Photos of the Earth

Many of the photographs in this entry and the next few are from APOD, Astronomy Photo of the Day [recommended] or the NASA Image of the Day [also recommended].

Regarding this first image which got a lot of attention: it’s not a photograph, per se. It’s a rendering of data. Mind blowing in more than one way.

Viral Image The Biggest and Bluest Marble – Kara Swisher – Media – AllThingsD

Enjoy:

(Image Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring)

APOD 2012 January 3 – A Full Sky Aurora Over Norway

2012 January 3

A Full Sky Aurora Over Norway
Image Credit & Copyright: Sebastian Voltmer

APOD 2011 October 28 – October Skylights

2011 October 28

October Skylights
Image Credit & Copyright: Malcolm Park

Fire in the Sky and on the Ground Image of the Day

acquired September 17, 2011

Amazing Time-lapse Video of Auroras as Seen From the ISS [Video] – How-To Geek

APOD 2012 January 1 – To Fly Free in Space

2012 January 1

To Fly Free in Space
STS-41B, NASA

Amazing Space Photo From Twitter – Peter Kafka – Social – AllThingsD

Here’s one NASA’s Ron Garan beamed to earth yesterday from his perch in the International Space Station.

His caption: “This is what the Moon looked like 16 times today #FromSpace We had simultaneous sunsets + moonsets”

APOD 2011 November 14 – Waterfall, Moonbow, and Aurora from Iceland

2011 November 14

Waterfall, Moonbow, and Aurora from Iceland
Image Credit & Copyright: Stephane Vetter (Nuits sacrees)

The long shadow of Mt. Rainier Bad Astronomy Discover Magazine

Here in Boulder we get magnificent sunsets, especially in the summer when the clouds interplay with the mountains to the west. But I have never seen anything like this: the shadow of Washington state’s Mt. Rainier cast along the clouds at sunrise:

That’s amazing. Mt. Rainier is a volcano, climbing to a height of over 14,000 feet (4300 meters).

Love and Joy for the New Year Image of the Day

acquired December 21, 2011download large image (341 KB, JPEG, 2128×1416)

In November and December 2011, professional and amateur astronomers reveled in observing a sun-grazing comet that dove close to the Sun and survived for a return flight back to the outer solar system. Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) enjoyed their own surreal view of the comet as it appeared on Earth’s horizon on the day of the solstice.

ISS Commander Dan Burbank captured a series of digital photographs of Comet Lovejoy on December 21, 2011, as it rose above Earth’s limb

Nickel Cobalt

$This up to 1000 years old snow has metamorphosed into highly pressurized glacier ice that contains almost no air bubbles. Thus it absorbs the visible light despite the scattered shortest blue fraction, giving it its distinct deep blue waved appearance. This cavity in the glacier ice formed as a result of a glacial mill, or moulin. Rain and meltwater on the glacier surface is channelled into streams that enter the glacier at crevices. The waterfall melts a hole into the glacier while the ponded water drains towards lower elevations by forming long ice caves with an outlet at the terminus of the glacier. The fine grained sediments in the water along with wind blown sediments cause the frozen meltwater stream to appear in a muddy colour while the top of the cave exhibits the deep blue colour. Due to the fast movement of the glacier of about 1 m per day over uneven terrain this ice cave cracked up at its end into a deep vertical crevice, called cerrac. This causes the indirect daylight to enter the ice cave from both ends resulting in homogeneous lighting of the ice tunnel.$

This up to 1000 years old snow has metamorphosed into highly pressurized glacier ice that contains almost no air bubbles. Thus it absorbs the visible light despite the scattered shortest blue fraction, giving it its distinct deep blue waved appearance. This cavity in the glacier ice formed as a result of a glacial mill, or moulin.

Photos of the Earth is a post from: Ah, Wilderness!. Thank you for subscribing. Let me know what you think. peace, mjh

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Election, QOTD

“The party that once sold hope has become instead the party of grouchy codgers yelling at the future to get off their lawn.” — Leonard Pitts Jr. [amen] #qotd

Wed 02/01/12 mjh

Looking for morning in America – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com

It reminds us that Republicans are no longer about sunshine and can-do. These days, they simply seem cranky and dyspeptic. As in Herman Cain vowing to build a fence to electrocute Mexicans, Newt Gingrich verbally punching out the media and debate audiences cheering for record executions and the death of the uninsured. As in Jan Brewer poking her finger in the president’s face.

Under Reagan, optimism about the future was the Republican brand. But that brand has curdled in the ensuing 30 years and the party that once sold hope has become instead the party of grouchy codgers yelling at the future to get off their lawn.

Thus, it has become the party of resentment and resistance, the last stand against ongoing racial, religious, cultural and sexual upheaval, the Alamo in the fight to forestall change. …Ronald Reagan would not recognize his party today. Morning in America is almost 30 years gone. It’s high noon now.

Looking for morning in America – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com

Ah, Wilderness!, PotD

The Big Picture from The Boston Globe [recommended]

Wed 02/01/12 mjh

Each week, The Big Picture features one long page full of photos of a current event. These photos are always very professional and gorgeous, appearing in a large format. My one complaint is that scrolling inevitably fails to line most of the photos up correctly; I wish there were a better mechanism for moving between photos.

2012 Marking the New Year – The Big Picture – Boston.com

Around the world people celebrated with fireworks, kisses, blessings, gatherings, cheers, watching the sunrise and plunges into icy bodies of water to welcome in a new year. Here’s a look back at how some of them marked the transition. – Lloyd Young (41 photos total)

Fireworks explode in the sky over Bucharest, Romania, at midnight, Sunday, Jan. 1, 2012, during street celebrations of the new year. Large crowds gathered downtown Romania’s capital taking advantage of the dry weather to attend the celebrations. (Vadim Ghirda/Associated Press)

The Year in Pictures Part I – The Big Picture – Boston.com

(36 photos total)

A wave caused by a tsunami flows into the city of Miyako from the Heigawa estuary in Iwate Prefecture after a magnitude 8.9 earthquake struck Japan March 11, 2011. (Mainichi Shimbun /Reuters)

The year in Pictures Part II – The Big Picture – Boston.com

(45 photos total)

A cloud of ash billowing from Puyehue volcano near Osorno in southern Chile, 870 km south of Santiago, on June 5. Puyehue volcano erupted for the first time in half a century on June 4, 2011, prompting evacuations for 3,500 people as it sent a cloud of ash that reached Argentina. The National Service of Geology and Mining said the explosion that sparked the eruption also produced a column of gas 10 kilometers (six miles) high, hours after warning of strong seismic activity in the area. (Claudio Santana/AFP/Getty Images) )

The Year in Pictures Part III – The Big Picture – Boston.com

(51 photos total)

A defaced portrait of fugitive Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi in Tripoli on Sept. 1, 2011 as the fallen strongman vowed again not to surrender in a message broadcast on the 42nd anniversary of the coup which brought him to power. (Patrick Baz/AFP/Getty Images)

The Big Picture from The Boston Globe [recommended] is a post from: Ah, Wilderness!. Thank you for subscribing. Let me know what you think. peace, mjh

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The Atheist's Pulpit

Meeting myself again

Tue 01/31/12 mjh

I ran into myself in the park again this morning. Last time, Future Mark got out of a car and shuffled over to a bench. There he sat, smoking a cigar, in contemplation. It was a fatter cigar than I currently like, but tastes change over the years. I intuited that this was a ritual for him/me to get away from some less-than-ideal living situation. Perhaps, Future Mark lives in a small apartment or shares space with a friend. More likely, he lives in a warehouse for the not-yet-dead. In the park, with a good smoke, he reclaims our independence, however briefly.

Back then, I avoided contact with Future Mark out of fear of some time paradox. Since then, apparently, I will learn that’s not a problem, because this morning Future Mark approached me, or, more correctly, Luke. Mark held out his hand for Luke to sniff. Luke looked back and forth between us and managed to reconcile the situation; dogs live in the now. Mark looked me in the eye as if delivering a message just for me: "Our dog lived to be 16." (Good news that has a bitter end.) "I can’t imagine ever replacing him." I tried to comfort him what little I could: "We felt that way about Lucky. Then, when the time was right, Luke came along." Cold comfort, to replace grief with delayed grief, but we have only one other choice: love nothing. Besides, the warehouse probably forbids pets.

A few minutes later, I saw Future Mark bend over stiffly to brush some leaves off a memorial plaque beneath a tree. Then, he passed us, staring straight ahead, his face at once rigid and fluid with grief. I knew his pain. I didn’t dare look at the name on that plaque.

NADA - New American Dark Ages

“American gun laws are downright insane”- Leonard Pitts Jr. [amen]

Mon 01/30/12 mjh

Rep. Giffords’ departure a blow to democracy – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com

This episode joins a long list of elections overturned and social movements derailed by men with guns, as in the shootings of Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, Huey Long, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, the Kennedy brothers, George Wallace, George Moscone, Harvey Milk, Martin Luther King, Jr. Somehow, people who should never have guns never have trouble getting them. John Kennedy’s assassin, a disaffected former Marine who had once defected to the Soviet Union, bought his by mail order. King’s assassin, a wanted fugitive, bought his over the counter.

Jared Loughner, the man now in jail for the Tucson massacre, was able to legally obtain a gun despite the fact that he was a mentally deranged man who had been rejected by the U.S. Army and kicked out of a community college. Which suggests that, while Loughner may be unbalanced, American gun laws are downright insane.

And they will likely stay insane, so long as our politics remain a hatefully polarized affair where the two “sides” glower at one another like boxers in their respective corners and “compromise” is a dirty word.

After all, the solution here is not rocket science.

We need meaningful background checks on all gun purchases — no loopholes. A mentally unstable man should not have legal access to a gun, period.

We need to ban fully automatic weapons from private use. The hunter who needs a gun that fires hundreds of rounds a minute isn’t much of a hunter.

We need to encourage gun safety classes so that poorly secured firearms stop ending up in the hands of little children.

At the very least, we need to have a serious national dialogue about these and other possible solutions.

But we won’t.