback.
"Space is hard, and today was a tough day," Whitesides told reporters. "We are going to be supporting the investigation as we figure out what happened today, and we're going to get through it. The future rests in many ways on hard, hard days like this. But we believe we owe it to the folks who were flying these vehicles as well as the folks who are working so hard on them to understand this and to move forward."
Witt said Mojave's close-knit aviation community was hit hard by the tragedy.
"When we have a mishap from the test community, we find that the test community is very small," he said. "We are human, and it hurts." 

View image on Twitter

First powered flight in months

SpaceShipTwo's crew was testing the rocket engine in flight for the first time in more than nine months. The plane was slung beneath WhiteKnightTwo for takeoff from the Mojave Air and Space Port at about 9:20 a.m. PT (12:20 p.m. ET). When the paired planes reached a height of about 50,000 feet, about 40 minutes later, SpaceShipTwo was released for the test.
Witt said the anomaly occurred about two minutes after SpaceShipTwo dropped away and fired the rocket engine, but he didn't see any explosion. "It wasn't because something did happen. It was what I was not hearing and not seeing," Witt said.
Photographer Ken Brown, who was covering the test flight, told NBC News that he saw an explosion high in the air and later came upon SpaceShipTwo debris scattered across a small area of the desert. The WhiteKnightTwo plane and its pilots, meanwhile, landed safely.
Authorities cordoned off the crash site pending an investigation. A National Transportation Safety Board team was expected to get to the crash site Saturday morning. The Federal Aviation Administration said it was also investigating the incident. 

New kind of fuel tested

During the nine months since the previous rocket-powered test in January, Virgin Galactic switched SpaceShipTwo's fuel mixture from a rubber-based compound to a plastic-based mix — in hopes that the new formulation would boost the hybrid rocket engine's performance.
Mickey said engines using the new type of fuel had been thoroughly tested on the ground. The final pre-flight qualification engine firing took place earlier this month. Friday's test marked the first time the new fuel was used in flight, but Mickey said "we expected no anomalies with the motor today."
Before Friday's flight, the most recent aerial outing was on Oct. 7, when SpaceShipTwo took an unpowered, gliding flight back to the Mojave runway.
The fatal flight was part of SpaceShipTwo's years-long test program, following up on the successful suborbital spaceflights of the smaller SpaceShipOne rocket plane in 2004. Virgin Galactic had said SpaceShipTwo's first test flight to an outer-space altitude — usually defined as 100 kilometers, or 62 miles — could have taken place before the end of the year.
The company's billionaire founder, Richard Branson, was hoping to ride on the first commercial flight next year. Over the past decade, he and his investment partners have put hundreds of millions of dollars into the Virgin Galactic venture. After Friday's crash, Branson said in a Twitter update that he was "flying to Mojave immediately to be with the team."
Image: SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwoJason DiVenere / Scaled Composites
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo rocket plane is slung beneath the WhiteKnightTwo carrier plane before Friday's takeoff.
NBC News' Julianne Pepitone and James Eng contributed to this report. NBCUniversal has established a multi-platform partnership with Virgin Galactic to track the development of SpaceShipTwo and televise Branson's spaceflight.

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Our Milky Way strips nearby galaxies of star-forming hydrogen

October 18, 2014 / / 0 Comments


Artist's impression of the Milky Way. Its hot halo appears to be stripping away the star-forming atomic hydrogen from its companion dwarf spheroidal galaxies. Image credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF
Artist’s impression of the Milky Way. Its hot halo appears to be stripping away the star-forming atomic hydrogen from its companion dwarf spheroidal galaxies. Image credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF

Excerpt from
earthsky.org

Astronomers have discovered that our nearest galactic neighbors are devoid of star-forming gas, and that our Milky Way is to blame.

New observations by large radio telescopes reveal that within a well-defined boundary around our galaxy, dwarf galaxies are completely devoid of hydrogen gas. Beyond this point, dwarf galaxies are teeming with star-forming material. 

The Milky Way galaxy is actually the largest member of a compact clutch of galaxies that are bound together by gravity. Swarming around our home galaxy is a menagerie of smaller dwarf galaxies, the smallest of which are the relatively nearby dwarf spheroidals, which may be the leftover building blocks of galaxy formation.

Further out are a number of similarly sized and slightly misshaped dwarf irregular galaxies, which are not gravitationally bound to the Milky Way and may be relative newcomers to our galactic neighborhood.

Kristine Spekkens is an assistant professor at the Royal Military College of Canada and lead author on a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. She said:
"Astronomers wondered if, after billions of years of interaction, the nearby dwarf spheroidal galaxies have all the same star-forming ‘stuff’ that we find in more distant dwarf galaxies."

Previous studies have shown that the more distant dwarf irregular galaxies have large reservoirs of neutral hydrogen gas, the fuel for star formation. These past observations, however, were not sensitive enough to rule out the presence of this gas in the smallest dwarf spheroidal galaxies. 

Spekkens said:
"What we found is that there is a clear break, a point near our home galaxy where dwarf galaxies are completely devoid of any traces of neutral atomic hydrogen."
 Bottom line: New observations by large radio telescopes reveal that within a well-defined boundary around our galaxy, dwarf galaxies are completely devoid of star-making hydrogen gas. Astronomers say our Milky Way is to blame.

Known Milky Way satellite galaxies. Click here for more about this diagram.
Neighboring galaxies to our own Milky Way (Descriptions below)
 

NAME DISTANCE (kpc) DISCOVERY PAPER
Canes Major 7.2Martin et al. 2004, A dwarf galaxy remnant in Canis Major: the fossil of an in-plane accretion on to the Milky Way
Segue 317 Belokurov et al. 2010, Big Fish, Little Fish: Two New Ultra-Faint Satellites of the Milky Way
Segue 123 Belokurov et al. 2007, Cats and Dogs, Hair and A Hero: A Quintet of New Milky Way Companions
Sagittarius24Ibata, Gilmore & Irwin, 1994, A dwarf satellite galaxy in Sagittarius 1995, Sagittarius: the nearest dwarf galaxy
Segue 234.7 Belokurov et al. 2009, The discovery of Segue 2: a prototype of the population of satellitesof satellites
Bootes II 43 Walsh, Jerjen & Willman, 2007, A Pair of Bootes: A New Milky Way Satellite
Coma 44 Belokurov et al. 2007, Cats and Dogs, Hair and A Hero: A Quintet of New Milky Way Companions
Willman 1 (SDSSJ1049+5103) 45Willman et al. 2005, A New Milky Way Companion: Unusual Globular Cluster or Extreme Dwarf Satellite?
Bootes III 46Grillmair 2009, Four New Stellar Debris Streams in the Galactic Halo
LMC 50.8-
SMC 59.7-
Bootes 60 Belokurov et al. 2006, A Faint New Milky Way Satellite in Bootes
Ursa Minor 66A.G. Wilson of the Lowell Observatory in 1955, Sculptor-Type Systems in the Local Group of Galaxies
Sculptor (Scl) 79discovered in 1938 by Harlow Shapley, A Stellar System of a New Type
Draco 82 A.G. Wilson of the Lowell Observatory in 1955, Sculptor-Type Systems in the Local Group of Galaxies
Sextans 89 Mike Irwin, M.T. Bridgeland, P.S. Bunclark and R.G. McMahon, 1990 A new satellite galaxy of the Milky Way in the constellation of Sextans
Ursa Major (UMa) 100Willman et al. 2005, A New Milky Way Dwarf Galaxy in Ursa Major
Carina 103Cannon, R. D., Hawarden, T. G., & Tritton, S. B., 1977, A new Sculptor-type dwarf elliptical galaxy in Carina
Hercules 140 Belokurov et al. 2007, Cats and Dogs, Hair and A Hero: A Quintet of New Milky Way Companions
Fornax 140discovered in 1938 by Harlow Shapley, described in "Two Stellar Systems of a New Kind", Nature, Vol. 142, p. 715
Canes Venatici II 150 Sakamoto & Hasegawa 2006, Discovery of a Faint Old Stellar System at 150 kpc
Leo IV 160 Belokurov et al. 2007, Cats and Dogs, Hair and A Hero: A Quintet of New Milky Way Companions
Pisces II 182 Belokurov et al. 2010, Big Fish, Little Fish: Two New Ultra-Faint Satellites of The Milky Way
Leo II (Leo B) 208 Robert G. Harrington and Albert George Wilson, 1950, Two New Stellar Systems in Leo
Canes Venatici 220Zucker et al. 2006 A New Milky Way Dwarf Satellite in Canes Venatici
Leo I 254 Robert G. Harrington and Albert George Wilson, 1950, Two New Stellar Systems in Leo

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7 Types of Non-Believers Who Don’t Need Religion

September 25, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Valerie Tarico, AlterNetReligious labels help shore up identity. So what are some of the things non-believers can call themselves?Catholic, born-again, Reformed, Jew, Muslim, Shiite, Sunni, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist…religions give people labels. The downside can be tribalism, an assumption that insiders are better than outsiders, that they merit more compassion, integrity and generosity or even that violence toward “infidels” is acceptable. But the upside is that religious o [...]

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Fall Begins Monday: Equinox Myth Debunked

September 21, 2014 / / 0 Comments


The start of fall in the Northern Hemisphere begins Sept. 22, 2014.
Excert from space.com
By Joe Rao, Space.com Skywatching Columnist 


 Sick of long, hot summer days? Well, you're in luck. Astronomically speaking, autumn is about to begin in the north.
On Monday (Sept. 22), at 10:29 p.m. EDT (0229 Sept. 23 GMT) autumn begins astronomically in the Northern Hemisphere. This also marks the start of spring in the southern half of the globe.
This date is called an equinox, from the Latin for "equal night," alluding to the fact that day and night are then of equal length worldwide. But that is not necessarily correct. [Earth's Equinoxes & Solstices Explained (Infographic)] 

Not so equal

Referring to the equinox as being a time of equal day and night is a convenient oversimplification. For one thing, it treats night as simply the time the sun is beneath the horizon, and completely ignores twilight. If the sun were nothing more than a point of light in the sky, and if the Earth lacked an atmosphere, then at the time of an equinox, the sun would indeed spend one half of its path above the horizon and one half below.
But in reality, atmospheric refraction raises the sun's disc by more than its own apparent diameter while it is rising or setting. Thus, when the sun looks like a reddish-orange ball just sitting on the horizon, it's really an optical illusion. It is actually completely below the horizon.
In addition to refraction hastening sunrise and delaying sunset, there is another factor that makes daylight longer than night at an equinox: Sunrise and sunset are defined as the times when the first or last speck of the sun's upper or lower limbs — not the center of the disc — are visible above the horizon.
And this is why if you check your newspaper's almanac or weather page on Monday and look up the times of local sunrise and sunset, you'll notice that the duration of daylight, or the amount of time from sunrise to sunset, still lasts a bit more than 12 hours. 
In New York City, for instance, sunrise is at 6:43 a.m., and sunset comes at 6:54 p.m. So the amount of daylight is not 12 hours, but rather 12 hours and 11 minutes. Not until Sept. 26 are the days and nights truly equal. (On Sept. 26, sunrise is at 6:47 a.m., and sunset is 12 hours later).
At the North Pole, the sun currently is tracing out a 360-degree circle around the entire sky, appearing to skim just above the edge of the horizon. At the moment of this year's autumnal equinox, it should theoretically disappear completely from view, and yet its disc will still be hovering just above the horizon.  Not until 52 hours and 10 minutes later will the last speck of the sun's upper limb finally drop completely out of sight.      
This strong refraction effect also causes the sun's disc to appear oval when it is near the horizon. The amount of refraction increases so rapidly as the sun approaches the horizon that its lower limb is lifted more than the upper one, distorting the sun's disc noticeably.

Not as dark as it seems

Certain astronomical myths die hard. One of these is that the entire Arctic region experiences six months of daylight and six months of darkness. Often, "night" is simply defined by the moment when the sun is beneath the horizon, as if twilight didn't exist. This fallacy is repeated in innumerable geography textbooks, as well as travel articles and guides. 
But twilight illuminates the sky to some extent whenever the sun's upper rim is less than 18 degrees below the horizon. This marks the limit of astronomical twilight, when the sky is indeed totally dark from horizon to horizon.
There are two other types of twilight. Civil (bright) twilight exists when the sun is less than 6 degrees beneath the horizon. It is loosely defined as when most outdoor daytime activities can be continued. Some daily newspapers provide a time when you should turn on your car's headlights. That time usually corresponds to the end of civil twilight.
So, even at the North Pole, while the sun disappears from view for six months beginning Sept. 25, to state that "total darkness" immediately sets in is hardly the case. In fact, civil twilight does not end there until Oct. 8. 
When the sun drops down to 12 degrees below the horizon, it marks the end of nautical twilight, when a sea horizon becomes difficult to discern. In fact, at the end of nautical twilight, most people will regard night as having begun. At the North Pole, nautical twilight does not end until Oct. 25. Finally, astronomical twilight — when the sky indeed becomes completely dark — ends Nov. 13. It then remains perpetually dark until Jan. 29, when the twilight cycles begin anew. So, at the North Pole, the duration of 24-hour darkness lasts almost 11 weeks, not six months.

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What Most People Do Not Know About Manifestation

September 16, 2014 / / 0 Comments

As the planet continues to raise her vibration toward a fifth dimensional frequency, the ability to manifest is becoming easier and faster. Ultimately those who are awakened to the possibility of a New Earth are working toward manifesting this into reality and need to know the missing piece of manifestation in order to be successful co-creators. The trinity of manifestation Manifestation involves using heartfelt intention, the Law of Attraction, and the Universal Law of Detachment. T [...]

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Galactic Federation of Light Mother Mary May-19-2013

May 20, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Mother Mary: Let Yourself Soar Into The Stillness That Is Your Core ~ Channeled through Fran Zepeda ~ May 19, 2013
Thanks to Franheal: http://franheal.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/mother-mary-let-yourself-soar-into-the-stillness-that-is-your-core-channeled-through-fran-zepeda-may-19-2013-3/

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Cosmic Awareness Newsletter 2012-01

March 8, 2012 / / 0 Comments

{mainvote}

7 March 2012

Channeler: Will Berlinghof

Well...Anasazi1 just made me realize that there was no Cosmic Awareness message posted here recently,so here's the most recent one avaiable right one,as the CAC newsletter is for mem...

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Entering The Sector of Deserving

October 20, 2011 / / 0 Comments

{mainvote}

a message from Gillian MacBeth-Louthan

Tuesday, 18 October, 2011  

The opulence, the prosperity, the role of Creator-ship that you so seek is within the cellular structure of your being.  It is not housed in a thoug...

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Heavenletter #3820 May 11, 2011 A Story Told on the Waves of Itself

May 11, 2011 / / 0 Comments

{mainvote}

God said:

There are no circles really. There are no squares. There are no shapes. All that you study in the relative world does not really exist, and yet the relative world is your existence on Earth. It is what you are involved i...

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HEAVEN #3756 An Ever-Blooming Rose, March 8, 2011

March 8, 2011 / / 0 Comments

{mainvote}

God said:  

Flowers are meant to blossom, and you are meant to blossom the same. So then, blossom.

How simple is life when you remember that you are a flower that grows to the sun and blooms. It is a simple task. It is ...

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The Temple of the Sun

July 8, 2010 / / 0 Comments

a message from Jesus/Jeshua channeled by Judith Coates

Thursday, 8 July, 2010 

Beloved one, once upon a time, before there was time, there was and is and forever will be outside of time an Isness...

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