Posts from ‘science’
Zoom into Tycho
Military force was authorized yesterday minutes after the E.T.’s 48 hour deadline had passed. The E.T’s were given an ultimatum to stop their whale poaching and leave Earth or face military action.
Here’s a recent video update/primer on the repairs underway at CERN. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is being built in a circular tunnel 27 km in circumference. The tunnel is buried around 50 to 175 m. underground. It straddles the Swiss and French borders on the outskirts of Geneva.
the philodendron on the porch is sporting some impressive (IMHO) new growth this spring.
Blue Jays: 4 Robin: 0
Well, it was fun to watch the bird cam for a few days while mama bird kept her four eggs warm, but in the end, after discovering her nest hidden cleverly in a hanging house plant, some nefarious blue jays absconded with her eggs and she was never to be seen again. The only evidence left: a disheveled nest, swinging gently in the breeze.
…Or in this case the driveway, if you’re there, let me just say that you can definitely hear it. Our house barely got a scrape, but on the easement just out back, right off the side of the patio, the neighbor’s Ford got pinned down…but it’s a solid beast and took a lickin’ and just kept on tickin’. It was windy last week, but today was relatively calm when this happened. here’s video of the tree people cutting down the rest of the tree.
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The moon will be at perigee (the closest point in the moon’s orbit around earth each month) at precisely 11:37UT today, the closest perigee in 2009, orbiting roughly about 357, 298 kilometers from earth°. It will also be a full moon tonight (January 11th, 03:27UT), but that happens about 16 hours later. For those in the bay area (40° lat), the moon rises at 16:02, is completely full at 19:27, and then sets at 06:51 on Sunday morning.
That will make the moon appear almost 14% larger as it looms beautifully in the evening sky. It will also be a whopping 30% brighter, so if your looking through a telescope, use a filter to prevent eye fatigue. I’ll try and post some pics or video later this evening.
Plus, don’t forget venus which has been twinkling brightly in the west in the early evening; tonight at a distance of .71AU.
And if you ever want to know what’s in the sky, at anytime or anywhere on earth, check out the planetarium by paul neave.
°each month the shamptonian institute calculates this figure by multiplying the mean radius of the earth (6,371.0 km) multiplied by the true distance (as listed in the The Astronomical Almanac for the year 2009).
For those of you in the world who may have caught tonight’s crescent moon: here’s a brief, janky glimpse from a basic flipcam I hand held through a 150mm (6 inch) reflector with a 35mm eyepiece. The battery ran out while it was drifting below the horizon.
