The Flipping Sun

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

The sun is getting ready to reverse its polarity, which will put us at the midway point of solar maximum. It has been an unusually quiescent solar maximum, which has gone some way to calming concerns about a potential Carrington Event. Of course it only takes one. A report that we just barely avoided one a couple of weeks ago has been the subject of some dispute. (If this link redirects you, find August 2, 2013)

A little before the one minute mark, there's an image of the Wilcox Solar Observatory at Stanford. I can't help noticing that it strongly resembles a pyramid with a sun at the apex.

DJI Phantom - Wilcox Solar Observatory, Stanford University from Rd on Vimeo.

This classic image is one that weaves itself through symbolic art:

And currency:

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An Astronomer's Paean to a Solar Flare

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

In what some might call "sun worship," astronomer Phil Plait waxes rhapsodic on how the sun giveth and the sun taketh away.

That barely constrained violence can be difficult to square with the grace and elegance of the motion. The Sun can damage our civilization, yet we also depend on it for our existence. But there you go: The Universe is full of such dichotomies.

It is harsh, inhospitable, destructive, and capable of crushing indifference.

It is pleasing, habitable, serene, and capable of life-altering beauty.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The video is a time-lapse movie of a solar flare raining in beautiful arcs onto the sun's surface. It is hard not to appreciate the beauty of the thing as we offer thanks to Sol Invictus for not taking out our entire power grid and plunging us back into a pre-technological era.

So what causes the fiery phenomenon? Coronal rain occurs when plasma in the solar atmosphere cools and gets attracted by magnetic field lines on the Sun's surface. As NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center explained in a written statement, "This plasma acts as a tracer, helping scientists watch the dance of magnetic fields on the sun, outlining the fields as it slowly falls back to the solar surface."

. . .

This eruption was special, NASA said, because it combined three out of three possible events: a solar flare, an ejection of solar material (called a coronal mass ejection) and coronal rain.

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Mona Lisa on the Moon

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Sure. Why not?

Call it the ultimate in high art: Using a well-timed laser, NASA scientists have beamed a picture of Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, to a powerful spacecraft orbiting the moon, marking a first in laser communication.

The laser signal, fired from an installation in Maryland, beamed the Mona Lisa to the moon to be received 240,000 miles (384,400 km) away by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been orbiting the moon since 2009. The Mona Lisa transmission, NASA scientists said, is a major advance in laser communication for interplanetary spacecraft.

"This is the first time anyone has achieved one-way laser communication at planetary distances," David Smith, a researcher working with the LRO's Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter — which received the Mona Lisa message — said in a statement. "In the near future, this type of simple laser communication might serve as a backup for the radio communication that satellites use. In the more distance future, it may allow communication at higher data rates than present radio links can provide."

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Total Eclipse: Views from the Land Down Under

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Yesterday was the last total solar eclipse we'll see until 2015. Aussies had a great view. The rest of us, not so much. But thanks to the wonders of technology, we can look at some pretty pictures. Is it as good as being there? No. But it's a little reminder of just how small this planet has become.

A total solar eclipse will occur on Tuesday afternoon, when the moon passes briefly between the Earth and the Sun, obscuring the solar rays and creating a 95-mile-wide shadow over parts of the Southern Hemisphere.

Only people who are lucky enough to be in northern Australia or somehow find themselves in the Indian or Pacific Oceans along the path of the eclipse -- where it will actually be early Wednesday morning -- will be able to see the celestial event.

But don't worry if you're not there in the flesh -- broadcasts of the eclipse will be available on several live streams and The Huffington Post is live blogging the event, bringing updates from astronomers and other experts, some of whom are on the ground in Australia.

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Once in a Very Blue Moon

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Tomorrow will be our last chance to see a blue moon until July of 2015. Of course, blue moons are no bluer than any other full moon -- only rarer. They're anomalous calendrical events that come about because our lunar cycle doesn't quite jibe with our 12 month, solar calendar. By our current definition, blue moons are really just like other full moons except that they happen to fall as a second full moon in a month. That makes them kind of neat, so people write songs about them.

What makes this blue moon particularly special is that it is also the day that Neil Armstrong will be laid to rest.

There's a rare `blue moon' on Friday, a fitting wink to Neil Armstrong by the cosmic calendar.

That's the day of a private service for Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, who died last Saturday in Ohio at age 82.

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Rover Curiosity Takes Pictures on Mars

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

History was made today as Curiosity landed on Mars. The rover has begun returning photos from the red planet.

Thanks to a remarkable combination of engineering and mathematics, a NASA satellite in orbit around Mars was able to capture a picture of the split second when Curiosity fell from the skies to its successful landing on the surface of the red planet.

"We have ended one phase of the mission much to our enjoyment," mission manager Mike Watkins said. "But another part has just begun."

And in a splendid second act, the rover beamed back its first images from the surface of the planet, including a shot Monday night of Mars' Mount Sharp looming in the distance, the object of Curiosity's own programmed curiosity.

The rover's shadow can be seen in the foreground, with dunes in the distance. And beyond rises the highest peak of Mount Sharp, at a height of about 3.4 miles taller than Mount Whitney in California. The Curiosity team hopes to drive the rover to the mountain to investigate its lower layers, which scientists think hold clues to past environmental change.

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Now Where Did That Galaxy Come From?

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A team of astronomers has located a well-formed, spiral galaxy in the early universe where one just shouldn't be -- only three billion years from the Big Bang.

Theories of galaxy formation held that the Universe was still too chaotic a place to allow such a perfectly formed or "grand-design" spiral to form.

It should take far longer for gravity to bring matter into thin, neat discs.

But a team reporting in Nature says the galaxy BX442 got the gravitational "kick" it needed to form a spiral from a smaller "dwarf galaxy" orbiting it.

. . .

Having proved that such grand-design spiral galaxies can exist at such an early age of the Universe, Dr Law said the team would now like to look into larger, wider-ranging galaxy surveys such as the Hubble telescope's ongoing Candels survey. 

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Solar Fireworks, Solar Fears

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

The sun has had an active Fourth of July week, setting off a number of fireworks of its own. Sunspot AR1515 let lose with an X class solar flare on Friday, after a week of powerful ejections. An M class flare, earlier in the week caused a minor radio blackout. This one does not appear to be aimed directly at Earth but may cause further radio disruption.

The most powerful solar flare of the summer erupted from the sun on Friday, marking the latest in a string of strong storms this week from our home star.

The sun storm occurred just after 7 p.m. ET and registered as a class X1.1 solar flare — one of the strongest types of solar flares possible, according to the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center, run by NOAA and the National Weather Service.

The huge solar flare erupted from the giant sunspot AR1515, which has already fired off several other powerful storms this week. Space weather scientists were closely watching the sunspot for possible X-class flares.

. . .

In a new alert announcing the X-class solar flare, SWPC officials said the sun storm could a "wide-area blackout" in the high-frequency radio communications.

It looks like this one should miss us completely but it's a powerful reminder of the damage one of these things can do if it's aimed straight at the planet. From SpaceWeather:

The explosion hurled a CME into space. According to this movie from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, the cloud appears to be heading south and away from Earth. Update: Analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab say the CME will miss eveything. Their forecast track shows the cloud not hitting any spacecraft or planets.

The storm on sunspot AR1515 is ongoing and more CMEs are likely.

If you wish to understand why NASA is watching the sun so closely these days, it's because of a genuine threat to a world as technologically advanced -- and technologically dependent -- as ours has become. A Carrington Event of the magnitude of the one for which they are named could hurl us back to an early 1800s lifestyle... or worse.

Solar activity peaks every 11 years sending waves of charged particles careening toward the earth at speeds over 1,000 miles an hour. Much of this energy is absorbed by the upper atmosphere, but some of it gets through and hits the surface of the earth -- fortunately at levels too low to cause direct damage to humans. It can, however, interfere with the high power transmission lines which crisscross the U.S. When these lines get overloaded, they can knock out and sometimes destroy the transformers whose task it is to step down the voltage which passes through them. This is what led to the blackout in Quebec.

But scientists know that vastly larger and more destructive solar storms than this are not just possible, but inevitable. The last recorded Solar Superstorm called the "Carrington Event" occurred over a period of nine days in 1859. It is is believed to have been caused by an explosion on the sun equivalent in force to a billion hydrogen bombs. Auroras were seen as far south as the Caribbean, and telegraph networks failed across the Northern Hemisphere, in some cases even catching fire.

Nobody knows when another storm of this size will envelop our planet, but a recent estimate published in the International Journal of Research and Applications says that there is a one in eight chance of this happening within the next decade. If it does, electrical grids throughout the world will not just fail, but be destroyed. NASA warns that such an event would cause "an avalanche of blackouts carried across continents [that] ... could last for weeks to months."

Some experts worry that it could actually take years to rebuild our grids and networks. So, yeah, the sun merits watching.

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A Galaxy Far, Far Away

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Japanese astronomers claim to have found the oldest galaxy, competing with other claims yet to be confirmed.

The Japanese team calculates its galaxy was formed 12.91 billion light-years ago, and their research will be published in the Astrophysical Journal. The scientists with the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan used the Subaru and Keck telescopes on the summit of Mauna Kea.

. . .

Richard Ellis of the California Institute of Technology, an influential expert in cosmology and galaxy formation, said the latest work as more convincing than some other galaxy discoveries.

He said the Japanese claim is more "watertight," using methods that everyone can agree on. But he said it's not much of a change from a similar finding by the same team last year.

. . .

Current theory holds that the universe was born of an explosion, called the Big Bang, about 13.7 billion years ago. So astronomers using the most powerful telescopes available are peering deeper and deeper into that dawn of the universe.

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Views of Venus

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Well, we missed it. Nothing but clouds and rain here. But thanks to the magic of technology, voilà ici!

More viewing options and information can be found here.

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Today: Venus Transit 2012

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

It won't be visible from Earth again until 2117. Today the planet Venus will transit the sun and astute sky watchers in the Northern Hemisphere will see it as a tiny black dot moving across the sun's surface.

Transits of Venus happen in pairs eight years apart, with more than a century between cycles. During the pass, Venus appears as a small, dark round spot moving across the face of the sun, like a bug on a dinner plate.

. . .

Tuesday's transit, which bookends a 2004-2012 pair, begins at 6:09pm EDT (2209 GMT) and lasts for six hours and 40 minutes. Times can vary by seven minutes depending on the location of the observer.

Skywatchers on seven continents, including Antarctica, will be able to see all or part of the Venus transit, which should only be observed with telescopes outfitted with solar filters to protect the eyes.

MSNBC has detailed information on how the sun can be viewed safely.

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Dragons in Spaaaaaace!

Not sure how I feel about the commercialization of space. NASA is concerned enough that they've already registered landmark protections on the moon. But as a matter of pure metaphor I love this story. The great dragon projects herself from the earth's surface into outer space.

"Smells like a brand new car," reported Don Pettit, who on Friday grappled the Dragon with a robotic arm and berthed it to the International Space Station.

During that critical operation, there was no time to philosophize about the historical significance of welcoming the first private vehicle to the station, Pettit said during a news conference from space Saturday.

But upon reflection, he likened the event to the completion of the transcontinental railroad — celebrated by the hammering of a golden spike — that opened the Western frontier to settlement.

"This is kind of the equivalent of the golden spike," he said.

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Eclipse 2012: Random Views

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Tokyo, Japan

Shibuya, Japan

Reno, NV

Albuquerque, NM

Lago Vista, TX

Courtenay Comox Valley, BC, Canada

Antelope, CA

Redondo Beach, CA

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Ring of Fire: Eclipse 2012

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Later today an annular solar eclipse will be visible in parts of the US for the first time in nearly 18 years. The most complete view will be on the West Coast.

The western United States and eastern Asia will be treated this weekend to a rare solar spectacle when the moon slides across the sun, creating a “ring of fire.”

. . .

The solar spectacle will first be seen in eastern Asia around dawn Monday, local time. Weather permitting, millions of early risers in southern China, northern Taiwan and southeast Japan will be able to catch the ring eclipse.

Then, the late day sun (on Sunday in the U.S.) will transform into a glowing ring in southwest Oregon, Northern California, central Nevada, southern Utah, northern Arizona and New Mexico and finally the Texas Panhandle.

The Huffington Post has more on what, how, and where, including a handy chart of viewing times and locations.

As the moon revolves aroundEarth, it passes between our planet and the sun once every 29.5 days. Most of the time,the moon zips either above or below the sun, and no eclipse occurs. [Video: How to View the May 20 Solar Eclipse]

But if the moon is close to one of its orbitalnodes— the points where the orbits of Earth and the moon cross — the moon will pass directly in front of the sun and block its light. If the moon is also close to apogee,the point that marks its farthest distance from the Earth, it will not completely cover the sun, and we get an annular eclipse.

"Annular" comes from the Latin word annulus (ring) and refers to the fact that a ring of sun shines all around the moon.

They've also posted interactive maps and other viewing options. They're all kindsa into it at HuffPo. Good for them!

NASA has a list of when and where the can be seen, even in those locations outside the path of annularity. Check out the map below and click the yellow pins to see when the eclipse will be visible in that location, and for even more locations, click over to NASA's comprehensive list. (Hint: Here's a UTC time conversion table.)

. . .

If you're east of the Mississippi River, don't worry -- the Slooh Space Camera is broadcasting the event live, using telescope feeds from Japan, California, Arizona and New Mexico. Slooh's live feed begins at 5:30 p.m. EDT on Sunday.

And remember, kids. Never look directly at the sun. Not even during an eclipse.

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Robert Schoch and William Henry on the Sun

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Excellent discussion this week on William Henry's Revelations about the sun cycle and just how bad it could get. Robert Schoch is the geologist who researched the weather patterning on the Sphinx and back-dated its construction to some time before recorded history. His work has been extensively cited by Graham Hancock, Robert Bauval, and John Anthony West, who sought out his expertise to evaluate the claims of R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz. Schoch has since turned his attention to Gobekli Tepe, the oldest known temple which was fairly recently discovered in Turkey. (See here)

In this interview he discusses geological, archaeological, and mythological evidence of a civilization ending solar catastrophe in the ancient past. He describes an event that would have dwarfed the 1859 Carrington Event that saw northern lights as far south as Hawaii and set telegraph stations on fire. He is not alone in positing that this may be what the Mayan calendar warns. It also bears mentioning, I think, that one of the Time Monks' most consistent predictions is the meme "sun disease."

Schoch and Henry also discuss the possibility that the weird noise phenomenon, discussed here and here, may be associated with the unusual radiation coming from the the sun. Schoch explains the interrelationship between electromagnetic radiation and sound. We already know that the radiation bursts from the sun can be translated into sound -- like all energy, really -- so it's an interesting theory. There is a very metallic ring to what was recorded here. So this is one of the most substantive suggestions I've heard yet on this issue. 

Schoch is a sober researcher and a scholar so this is a very even-handed discussion. His book on the topic is here and more information can be found at RobertSchoch.com.

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Esoterica

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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Has King Arthur's round table been found in Scotland?

The King's Knot, a geometrical earthwork in the former royal gardens below Stirling Castle, has been shrouded in mystery for hundreds of years.

Though the Knot as it appears today dates from the 1620s, its flat-topped central mound is thought to be much older.

Writers going back more than six centuries have linked the landmark to the legend of King Arthur.

. . .

"The finds show that the present mound was created on an older site and throws new light on a tradition that King Arthur's Round Table was located in this vicinity."

We may have been a seafarin' people since before we were even human.

A team of researchers that included an N.C. State University geologist found evidence that our ancestors were crossing open water at least 130,000 years ago. That's more than 100,000 years earlier than scientists had previously thought.

Their evidence is based on stone tools from the island of Crete. Because Crete has been an island for eons, any prehistoric people who left tools behind would have had to cross open water to get there.

The tools the team found are so old that they predate the human species, said Thomas Strasser, an archaeologist from Providence College who led the team. Instead of being made by our species, Homo sapiens, the tools were made by our ancestors, Homo erectus.

Will we find the God Particle in time for Christmas?

The hunt for the Higgs particle is well ahead of schedule, say researchers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Earlier this year they said they would either discover the Higgs or confirm it does not exist by the end of 2012.

Now, because the machine is working so well, an LHC spokesman, Professor Guido Tonelli, has told BBC News that the search could be completed much sooner.

The Higgs Boson is the particle that in the physics "Standard Model" allows other particles to have mass.

Discovery or elimination of the particle is one of the LHC's major objectives; and it could come as early as Christmas 2011.

Edgar Cayce, look out! The sleeping artist is here. A nocturnal painter believes he may be receiving artistic guidance from the spirit world.

Being an artist is so easy, Lee Hadwin can do it in his sleep, but when he is awake, the 37-year-old, who got a D in art at school, cannot paint or draw to save his life.

He discovered his nocturnal talent aged four, when he began to sleepwalk and draw on his mother’s furniture.

. . .

Since then, he has produced almost 200 sleep-pictures, selling them to collectors such as illusionist Derren Brown, with one piece fetching a six-figure sum. He does not know why he can draw only in his sleep but believes it may be spirits communicating from the other side.

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Gardens in spaaaaaaaaace!

Astronauts on the first manned missions to Mars could tend “kitchen gardens” of salad and vegetables onboard spaceships, scientists claim.

Experts say the crops would not only give crews healthy food to eat during the long journey to the red planet, but would also improve the atmosphere onboard by producing oxygen and removing carbon dioxide.

In addition, the plants suggested as suitable by a NASA scientist would require minimal tending and not take up much room on spacecraft.

Bad pizza in spaaaaaaaaace!

Domino's pizza has announced plans to conquer the final frontier by opening the first pizza restaurant on the Moon.

Domino's Japanese arm has proposed a branch on Earth's nearest galactic neighbour is the latest escalation in a pizza publicity war.

Rival chain Pizza Hut set the bar high in 2001 by delivering a pizza to astronauts orbiting the Earth in the International Space Station, but Domino's fought back last year in a series of events to mark the 25th anniversary of its arrival in Japan.

Diamonds are forever.

A newly discovered alien planet that formed from a dead star is a real diamond in the rough.

The super-high pressure of the planet, which orbits a rapidly pulsing neutron star, has likely caused the carbon within it to crystallize into an actual diamond, a new study suggests.

The composition of the planet, which is about five times the size of Earth, is not its only outstanding feature. [Illustration of the diamond alien planet]

The planet's parent star is a special kind of flashing star known as a millisecond pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star formed from a supernova. The entire system, which is only the second of its kind ever discovered, is located about 4,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Serpens (The Snake).

Chimera alert! Spider goats developed for the military.

Researchers genetically engineered goats to produce milk which is packed with the same protein as silk spiders.

Once this is milked out it can be spun out and weaved into a material that is ten times stronger than steel.

The fabric can then be blended with human skin to make what the scientists hope will be tough enough to stop even a bullet.

Dutch researcher Jalila Essaidi said the ‘spidersilk’ project was called ’2.6g 329m/s’ after the weight and the velocity of a .22 calibre long rifle bullet.

An elephant never forgets. And elephants are smarter than we know.

Kandula, a seven year old Asian elephant living in Washington D.C.’s National Zoo, has proven that elephants are as smart as those that spend a lot of time around them have believed. In an experiment carried out by researchers at the zoo, the little elephant figured out all on his own, without resorting to trial and error, how to go get a cube to use as a footstool to help him reach some food that was just out of reach. The research team, led by Preston Foerder of the City University of New York, has published the results of their study on PLoS ONE.

Other animals (besides humans) such as chimpanzees and dolphins have demonstrated in various ways that they are capable of dreaming up solutions to problems in their head and then carrying them out. Called “aha” moments by researchers, such thinking, a form of insight, is one of the hallmarks of higher intelligence. Most people who have ever worked with elephants will attest to the fact that they are indeed intelligent creatures; though no one (at least in the research community) had ever witnessed an elephant using insight to solve a problem. This has perplexed scientists for several years, and has caused them to study the seeming paradox. It appears now that the team working with Kandula has seen it in action, that previous research had been attacking the problem from the wrong angle.

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More news items can always be found in the Esoterica feed in the right-hand column here.

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Kissing the Sun

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

With today's partial solar eclipse, we will complete another of what Lauren Gorgo calls sandwich cycles; two solar eclipses on either side of a lunar eclipse. And I agree with Gorgo that the lunar eclipse was a doozy.

How are you faring?

We did come up for a quick breath of air after integrating that noxious lunar eclipse, but only for a hot second before the solstice energy waves started to pull us under again.

This lunar eclipse was a doozy for many…in some cases it successfully cracked open core blocks and forced us to take a solid look at our foundations before we begin to build upon them. If your foundation was slightly damaged, most likely you spent the last 7 days repairing it. If the damage was severe or irreparable, you may have been suddenly forced to begin again…to dig up the existing foundation and lay an entirely new one. If you are one who is experiencing the latter, no worries...this is not a race. Everything is always exactly as it should be.

For all of us, the lunar eclipse provided a massive opportunity to release some deeeeeeep feelings of lack/unworthiness…we were given the chance to coddle those remaining loveless parts which, unfortunately meant revisiting some dark places in our past so that we could illuminate and reclaim those aspects of ourselves that we unknowingly left behind.

No argument. It's been intense and I've been awash in memory, nostalgia, and icky, toxic goo.  It has definitely been a time to face hard truths about ourselves and undertake the difficult work of loving them back into wholeness. And, at the same time, there's been a feeling of tremendous movement, shifting, and expansion. I've had the feeling for weeks that thing are about to kick into high gear and that many of the changes will be unexpected and surprising. It would seem Karen Bishop concurs. I got this in my email last night.

The energies have really kicked in of late and are creating massive amounts of movement within. Symptoms? You may feel like crying for no apparent reason, have a racing heart, shortness of breath, difficulty sleeping, and feel short-tempered. You may feel like you are losing it, feel acutely overwhelmed, or even as though no one is remotely making any sense.

Hectic, hectic, hectic, and busy, busy, busy are results of this fast moving energy which pushes most of everything in its path along at a very steady and rapid pace. We absolutely cannot keep up with the rapid creations now, and hence, may continually feel overloaded. Add to this the pushing of the energies themselves, and head pressure, neck stiffness, and overall PRESSURE all around are common results.

People we encounter may cut us off abruptly with a need to move away (not a very high level response with connection and unity the desired reality! --- creating even more confusion and sad hearts!), or continue to ramble on about their personal situations with a near hysteria at the core, if even so subtly (can't blame them...this energy is intense!)

Guilty as charged! I know I have been both weepy and bitchy -- not an attractive combination.

So, here's some information on the "stealth eclipse" of today, which will complete, at least, that cycle of strangeness.

If you miss the partial eclipse of the sun on Friday (July 1), don't feel bad; everyone else on the planet will likely miss it, too. But a touch of skywatching trivia makes it a rare event.

Friday's solar eclipse will occur over an extremely remote part of the world — an uninhabited region in the southern Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of Antarctica. You could even call it a "stealth" eclipse since it will probably only be seen by a few penguins and leopard seals.

. . .

On June 1, a more impressive partial solar eclipse occurred over Earth's northern polar region, stunning skywatchers across Europe and Asia. Then, on June 15, a total lunar eclipse (the first of two in 2011) occurred, with the moon turning a blood-red hue for skywatchers across the Eastern Hemisphere.

And now we have a third eclipse, and the second partial eclipse of the sun. This trio of eclipses is possible because of the mechanics of the moon's phases, according to SPACE.com's skywatching columnist Joe Rao. [Infographic: How Moon Phases Work]

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