Somewhere along the way the truth has been buried. Yet scandal after scandal emerges from the Obama administration while Romney stumbles with international gaffes. All this explains why the polls reveal two-thirds of America thinks we are on the wrong track.
Throw out your funny challenge of the day - Normal is Boring... Step Aside
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From Denny: Forget what the main stream media put up for Supermoon photos. I found some superior ones over at flickr from both amateur and professional photographers. They also tell you how they constructed these photos or video from a series of photos. In this post are 49 photos and two videos.
And, yeah, I like to promote photographers so any info they provided with their awesome photos is posted here too so you can purchase prints or visit their websites. Most of these photos are All Rights Reserved, some are Creative Commons, some ask to be licensed for Getty Images. All have embed codes available for your blog or site. Be sure to click on the photos to take you to their flickr pages for more wonderful photography to enjoy!
From Denny: Does this month get any better? We have a Super Moon on Saturday too. Tonight, 3 May 2012, is a special treat for skywatchers about an hour after the sun sets. Look up in the sky and you will get the special eye candy treat to behold a rare beautiful sight: a triple conjunction of the planet Saturn, the bright star Spica and our moon.
Photo by Tim McCord in Entiat, Washington on 19 March 2011
From Denny: Look up in the night sky this weekend for the most awesome extra-large and extra-bright moon viewing for the entire year of 2012. The spectacular Super Moon will be showing off its size and brightness on 5 May 2012 at 11:35PM EDT. It will swing in closer at 221,802 miles (356,955 kilometers) from Earth.
Why will the moon appear to be so large and bright? Turns out this month's full moon also coincides with the time when the moon is closest in its approach to Earth, called the moon's perigee.
Another factor for this Super Moon show is because the perigee in this month will be the closest to Earth of any for this year, varying only by three percent. How is that so? According to meteorologist Joe Rao, Space.com's skywatching columnist, "it happens because the moon's orbit is not perfectly circular."
How much brighter will the Super Moon be this month? Try an extra 16 percent brighter than average. Now that makes for great skywatching, even with the naked peepers (eyes).
Göran Strand of Östersund, Sweden, took a panoramic photo of 25 Jan 2012 sights and wrapped it into a 360-degree composition titled "Planet Aurora."
From Denny: Check out the glowing rim of the Earth as seen from the Space Station. The sun was highly active exploding out a huge dose of electrically charged particles that spectacularly lit up our Earth's upper atmosphere.
These photos were assembled into a video from NASA's Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth and were taken during the period of 25 - 30 January 2012. Usually, the photos are taken at the speed of one frame per three seconds instead of one frame per second as done here. The result is a more leisurely video because it is a bit slower than the true speed of the space station. It gives you that dreamy "you are here" feeling as you watch it.
From Denny: Just when you think "the grass is greener on the other side," as the proverb goes, well, in our celestial neighborhood, it just might be true. This week scientists are reporting Life is a lot different and downright strange just next door beyond our solar system.
What they find odd is the amount of oxygen present. Oxygen is actually dancing around like an all night party at a hip bar inside that solar system. In fact, there is more oxygen there than in the immediate interstellar space (that vast region between stars).
Scientists have yet to determine the reason for so much oxygen. The speculation for now is that perhaps oxygen is hidden in dust or ice.
From David McComas, Southwest Research Institute of San Antonio, Texas: "We discovered this big puzzle, that the matter just outside of our solar system doesn't look like the material inside."
LUNAR ECLIPSE: Five moons, a composite image of a lunar eclipse, showing the path of the moon into and then out of earth's shadow. (Telescope Image). Source: Supplied
From Denny: The 10 December 2011 total lunar eclipse was the last total lunar eclipse to be seen until April 2014. At least we can view a partial lunar eclipse on 4 June 2012. It was reported to be an intense red, putting on quite a show in the sky. In fact, the type of red color was considered a rare treat.
Of course, when I went out to view it here in south Louisiana all I got was a completely cloudy sky. It's time for me to move up to higher ground, like the mountains. The Gulf Coast just doesn't cut it for proper skygazing. :)
From atmospheric scientist and eclipse expert Richard Keen of the University of Colorado:"During the lunar eclipse, most of the light illuminating the moon passes through the stratosphere, where it is reddened by scattering. If the stratosphere is loaded with dust from volcanic eruptions, the eclipse will be dark. A clear stratosphere, on the other hand, produces a brighter eclipse."
Dennys: News Politics Comedy Science Arts & Food: Posts Roundup at Dennys Blogs - 17 Nov 2011: From Denny: Check out blog posts on photography, arts, food, news, politics, a huge amount of humor - especially the political pundits, poetry, astronomy, quotes, music, spiritual and just about anything else that catches my eclectic interest. Can you tell that 140 characters just doesn't work for me? :)
The last posts roundup I did was back in June and we sure are overdue like a long pregnancy. Be sure to bookmark this post as you will enjoy endless hours of laughing while you absorb some good information.
Most of the blog posts are at my flagship blog that spun off into the other 20, The Social Poets, where the news crashes into humor. I even manage to write a few in-depth news posts, slicing and dicing the BS that passes for truth these days on the airwaves.
And to think I do all this in my spare time... Hope you enjoy!
From Denny: Apollo missions astronauts landed on the moon back in the 60's and 70's, gifting Earth's scientists with loads of moon rocks when they returned from their harrowing journeys.
Scientists were shocked to discover those rocks displayed magnetic properties. How could that be?
They also figured out that some of those moon rocks could possess magnetic north and south as well as individual magnetic fields. That sure started some serious scientific head scratching as to how this could be a fact.
Whenever we celebrate our summer holiday on the Fourth of July, often our thoughts turn to remembering various places with which we associate it. Football games, the giant tattered flag waving back at us from Ground Zero on 911, Memorial Day parades and bedecked graves, the White House flag at half mast when a Senator or President dies, a flag draped coffin of a fallen warrior from a foreign war returned home with respect.
The space shuttle program ends this week in hot steamy July. Have you ever wondered what happened to those old flags on the moon after all these decades?"
From Denny: Astronomers just found out about this asteroid coming into our neighborhood for a drive by. It's called 2011 MD and will pass within 7500 miles of our planet today. Astronomers figure the asteroid is between 16 to 35 feet wide and coming 23 times closer than our moon.
It was only spotted last week by a robotic telescope in New Mexico configured to search out these kinds of astronomical hazards.
The good news is that this asteroid will avoid a collision with planet Earth though it certainly will be a nail-biting close call. Astronomers seem to believe that even if it did come close it would burn up in the atmosphere on its descent. So, spread the word: humanity is not doomed to the fate of the dinosaurs, at least not this week. :) Check out the video:
From Denny: Talk about beautiful. A Norwegian photographer, Terje Sorgjerd, decided to hop on over to an island off Spain to film the Milky Way for this video. He says this area is the best place to observe the sky for the best views of the Milky Way Galaxy. It's definitely poetry in the sky. After viewing these incredible scenes I'm inclined to agree with him. Book me on the next flight to Spain! :) Happy Easter, everyone!
Sometimes, I think if I didn't do posts roundup on all these crazy blogs I would never realize just how much I've been writing or on what subjects as the writing moves so quickly. The news is running at a rapid rate these days with all the revolutions in the Middle East and destructive world weather.
Fortunately, we have the comedians and the chefs to perk up our spirits and tantalize our taste buds so we don't get overwhelmed with too much negativity in the news and our politics."
Visual Insights: Dennys Photo Gallery: 2011 Super Moon World Photos: "Yes, I've been on one of my visual vacations, tripping through the Flickr database for cool Super Moon photos. All of these photos were taken on 19 March 2011 for this year's Super Moon event all over the world. Usually, a Super Moon occurs about every 20 years. We are expecting another one in 2016. One photographer created a short video of his various shots and paired a great jazz love song with it. Enjoy these visual treats!"
From Denny: Be on the look out for a gigantic moon hovering over you on the night of 19 March 2011. The news outlets and stargazers are all excited to see this event. The moon has not appeared this large since 1992. This huge moon appears because the moon is closer to the Earth than usual in its elliptical orbit. That closest approach in the orbit is called the perigee at about 364,000 km. When the moon is orbiting farther away it's called the apogee at about 406,000 km. Tonight the moon will be orbiting at about 221,567 miles (356,577 kilometers). The average distance between the Earth and the moon is about 238.000 miles (382.900 km).
Huge moon 30 percent brighter tonight
Of course, the astronomy killjoys like to inform the romantics among us that this huge moon is just an illusion. An illusion you say? Prove it. The moon will appear 30 percent brighter in the sky and about 16 percent larger - though your brain will swear it's bigger than that when low on the horizon. It's an optical illusion and it's your brain that is tricked - or so the science guys say.
The Moon Illusion.
Scientists, being the Big Namers that they are, call it The Moon Illusion. Rather clever like when the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia paid $100,000 for a marketing firm to name their upscale coat and tie restaurant. The settled on the name: The Restaurant. Call me old-fashioned but I'd demand my money returned after that farce. :)
Well, the science guys don't really have a definitive answer as to why our brains are tricked into believing the moon is larger when the reality of the measurements say it isn't so. They do have a couple of Just Supposing Ideas as to why this optical illusion occurs.
Ebbinhaus Illusion theory
One possibility is when the moon is low on the horizon we have plenty of hills, houses, even trees in the landscape to which we can compare its size. However, when the moon rises high in the sky it does look isolated and nothing close by for comparison. Here goes another name: the Ebbinghaus Illusion. This is where objects of the same size give the appearance of being different sizes when they are placed in different surroundings. After all, most of what we judge in life is in perspective to the surroundings of which we compare it.
Perspective
Another idea is that when we view the moon against objects in the foreground that we already know are far away from us, our brain starts running away with this comparison: "Wow! That moon is even farther than those trees and I know those are really far away. Even though the moon is far away it sure does look big. In fact, that Super Moon must be huge!" (Works for me.)
Legend of the Super Moon
Natural disasters like earthquakes, unusually higher and stronger tides and beach erosion, along with human mayhem have been linked as legend to the Super Moon event. The natural disasters might make sense as the moon is closer in orbit and exerting more gravitational pull on the planet than normal. However, the science guys seem to think it's no big deal and will be minimal. Tell that to the folks in Japan still encountering 6.0 and above aftershocks, to the tune of several hundred now, since their earthquake and tsunami just one week ago Hopefully, they will not experience any more Mother Nature mayhem during the Super Moon.
Optical illusion or not I've come to the conclusion the brain is a natural romantic so give it up and just enjoy the cosmic show tonight!
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The Social Poets: Posts Roundup at Dennys Blogs - 28 Feb 2011 - Choose from world news analysis combined with the best political cartoon opinion, celebrity watching, science and health news, arts, poetry, funny photos, serious photography, funny videos, great satire, awesome food and spiritual thoughts.
Posts on astronomy, news, politics, poetry, lots of crazy humor, health and food.
From Denny: The past month I've been busy rounding up what the readers enjoyed throughout the year on all the blogs. It's amazing what people find intriguing - like the crazy humor post about the sloths over at Dennys Funny Quotes. The sloth post has gone past 30,000 views. People just love the cute little guys in the video. It's for a good cause too - a sloth sanctuary in Costa Rica.
Thanks, all of you, for visiting, commenting, subscribing in feeds and email updates! Your support is much appreciated!
Check out the latest findings to answer the 200 year old questions baffling astronomers.
Artist rendition of Epsilon Aurigae
From Denny: For a couple of centuries now astronomers have been baffled by the star Epsilon Aurigae (pronounced EP-si-lon au-RYE-gee). They have been frustrated to discover the reason why the brightness of the star always dims for about a two year period. The star's light fluctuates regularly in a cycle of about 27.1 years.
In the winter sky this time of year look up to see Polaris and to the northeast The Big Dipper. Now track along to Capella and just to the right of that is Epsilon Aurigae and it's quite faint. We are in that dim cycle for the star from 2009 to 2011.
Check out the popular science stories this year that fascinated us like the volcanic explosions and earthquakes.
From Denny: Thanks for all your support this year! What a year of massive planet wide geologic changes: polar glacial ice caps melting rapidly, high scale earthquakes in Haiti, Chile and around the world, volcanoes spewing lava high into the air in Iceland and Indonesia - stopping air travel. It's been a humbling year for the human race on planet Earth. Floods, blizzards, mudslides, oceans rising, the Earth is changing and we are here to witness it.
Just this December we got to see the first lunar eclipse on a Winter Solstice, the first in almost 500 years. The next one is scheduled for 2094. Here in my region of the world we experienced the British Petroleum Oil Spill Disaster. As usual Big Business and the governments like America and Britain have shafted the locals who have gone bankrupt, personal and business. The millions of barrels of oil still lurks on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico and continues to wash ashore. There are now light orange alligators found off the coast of Florida.
Here in Louisiana BP's oil spill devastated our fishing industry, killing the oyster beds and safe fishing grounds for everything from shrimp and spillway crawfish to salt water fish. The fishing industry has declined by 70 percent with no help from BP or our federal government. Big Business is just plain greedy and refuses to take care of the planet and future generations.
Out of this oil spill disaster has come some interesting ideas of how to clean up future oil spills. More ideas abound for new types of alternative fuels using the ocean to help produce it. Humanity can be innovative and creative if we just curb our greed to use our resources faster than we can replace them.
Take a look around. There are plenty of humor posts too and lots of technology cartoons for a grin.
The Soul Calendar - Wondering about our universe and the universe inside us.
