The Pithy Amateur Astronomer

I decided to do some reading on the "end of the Earth in 2012" and found this in Wikipedia.

The original article can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibiru_collision

"The idea of the Nibiru encounter originated with Nancy Lieder, a Wisconsin woman who claims that as a girl she was contacted by gray extraterrestrials called Zetas, who implanted a communications device in her brain"

I rest my case.

I understand that the crew of the ISS are not phased by the way this looks but it would soooo mess with my perspective.

Pretty spectacular. Check it out in the link below.

http://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/top100/

This image was taken by the Cassini spacecraft of two moons of Saturn (Dione and Rhea) in what appears to be a marriage of the two moons. This image is just an optical illusion but it is still neat to look at.

"OOOOOO PRETTY" -What my nephew would say.

This star cloud was featured on APOD and, as always, I thought I would share it.

Source: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100809.html

Explanation: What's lighting up nebula IRAS 05437+2502? No one is sure. Particularly enigmatic is the bright upside-down V that defines the upper edge of this floating mountain of interstellar dust, visible near the image center. In general, this ghost-like nebula involves a small star forming region filled with dark dust that was first noted in images taken by the IRAS satellite in infrared light in 1983. Shown above is a spectacular, recently released image from the Hubble Space Telescope that, although showing many new details, has not uncovered a clear cause of the bright sharp arc. One hypothesis holds that the glowing arc was created by a massive star that somehow attained a high velocity and has now left the nebula. Small, faint IRAS 05437+2502 spans only 1/18th of a full moon toward the constellation of the Bull (Taurus).

Older video but still worth to watch. I keep hearing people go on about 2012 blah blah blah. This video brings up some pretty good points refuting those ideas.

Enjoy!

Source: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100806.html / NASA / Goddard / SDO AIA Team

Earlier this week, the Sun released a Coronal Mass Ejection that made the 93 million mile trip to Earth. I have been searching for images of the auroras and finally found one on Space.com. Thankfully the Earth possesses safety measures to keep us from getting nuked by our nearest star.


Source: Space.com and www.fredrik_broms.fotosidan.se

I was looking forward to hearing about my favorite Mars robot (Spirit) waking up but it isn't looking like it will happen. It is a sad but good outcome for the little rover. Who knows, maybe one day when no one is looking she will wake up and talk our ears off.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/30jul_spirit2/

"Astronomers have imaged a very young brown dwarf, or failed star, in a tight orbit around a young nearby sun-like star."

Read more: http://www.physorg.com/news199635354.html

Source: http://www.physorg.com/news199594786.html

Astronomers Find Planets in Unusually Intimate Dance around Dying Star

Hundreds of extrasolar planets have been found over the past decade and a half, most of them solitary worlds orbiting their parent star in seeming isolation. With further observation, however, one in three of these systems have been found to have two or more planets. Planets, it appears, come in bunches. Most of these systems contain planets that orbit too far from one another to feel each other's gravity. In just a handful of cases, planets have been found near enough to one another to interact gravitationally.