Check out the unusual night to early morning sky this month.
From Denny: Talk about funny. At our house when we were star gazing off the back porch early in the morning this past week we sure were wondering what was going on in the sky above us. Was there actually a UFO sighting? It sure looked bizarre.
Turns out that the planet Venus is low in the sky on the morning horizon, shining brightly its light due to the extended daylight savings time. So, do try to resist the urge to run on down to your local police station to report your very first UFO sighting. :) Oh, well, so much for debunking the fun speculation at our house - and now yours.
Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss. It sure is more fun to speculate. Of course that isn't going to stop the heavy call volume at local planetariums, observatories, weather offices and, yes, maybe even police stations that will be getting peppered with excited or anxious inquiries. Venus will be low in the sky for a couple of weeks so enjoy the planetary version of a UFO sighting.
The UFO sighting idea stemmed from viewing this dazzling silvery-white star-type object that suddenly made an appearance in the sky about 30 minutes before sunrise on 3 November. It was located just above the east-southeast horizon. Since then it has climbed higher in the sky on following mornings.
I have to admit the late sunrise combined with Venus so low on the eastern horizon is a real jolt to what usually is considered normal. Did you know that since daylight savings time extended into the first week of November 2008, sunrises at this time occur later - than even in the dead of winter? In some parts of the country sunrise does not occur until as late as 8 A.M.
Did you know the simple way to judge a 10 degree difference of how a planet rises in the sky is to hold up your clenched fist at arm's length? The portion of the sky that your clenched fist covers is about 10 degrees.
By 16 November Venus will have climbed about 20 degrees higher in the sky. By 25 November Venus will climb about 27 degrees. By the end of November the beautiful shining planet of Venus will hang up in the sky by about 30 degrees higher at sunrise. Venus will rise a good three hours before the sun by then. If you think Venus is bright now just keep looking up. On your morning commute to work you will find that Venus shines brighter and brighter during the month for quite an impressive early morning show.
Venus is closer to Earth this month - about 25 million miles - and moving much faster across the background stars. That's probably why so many people thought it was a UFO sighting since Venus is moving at such a rapid rate in comparison to the rest of the stars.
This photo was taken on 16 May 2010 with a crescent moon and planet Venus in Mudanjiang City, in northeast China.
A dazzling Venus could prompt a flurry of UFO sightings. Since 3 November the planet is now fully visible and is not quite so scary just shining a mysterious light. For exact locations in the night sky you can check out this Sky Map for Nov 2010.
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Arts: Whimsical Fiber Artist Ed Bing Lee - This fiber artist has a sense of the whimsy while he explores new ways to use simple knotting techniques to develop his art.
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Check out rare summer-autumn twilight glow that only happens about every 20 years.
From Denny: Check out tonight's Super Harvest Moon! It happens to occur on the Fall Solstice with the setting sun that bringing this summer season to a close. Someone tell that to our Louisiana weather guy still predicting 90-degree heat through the week, well above average temperature for this area.
What's so special about this Super Harvest Moon that has people all gaga-faced is that it will produce a wonderful glow. The glowing light is from the rising moon and setting sun that create this 360-degree summer-autumn twilight glow which only happens rarely.
Make sure to observe the moon during its rise as you will find it appears to be inflated. Astronomers and physicists have yet to figure out why this happens. The low-hanging moon appears to be much wider than it actually is, creating an illusion. We all have heard the old songs about moon magic. Hmmmm... maybe there is something there after all. :)
Keep looking up as the view only gets better. The precise time of the autumnal equinox is 11:09 PM EDT, where summer changes over to fall. The Harvest Moon will be high overhead by this time along with its very visible partner, the planet Jupiter. They will be easy to find as they will be the two brightest in the sky.
Where did the name of Harvest Moon originate? As you can guess it had to do with farmers and agriculture. Before the days of electricity farmers used the full moon to extend their working days beyond the sunset. In fact, this Harvest Moon shone so bright it helped them finish up harvesting so they could get their crops to the market in time.
Usually, the Harvest Moon falls a few days or weeks before or after the fall equinox. It's called the Super Harvest Moon because it falls exactly on the fall equinox. The last time it happened was back in 23 Sept 1991. It won't come this way again until the year 2029. So enjoy it while it lasts!
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From Denny: Am I'm busy playing "catch up" with all these posts in draft form - after 10 days off line, changing internet providers. :) Hope everyone had a great weekend!
Roundup of Late Night Funnies - 14 Sept 2010 - Catch up on the latest comedic musings and amusements from Colbert, Stewart and late night show jokes, funny video clips and newest cartoons before they post for the week at other sites.
Posts Roundup at Dennys Blogs - 12 Sept 2010 - Check out news, political opinion, political humor and funny cartoons, recipes, poetry, funny posts, photography, spiritual thoughts and great quotes.
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*** Come by for a visit and check out my other blogs:
*** Check out news, political opinion, political humor and funny cartoons, recipes, science news, poetry, funny posts, photography, spiritual thoughts and great quotes.
From Denny: I tell ya, this summer heat index of 116 degrees Fahrenheit, along with the WikiLeaks nutjob child who thinks he's stalking me on this blog, you know it's a full moon out tonight. This poor kid has scrambled eggs for brains, taking a second and third run at me.
Guess it's time to go ahead and do another WikiLeaks post to explain to him and his silly little friends living in some gaming fantasy world in their heads that real life is not a computer game. It's much more serious because the people who are stalking them are out for a lot more than winning their props as a gamer.
As far as posts go I did manage to find some interesting health and science news and had some fun with some photo posts too. Take a look.
The Social Poets:
BP Screws Over Gulf Residents With New Claims Restrictions - BP continues to play the shell game of moving the pea with misdirection and sleight of hand, with the definition of "legitimate claims" an elusive target to hit for residents.
Poetess Defies, Shocks Saudi Arabia - A brave woman in the Middle East dares to criticize her religion and her culture - through a live TV national poetry competition, the Arab world version of American Idol.
Roundup of Late Night Funnies - 16 Aug 2010 - Check out this week's funny late night jokes and latest cartoons lampooning politics to American culture, with a funny side dish of funny video clips thrown in to keep you grinning.
Check Out NASA Images of Devastating Pakistan Floods - These aerial view flood images of the entire country of Pakistan are mind-boggling in their scope of how the monsoon flooding is affecting the lives of millions.
Arts: Whimsical Fiber Artist Ed Bing Lee - This fiber artist has a sense of the whimsy while he explores new ways to use simple knotting techniques to develop his art.
*** Coffee cup from Brazil photo by Quoquo at flickr
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*** The fun side of archaeology is what you find in pristine condition after thousands of years.
From Denny: 4,200 years ago the Head of the Royal Scribes, Shendwas, father of Khonsu, died and was entombed in Egypt. His tomb was recently uncovered and what was astonishing was the artwork. It looks almost as if it were painted only recently for that's how vivid the colors are after thousands of years buried under the sand.
"The tomb includes two false doors with colorful paintings depicting the two people buried there, a father and a son who served as heads of the royal scribes," said Abdel-Hakim Karar, a top archaeologist at Saqqara.
Inscribed on the father's false door: the name of Pharaoh Pepi II, whose 90-year reign is believed to be the longest of the pharaohs. That dates the double tomb to the 6th dynasty. That time period was the beginning of the decline of the Old Kingdom. It was also known as the Age of Pyramids.
Egypt's antiquities chief, Zahi Hawass, said "the new finds were the most distinguished tombs ever found from the Old Kingdom because of their amazing colors. If the area is excavated it could unveil the largest cemetery of ancient Egypt."
Shendwas and Khonsu were identified as royal scribes and the "supervisors of the mission." That meant they were in charge of delegations overseeing the supply of materials used for pyramids construction. Who knew writers and historians had so much authority in the ancient world? :)
From the past three years of digging, there have been found six tombs dating back to the Old Kingdom. This double tomb was unearthed six weeks ago. The area in which they are digging is a large burial ground. There are tombs from Egypt's earliest history up through Roman times. Check it out.
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From Denny: These are all the posts I managed to get out this week while suffering through all this crazy summer heat and humidity. This summer Louisiana didn't have the usual whiners' bragging rights about the summer heat. The rest of America got to "share" - and a lot of the world too! :)
One bit of good news: Prez Obama is thinking of lifting the oil moratorium here on the Gulf coast. Uh, yeah, put 300,000 people back to work would be helpful for this economy - not to mention the rest of America would appreciate not having their fuel prices skyrocket this winter from a low supply.
Earth to White House: It sure would be great if you would lift this moratorium immediately - and gift it to Congressman Charlie Melancon to announce it. Lifting the moratorium would help Melancon win in November against Whore House Vitter, a complete embarrassment as a senator from Louisiana. Louisiana is all a twitter and excited about getting back to work - so make it happen, Mr. Prez, and it would be much appreciated.
And to my StumbleUpon friends: Now isn't one silly email a whole lot less annoying than a bunch of "shares"? :)
America and World Politics Cartoons - 14 Aug 2010 - Check out the latest opinions on the economy, the November elections, the building of a mosque on Ground Zero in New York City and education in America now that budget cuts have arrived.
Posts Roundup at Dennys Blogs - 8 Aug 2010 - Check out news, political opinion - serious and funny cartoons, recipes, science news, poetry, funny posts, photography, spiritual thoughts and great quotes.
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*** Look up in the middle of the night to see as many as 100 shooting stars above your head for a spectacular show brought to you by the Universe!
From Denny: Every August we night sky watchers get to enjoy the Perseid meteor showers. This year it's supposed to be spectacular with hundreds whizzing by in the sky for our enjoyment. It peaks from midnight to dawn. In my area there will probably be cloud cover like most years but I'm still getting up in the middle of the night hoping to catch a glimpse. Hot and humid Louisiana is not exactly the best viewing of astronomical events. :)
Meteor showers are made up of what?
This famous meteor shower is actually the exhaust plume of the comet called 109/Swift-Tuttle. We really have to work on getting scientists to employ a Romance era English professor - who secretly writes modern day romance novels on the side for outrageous income - to come up with some better and more creative names.
So here's what happens as this ST comet enters the inner solar system. As it whips around the sun it starts heating up. The ice pockets on the comet melt, pretty much skip the liquid stage just for fun, and turn into gas. Those ice pockets also spew out dust and rock chunks as the ice is coming loose. Like any good drama queen exiting the stage, as this comet exits the inner solar system, there is still the long train of a debris trail that remains for our Earth to pass through. And we on Earth find this process terribly romantic as we gaze up toward the heavens.
Planet Earth started its move into Swift-Tuttle’s stream of dust by the middle of July. "The debris is a very old stream that has been building for a long time and is a very dense concentration of dust," says Peter Jenniskens, a meteor researcher at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif.
"Indeed, if you look back at records from the Middle Ages, you can see that people in the Middle Ages were seeing the Perseid meteor shower," he says. This year the Perseid shower is trumpeted to be above average.
How much will you see?
Under the best of conditions this meteor shower may generate up to 100 meteors an hour. It all depends upon just how dark your skies are going to be so you have to know your area. If you are in an area where you can hike up to the top of a mountain you can expect to see up to 108 meteors an hour. The peak viewing hours are from 3 AM to 4 AM Eastern Standard Time. And the official word is too that our night sky will be having a double feature: a waning-gibbous moon. Read that as it's a new moon so the Perseid shower won't have to compete with a lot of moonlight.
"Earth will be passing through a denser patch of Swift-Tuttle's dust stream than usual," according to William Cooke, who heads NASA's Meteroid Environment Office at the Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. "The main dust stream got a slight stir from Saturn, and we're also running into a patch of material the comet off-loaded in 1479," Cooke explains.
Why called the Perseid shower?
The meteors appear to be emerging from the area of the night sky that contains the constellation Perseus. For some good advice of how to photograph this event and some more detailed viewing tips check out the American Meteor Society's website.
Check out the "Fluxtimator." You can check out what is likely to happen in your area for meteor showers besides this August show of the Perseid. The graph will automatically adjust itself to give you the best viewing times for your location when you select which meteor shower, your nearest major urban area, your viewing conditions and the date. It will even tell you how many of those famous shooting stars you are likely to see.
If your alarm clock fails to rouse you tonight, don't worry. You still have a chance the next morning at about the same times.
History of the Swift-Tuttle comet
This comet was discovered as far back in history as 1862 by two astronomers: Lewis Swift and Horace Tuttle. They both saw this comet within days of each other. I guess they agreed to both claim bragging rights - so the astronomy community decided to split the difference and name the comet after both of them.
This comet swings around our sun once in every 133.28 years. The last time we saw it was back in 1992 and it will return again in 2126, assuming we all survive the Mayan predictions of 2012. Astronomers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory are pretty excited about the next visit. They say it should be spectacular because the comet will pass so close to Earth, by a distance of only 14 million miles.
The Oort cloud is where the Swift-Tuttle comet originated. The Oort cloud is this huge spherically shaped cloud made up of frozen leftovers from when the solar system was formed, about 4.6 billion years ago. The word is that when the ST comet was passing through the inner solar system that planet Jupiter took an interest and captured it. After that event about 160,000 years ago the comet's orbit around the sun shrank.
While Jupiter was successful at rounding up this comet into the zone Jupiter's gravity was not able to reel in this comet to become part of the short-period comets stable. Those guys reappear about every 20 years or even in less time. This ST comet proved difficult to tame and joined the ranks of comets like Halley's Comet, having an orbital period that could range from 20 to 200 years.
Every time the ST comet tours through the inner solar system it makes a teasing pass across Jupiter's orbit. Yet it manages to remain just out of reach of grasping Jupiter so the ST comet's travel plans and path are never significantly altered. This is one crafty stealthy comet determined to remain free to do as it will. One thing is for sure is that every time the ST comet passes by it slowly thickens that famous dust stream it leaves behind for us all on Earth to admire.
The best place to view this comet will be in the Northern Hemisphere. Yeah, since I live in south Louisiana on the Gulf of Mexico I only get to view about 30 to 40 meteors an hour - and that's at the peak. It's still worth the spectacular view in the wee hours of the morning.
To enjoy your night out watching the sky for free from the University of Texas's McDonald Observatory:
* Try to drive out to a safe and secure dark spot outside your city or town where you can reduce the light pollution that will interfere with your viewing. Be sure to arrive early enough to allow for your eyes to adjust to the dark. Here in Louisiana we do have a small observatory in a large park setting where city residents go for these events.
* Make sure you have a low horizon to the northeast. This is where the constellation Perseus will rise.
* Either lay on a blanket or a chaise lounge you've brought just for this purpose (you plan-ahead person, you) and position yourself so the horizon is just within your peripheral vision. Since Perseus moves across the night sky, be ready to tweak your viewing position as it does so.
* As the folks at the observatory say: "Treat meteor watching like you would the 4th of July fireworks. Pack comfortable chairs, bug spray, food and drinks, blankets, plus a red-filtered flashlight for reading maps and charts without ruining your night vision. Binoculars are not necessary. Your eyes will do just fine."
* If you need a quick red filter for your flashlight, try picking up a tail-light repair kit from your local auto-parts store. The red plastic works well and is fairly easy to cut.
Astronomers and the night sky Photo by Peter Petrov
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From Denny: This week I was forced "off the grid" on two different days. Monday and to noon Tuesday my server was off line - which is rare - but when it happens on a Monday I always figure there was an obnoxious computer virus attack. Then again on Thursday we had some seriously severe thunderstorms in our area for the day, lots of intense lightning which we never used to see until this year. Even my outdoor cats made a run for inside the house with a "Make way, lady, we're running in full speed: incoming!"
Well, I made good use of the "snail time" and read some "snail books" - quite the treat when normally I'm fast paced and hard-charging. I might try this "off the grid" vacation a bit more often as it was enjoyable! Anyway, I wasn't able to publish all that I wanted to this week and will see what I can do to get caught up for you. Thanks for your continued support, much appreciated! :)
Roundup of Late Night Funnies - 2 Aug 2010 - *** Check out jokes from the late night comedians about American society, funny videos from Colbert and Stewart and a few of the newest political cartoons.
Posts Roundup at Dennys Blogs - 1 Aug 2010 - ** Check out news, political opinion - serious and funny cartoons, recipes, science and health news, poetry, funny posts, photography, spiritual thoughts and great quotes.
2012: What Will Happen to Earth and Us? - What you can do to ensure your safety and survival as geologic time rapidly changes - and the resulting paradigm shift of humanity - is in the process of occurring.
Ethics Investigations in Congress Cartoons - 7 Aug 2010 - Check out what the cartoonists had to say this week about political corruption and the Speaker's promise to drain The Swamp. Washington, D.C. sits on a literal swamp so it's natural to get a few rats running around the place.
Gay Marriage and Society Cartoons - 7 Aug 2010 - The more things change, the more they remain the same. As gays battle for their right to marry, soon they discover the same marital experiences as everyone else. Check out the cartoonists this week.
Funny Photos: How Your Brain Can Be Fooled - Funny photos that prove how easy it is to fool your brain into interpreting a photo to mean something other than is actually true.
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*** Check out 3 video clips of the solar flares and magnetic filament in action as they create the Northern Lights on Earth.
From Denny: The Northern Lights are quite the spectacular celestial show. Right about now I wished I lived back up in Maine or along the Canadian border to be able to view this month's show in the night sky. The past few days our sun has been busy throwing off sun flares and magnetic filament to create the Northern Lights phenomenon.
The three clips feature just how spectacular the sun looks right now while space expert James Oberg explains how this celestial show can affect us here on Earth. With sun flares there are often satellite issues and that involves bank transactions like when you go to pump gas and your credit card won't scan or record the transaction because of the magnetic interference from the heavens. Oh, well, stuff your pockets full of cash if you want to travel or sit back and just enjoy the show in the night sky.
Space expert James Oberg explains what's behind the Northern Lights show:
For folks along the northern rim of the US, a second chance to see the northern lights will come when another solar outburst hits Earth Wednesday or Thursday.
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*** Check out news, political opinion - serious and funny cartoons, recipes, science and health news, poetry, funny posts, photography, spiritual thoughts and great quotes.
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