Hunting and fishing licenses go on sale March 10

Licenses for current year expire on March 31

Wisconsin hunting, fishing, trapping and other licenses and harvest permits for fish and wildlife activities in Wisconsin go on sale Wednesday, March 10. Annual licenses are valid from April 1, 2010 through March 31, 2011. Hunting and fishing licenses for the 2009-10 license year expire on March 31, 2010.

“We’re here to answer questions regarding licenses as folks plan their hunting and fishing trips, purchase a recreational vehicle, or pursue other activities. Just contact our call center,” said Kevin Huggins, chief of licensing and information for the Department of Natural Resources.

DNR customer service staff is available to assist the public by phone and online from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week. Spanish and Hmong bilingual customer service representatives are also available.

Customers may reach Customer Service at 1-888-WDNRINFo (1-888-936-7463) or by e-mail at csweb@wisconsin.gov. An online chat link is also available at dnr.wi.gov/contact.

Information on renewing a Conservation Patrons License, which offers many different privileges, including licenses, stamps, applications, park admission and more, was included in the February issue of Wisconsin Natural Resources magazine, along with a bonus pamphlet showing how fish and wildlife license and permit fees are spent to bolster outdoor recreation.

Hunting and fishing licenses can be purchased over the Internet through the DNR Web page (click on Hunting & Fishing Licenses and Permits under Online Services); by calling toll-free 1-877-WI LICENSE (1-877-945-4236); at license sales locations; or DNR service centers during their regular business hours (check service center link for hours of operation, which vary by service center).

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Bureau of Customer Service and Licensing, (608) 266-2621

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Callaway Motorsports,Wiseco 2003 KX327cc Modified by Tom Morgan and Race Tech

Many years ago the outdoor national championships were split into three separate classes, the 125cc, 250cc and 500cc or open class as some liked to call it. The 125 class was contested by the young up and comers of the sport, while the 250 and Open division championships were contested by the more experienced racers of the day. While the 125 kids would battle it out for the full length of the series on the smaller mills, the big bikes series was split into two separate championships. The 250 National title would be decided during the first half of the outdoor series and then riders would switch over to the more powerful 500cc machines to battle it out for the Open class Championship. As the years progressed, many factories began to loose interest in the open class, as sales of these high-powered machines were down and several of the companies no longer produced an open class motocross bike. Honda and Kawasaki became the only title contenders in the open class, as they were the only two manufactures that were still selling an open class motocross bike and these bikes were even dated, as the companies were no longer putting any effort into the development of these bikes. Factory riders and privateers that raced other brands that no longer built open class bikes had to drop down to the 125 class or ride highly modified 250cc machines against the powerful 500cc Hondas and Kawasaki's. As it became more apparent that the open class was doomed to become extinct, the AMA made the decision to drop the class from AMA competition and created the 125/250cc National Championships of today.

Now that the Open class is dead in AMA national competition, the question is sometimes asked, what two stroke can a guy race and be competitive with in open class race events. Yes, these events are rare, but there is one open race in the country that still thrives and that is held once a year at the Mammoth Mountain Motocross, in Mammoth Lakes California every June.

Mammoth has been a staple event on most serious racers calendar for many years and it is often appealing for riders to enter all three-displacement classes at Mammoth, to vie for the overall championship. Back in the day, Mammoth Mountain offered a large chunk of change and the prestige of being king of Mammoth to the rider that scored the best combined finishes in the 125, 250 and 500cc classes. Sure it would be easy to hop on one of the big four stroke machines that are now commonplace in today's 250cc class, but what if you are a two-stroke kind of guy, or are sponsored by a manufacture that doesn't yet offer a big displacement 4-stroke? Well, you do what many racers of the past did; you build yourself a big bore 250cc 2-stroke.

With Mammoth just around the corner, we got a phone call from our friend Jay Clark from Wiseco Piston fame. Jay just happened to be building a big bore Kawasaki 250 for just the occasion of the Mammoth race. As always, Jay wanted our feed back on his special project bike and even offered to let us enter it at Mammoth this year. How could we refuse a chance to race someone else's bike at a race such as this?

Jay started off with a box stock 2003 Kawasaki KX 250 provided by Callaway Motorsports. He first stripped the bike down to its bare frame and sent out the motor to former Kawasaki factory mechanic Tom Morgan. Tom Morgan Racing who relocated from Lake Havasu City Arizona, now in San Bernardino California, tore into the motor to create a fire breathing 327cc monster. He began by boring the cases to accept the longer (3.5mm) stroke and then blue printed the entire motor. The Hot Rod crank is stroked by moving the crank pin and welding new weights to offset the difference and is rebalanced for the new rod and huge 74mm Wiseco piston. Do to the much larger then stock piston, the cylinder is welded and stress relieved because of the large bore size. Tom completes the top-end assembly with a Cometic base spacer and a larger bore head gasket.. Now, with a whopping 54+ horsepower, Morgan opted for a larger 14-tooth counter shaft sprocket to make the KX a bit more rider friendly.

While the motor was being built at Tom Morgan Racing, Jay had the suspension over at Race Tech, where Paul Thede and the boys worked their magic. A complete revalve front and rear was done, utilizing the Race Tech Gold Valves. Spring rates were changed to a .42 up front and a 4.8 out back. Race Tech set this up based on our racers weight and skill level and based on Race Techs many years of racing experience at the Mammoth Mountain race.

While the motor was out getting some more power breathed into it and the suspension was off being massaged, Jay was hard at work assembling the chassis with its fresh B&B powder coated frame. Jay doesn't like to just build up a stock bike with a few mods. Jay likes to go all the way and turn his bikes into one off aftermarket works of art. Mr. Clark built one heck of a nice ride, using parts from many top quality manufactures in his final assembly. Although the color choice on the frame was a little bit Bling Bling for our taste, the bike had an attractive factory look to it.

Once the bike was ready for it's maiden voyage, Jay, Tom Morgan and the Race Tech boys met us out at Glen Helen Raceway for break in and some fine tuning to get ready for the Mammoth event. Initially the bike was a bit hard to start when cold due to the increased compression, but once it was warm we had little problem with starting. As we headed out on the first lap, we quickly realized that this wasn't your ordinary hopped up KX 250. With a bit more vibration then a stock 250, the 327 pulled a lot stronger throughout the power band. We could only imagine how valiant it would have been had the original 13 tooth sprocket not been swapped out for the more forgiving 14 tooth. The KX 327 was actually very rider friendly and required us to ride it the same way that we would ride our regular 250. One thing that we hoped that would have been improved over stock was the lack of top-end over rev, but the 327 still pulled short at the very top of the power band. We would most likely not have noticed this as much, but Glen Helen is famous for having ridiculously long straights that require a bike to pull long on top or to be shifted a bit more than on most tracks.

Our Race Tech suspension performed well, but would require some more time to get it dialed in for out faster more aggressive tester. As the day went on the track became much rougher and our tester became more aggressive as he got more comfortable with the bike and the track, thus requiring a different setting. This is nothing that Race Tech couldn't handle and this test gave us a good baseline for the Mammoth track. Our test crew felt that the track conditions at Mammoth would be better for the suspension settings that Race Tech provided.

Our test riders unanimously agreed that the KX 327 would be an excellent cheater bike in the 250 class, as the new 450cc 4-strokes are becoming more and more difficult to hang with on a 250cc 2-stroke. Even vet riders could take advantage of the extra HP, as many vet classes aren't restricted to motor displacement. Although we don't cheat ourselves and don't recommend cheating to anyone, it will be interesting to see what happens in the very near future, as it is fast becoming much more difficult to hang with the 450 4-strokes. With the power that the KX 327 produces and the ride ability of the complete package, this bike is a definite 4-stroke killer.

Cylinder & Head Modification/Porting and big bore of cylinder by Millennium technologies. Blue printing engine (Trans mods and matching cases) Crank Lighten, Balance and 3.5mm stroker, TMR Wiseco 74mm big bore KX piston. Cometic gasket custom head and base gaskets with spacer plate. FMF SST Pipe and spacers to a FMF Titanium silencer. A Moto Tassinari V force reed valve system (off a Jet Ski). Redline Water Wetter

This type of custom project with all of it parts from TMR isn't cheap and cost in the $2000 range. This figure is a rough estimate and would depend on how much R&D time of Tom Morgan's your looking for

This custom one-off motor is only available with all of its trick aftermarket parts from TMR. That would include; Wiseco Piston, Millennium Technologies, Cometic, FMF and Moto Tassinari

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How I Make Firewood With Minimal Equipment And No Heavy Lifting

Step One, 11:25am: Leave yard.


Step Two, 11:30am: Cut tree down.


Step Three, 11:35am: Cut tree up.


Step Four, 11:45am: Split.


Step Five, 12:05pm: Haul back to the yard.


Step Six, 12:15pm: Stack.


Done. After several seasons of drying, this will be some very nice firewood (or by next week if I point a dehumidifier at it, according to a rumor I heard).

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

History in the Remaking

A temple complex in turkey that predates even the pyramids is rewriting the story of human evolution.

They call it potbelly hill, after the soft, round contour of this final lookout in southeastern Turkey. To the north are forested mountains. East of the hill lies the biblical plain of Harran, and to the south is the Syrian border, visible 20 miles away, pointing toward the ancient lands of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, the region that gave rise to human civilization. And under our feet, according to archeologist Klaus Schmidt, are the stones that mark the spot—the exact spot—where humans began that ascent.

Standing on the hill at dawn, overseeing a team of 40 Kurdish diggers, the German-born archeologist waves a hand over his discovery here, a revolution in the story of human origins. Schmidt has uncovered a vast and beautiful temple complex, a structure so ancient that it may be the very first thing human beings ever built. The site isn't just old, it redefines old: the temple was built 11,500 years ago—a staggering 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid, and more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge first took shape. The ruins are so early that they predate villages, pottery, domesticated animals, and even agriculture—the first embers of civilization. In fact, Schmidt thinks the temple itself, built after the end of the last Ice Age by hunter-gatherers, became that ember—the spark that launched mankind toward farming, urban life, and all that followed.

Göbekli Tepe—the name in Turkish for "potbelly hill"—lays art and religion squarely at the start of that journey. After a dozen years of patient work, Schmidt has uncovered what he thinks is definitive proof that a huge ceremonial site flourished here, a "Rome of the Ice Age," as he puts it, where hunter-gatherers met to build a complex religious community. Across the hill, he has found carved and polished circles of stone, with terrazzo flooring and double benches. All the circles feature massive T-shaped pillars that evoke the monoliths of Easter Island.

Though not as large as Stonehenge—the biggest circle is 30 yards across, the tallest pillars 17 feet high—the ruins are astonishing in number. Last year Schmidt found his third and fourth examples of the temples. Ground-penetrating radar indicates that another 15 to 20 such monumental ruins lie under the surface. Schmidt's German-Turkish team has also uncovered some 50 of the huge pillars, including two found in his most recent dig season that are not just the biggest yet, but, according to carbon dating, are the oldest monumental artworks in the world.

The new discoveries are finally beginning to reshape the slow-moving consensus of archeology. Göbekli Tepe is "unbelievably big and amazing, at a ridiculously early date," according to Ian Hodder, director of Stanford's archeology program. Enthusing over the "huge great stones and fantastic, highly refined art" at Göbekli, Hodder—who has spent decades on rival Neolithic sites—says: "Many people think that it changes everything…It overturns the whole apple cart. All our theories were wrong."

Schmidt's thesis is simple and bold: it was the urge to worship that brought mankind together in the very first urban conglomerations. The need to build and maintain this temple, he says, drove the builders to seek stable food sources, like grains and animals that could be domesticated, and then to settle down to guard their new way of life. The temple begat the city.

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Alpha Monocerotis

Alpha Monocerotis, the brightest star of Monoceros, the unicorn, is nearing the end of its life. Internal changes have caused the star to puff up like a big balloon, growing so bright that it is visible across about 145 light-years of space.

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

NASA officials ponder the future

Space shuttle Endeavour has returned to Earth, leaving only four more shuttle flights in the program and leading NASA officials to ponder the future.

The shuttle and its crew, led by George Zamka, landed at 10:20 p.m. EST Sunday at the Kennedy Space Center, ending a 14-day, 5.7-million-mile mission to the International Space Station.

"We've come a long way in human spaceflight because of the shuttle's capability," Zamka said. "We've launched and retrieved satellites, we've done medical research and now we've built this huge space station. We're almost to the point of passing the baton from the space shuttle to the space station in terms of what our human spaceflight experience will be now."

Kwatsi Alibaruho, lead STS-130 space shuttle flight director, said even with so much left to do in the shuttle program's final four flights, he was making it a point to spend some time thinking about the subject.

"It's very easy to get into a routine, to lose oneself in the hustle and bustle of trying to get the work done," Alibaruho said. "But the shuttle is a unique spacecraft. I find myself thinking a lot about how I'm going to describe this time to my son when he's old enough to understand. There has never been an operational spacecraft like (the shuttle) before and all indications are that it will be some time before there will be one like it again."

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ISS Tomorrow Morning

23 Feb -2.6 05:26:55 SW 34

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

My Camera-shy Audience

All winter there has been a herd of about 20 deer where I have been cutting. They watch me working, peeking from behind the thickets. They've been really hard to get a picture of. Two of them have finally decided that deer season was long enough ago to become a little bit more brave.


They got up after awhile, but they still weren't too afraid.


Slowly moving away.


And there they go.


The day's airplane photo.


I thought this was a red-tailed hawk, it's screech sounded like one. He was way up there. But, upon review of the photo, I don't think it was. Not sure what kind of hawk it was.


It was a beautiful sunshiny day.


40°. Won't be long now before Spring arrives. There could be a lot more snow and cold, but it won't last long anymore.


- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

First images from Nasa's Wise infrared sky probe

Andromeda is the closest large galaxy to us, 2.5 million light-years from the sun.

Nasa has published the first images from its Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or Wise, which has been scanning the skies since January.

"Wise has worked superbly," said the agency's Ed Weiler in Washington DC.

The images include a comet, a "star factory" 20,000 light years away in our Milky Way galaxy and our nearest large neighbour, the Andromeda spiral galaxy.

Wise will search on until October when its supplies of frozen coolant for chilling instruments will run out.

It's hoped it will find many more comets and, from them, provide information about the birth of our Solar System. It's also looking for asteroids and cool stars called brown dwarfs.

By the time the mission ends the explorer should have scanned the sky one-and-a-half-times with its "infrared goggles", revealing objects not visible to the naked eye.

"All these pictures tell a story about our dusty origins and destiny," said Peter Eisenhardt, Wise project director at Nasa in California.

"Wise sees dusty comets and rocky asteroids tracing the formation and evolution of our solar system. We can map thousands of forming and dying solar systems across our entire galaxy.

"We can see patterns of star formation across other galaxies, and waves of star-bursting galaxies in clusters millions of light years away," he explained.

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ISS Tomorrow Morning

22 Feb -3.3 05:05:19 E 75

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

ISS Tomorrow Morning

21 Feb -2.3 06:17:09 WNW 31

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

Astronauts Bask in Spectacular Views From New Space Windows

Astronauts in space are basking in what they described as "absolutely spectacular" views of Earth after cranking open the shutters on the International Space Station's new window-covered observation dome for the first time.

The shutters were opened early Wednesday after an overnight spacewalk by Endeavour shuttle astronauts Robert Behnken and Nicholas Patrick, who unwrapped and unlocked the new space observation deck, called the Cupola, for their crewmates inside.

It was space station commander Jeffrey Williams of NASA who said the first view was spectacular.

"This has to be the largest window onboard and when we have the others around it open it will give us a view of the entire globe," he said. "Absolutely incredible."

The astronauts were understandably eager to take their first glimpse out the Cupola's windows. They opened its biggest one first in a test. It's a huge, 31-inch (80-cm) window looking down on the Earth, making it the world's largest space window ever built.

They didn't even wait until the spacewalk was over to open all seven windows at one time and start snapping photos of Earth. The astronauts could easily be seen floating inside the Cupola in views from video cameras outside the space station.

"Hey great job raising the curtains on the bay window to the world," Endeavour astronaut Kathryn "Kay" Hire told the spacewalkers as they finished their work.

Soon after, Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi posted the first photo of Earth as seen from the Cupola on his Twitter page. It showed the Sahara Desert 220 miles (354 km) below the station.

"Let there be light! Cupola windows open toward Sahara desert. Priceless!" wrote Noguchi, who tweets as Astro_Soichi and has lived on the station since December.

The spacewalkers removed insulation blankets and bolts locking the window shutters during nearly six hours of outside work. They said they hoped to take their own look out the new windows after returning inside.

At one point, shuttle pilot Terry Virts opened a window shutter and saw Patrick floating outside in his spacesuit. The two astronauts happily said hello to each other.

"You guys have come a long way to see each other across such a short distance," Endeavour astronaut Stephen Robinson said from inside the shuttle.

Virts promised to send video recorded of the views out the new windows to Mission Control later today.

"I know we talk about the view a lot, but this one takes your breath away," he told Mission Control.

Shuttle flight director Bob Dempsey compared the view to that of the fictional "Star Wars" spaceship the Millennium Falcon, and said watching the Cupola open was one of the most exciting things he's ever seen.

"The astronauts, who are accustomed to views that you and I can't really describe, were moved to tears when they looked out the windows of the Cupola for the first time tonight because the panorama is just spectacular," Dempsey said after the spacewalk.

Windows on the world

The Cupola is perched on the bottom of the space station's new Tranquility module, where it promises to give astronauts inside unprecedented panoramic views of Earth and space. Station astronaut Timothy "T.J." Creamer, also of NASA, has called it the "window of all windows."

Both Tranquility and the Cupola were delivered by the shuttle Endeavour. With them, the space station is now 98 percent complete and weighs nearly 800,000 pounds (362,873 kg). The $100 billion space station is the product of 16 different countries and has been under construction since 1998.

The Cupola's locking bolts were in place to keep its shutters from shaking loose when Endeavour launched toward the space station on Feb. 8. NASA wanted to test the shutters while Behnken and Patrick were outside just in case one got stuck.

Tuesday night's spacewalk began at 9:15 p.m. EST (0215 Wednesday GMT). It is the third and final spacewalk for Endeavour's six-astronaut crew.

The station's new $27.2 million viewport is about 10 feet (7 meters) wide and 5 feet (1.5 meters) deep. It has six windows arranged around the big, central round portal. When all the shutters are open, it resembles an open metal flower.

"It may be a small space station module, but good things come in small packages," Patrick said.

The shutters protect the windows from scratches or other damage caused by space debris or micrometeorites. They are opened by turning a knob inside the Cupola, which drives the crank to pop open the shutter. When the Cupola isn't in use, the window shutters will stay closed.

"There's not a lot of debris out there, but it wouldn't take much for a small piece of debris coming through and damaging these windows," Dempsey has said.

The windows are reinforced, but NASA wants astronauts to be extra careful to protect them from damage. After all, the view they offer won't be just for leisure.

Picture perfect

When all the windows are open, they give astronauts a clear, 360-degree view of the space station's exterior so that they can see with their own eyes when new spacecraft approach and while using the outpost's robotic arm. The station's robotic arm control systems will be moved inside the Cupola on Thursday.

The Cupola windows were delivered with the station's new $382 million Tranquility room by the shuttle Endeavour, which launched last week on a two-week trip to the orbiting laboratory. They were built in Italy by the European Space Agency and are the last major NASA additions for the space station, space agency officials have said.

Mission Control roused Endeavour's crew Tuesday afternoon with the song "Window on the World" by Jimmy Buffett, just to set the tone for their overnight work. NASA is also expecting a flood of photographs to come from the Cupola's windows.

"I anticipate a lot of photos," said station flight director Mike Lammers before the spacewalk. "Probably so much that the folks responsible for bringing them down from onboard are going to be overwhelmed."

In addition to unlocking the station's window shutters, Behnken and Patrick connected power and data cables to an old docking port that was moved to the outboard end of the Tranquility room late Monday. They also put the finishing touches on ammonia cooling hoses on the Tranquility node, added handrails to the new module and performed some other chores.

The spacewalk was the 140th dedicated to space station construction and the third for Endeavour's astronaut crew. In all, Endeavour's spacewalking team spent 18 hours and 14 minutes working on the station's new Cupola and Tranquility module.

The spacewalk was also the third for Patrick (all on this flight) and the sixth for Behnken, who finished with a total cumulative spacewalking time of 37 hours and 33 minutes.

While NASA's current mission is going smoothly, the space agency announced Tuesday that it has delayed the next shuttle launch aboard Discovery until April 5. Cold weather at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida has held up work to attach Discovery to its external tank and solid rocket boosters needed for launch.

Endeavour is slated to depart the space station late Friday after a nine-day stay. The shuttle and its crew are scheduled to return to Earth Sunday night.

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ISS Tomorrow Morning

20 Feb -3.3 05:52:23 NW 82

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

Out There: A Strange Zoo of Other Worlds

More than 400 worlds have been found beyond the reach of our sun, and the tally is rising rapidly. From super-Earths to giants dwarfing Jupiter, our galaxy is a zoo of different kinds of planets.

Hot Jupiters

The first discovery of an extrasolar planet around a sun-like star was 51 Pegasi B, an exoplanet roughly 50 light-years away, unofficially named Bellerophon after the tamer of the mythical Pegasus.

Like many alien worlds found after it, 51 Pegasi B was a "hot Jupiter," a gas giant as close or closer to its star than Mercury is to our sun, unlike "cold Jupiters" that orbit farther away such as Saturn or, naturally, Jupiter.

Of the 429 exoplanets discovered to date, 89 have been hot Jupiters, likely because their large size and proximity to their stars makes them easier to spot by current techniques.

Pulsar planets

The first true discovery of extrasolar planets came in 1994, when radio astronomers discovered worlds around the pulsar PSR B1257+12 some 980 light-years away in the Virgo constellation. A pulsar is not a normal star, but a dense, rapidly spinning remnant of a supernova explosion. As of 2007, three extrasolar planets have been confirmed in orbit around this pulsar.

The oldest exoplanet known yet, PSR B1620-26 b, nicknamed Methuselah, is also a pulsar planet, located 5,600 light years from Earth in the Scorpius constellation. Methuselah is roughly twice Jupiter's mass and is estimated to be some 12.7 billion years old, and it suggested planets as potential habitats for life arose early in the universe's history. It is also a circumbinary planet, orbiting around a binary system composed of the pulsar PSR B1620-26 A and the white dwarf WD B1620-26.

All these worlds cannot support life as we know it, permanently bathed as they are in the pulsar's high-energy radiation.

Super-Earths

A super-Earth is a planet with a mass larger than Earth's, roughly up to 10 times greater. The first super-Earths ever found were two of the planets around PSR B1257+12.

Super-Earths might be more geologically active than our planet.

Astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics suggest they experience more vigorous plate tectonics because they possess thinner plates under more stress. Such activity is essential to life as we know it, because it helps enable complex chemistry and recycles substances like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which keeps Earth warm.

Eccentric planets

In our solar system, planets for the most part have fairly uniform circular orbits. The exoplanets found so far, however, can have far more eccentric orbits, moving in close and then far from their stars. Where a perfect circle has an eccentricity value of zero, roughly half of exoplanets seen thus far have an eccentricity of 0.25 or greater.

These eccentric orbits can lead exoplanets to extreme heat waves. For instance, HD 80606b, which is about four times the mass of Jupiter and is located some 200 light-years from Earth, has an eccentricity of roughly 0.93, "so it goes from an orbital distance close to that of Earth's to come hurtling in well inside the orbit of Mercury, essentially getting blasted with a blowtorch every 111 days," said astronomer Charles Beichman, executive director of NASA's ExoPlanet Science Institute.

"One thing we're trying hard to understand now is whether planets with eccentric orbits are the unusual ones, or whether it's our system that's the oddball out," Beichman said. "These eccentric orbits would essentially lead planets to interfere with each other, scattering them around."

Hot Neptunes

Hot Neptunes are planets some 10 to 20 times the mass of Earth's – about the mass of "cold Neptunes" such as Uranus and, naturally, Neptune – yet are as close or closer to their stars than Mercury is to our sun. The first hot Neptune discovered was Gliese 436b some 33.4 light years away in the constellation Leo, which orbits its star a thousand times closer than Neptune orbits our Sun. It might have a surface of "hot ice" – water that remains solid despite its heat because it gets compressed by the planet's gravity. So far about 25 hot Neptunes have been found so far, Beichman said.

Water worlds

There are two kinds of worlds that might be entirely covered with water. "One is a terrestrial Earth-like planet that's just covered with a lot more water than our world, like the Kevin Costner movie, but is otherwise still familiar," Beichman said. "Or you can imagine a hot Neptune which is almost totally composed of water that is close enough to its star to not be frozen, but instead have an ocean thousands of kilometers deep and perhaps an atmosphere like a gas giant's, with lots of hydrogen and water vapor."

Chthonian planets

Sometimes hot Jupiters or hot Neptunes live too close to their stars for comfort. Once their stars roast these exoplanets and rip at them with their gravity, they might blow the gas completely off them, leaving behind rocky cores scientists have dubbed chthonian planets or evaporated remnant cores. Their proximity to their stars could mean they are covered in lava.

The super-Earth COROT-7b may well be a chthonian planet, orbiting 23 times closer to its star than Mercury is to our sun. The first evaporating planet discovered, HD209458b, nicknamed Osiris, might be on its way to becoming a chthonian planet.

Free-floating planets

Normally planets are thought of as orbiting stars, but there are hints a number of bodies with the mass of gas giants might be free-floating. These might either have escaped from their suns or never had a star to begin with, born in star-forming regions without the mass needed to ignite.

Roughly a half-dozen candidate free-floating planets have been found so far, either still glowing from the heat released as their gravity contracts their mass, or from the rare times one passes in front of a star and magnifies the light from the background star. "It's not clear whether you call them planets because they formed as part of a planetary system and were subsequently ejected or formed as super-small brown dwarf stars with the mass of planets," Beichman said.

Exo-Earths

Although vast majority of the 429 exoplanets found to date have been gas or ice giants, it is likely that terrestrial exoplanets outnumber these behemoths, and upcoming missions may soon finally discover rocky worlds the size of Earth.

"This is the decade when the first real confirmed exo-Earths are likely to come," Beichman said. "We've already found objects three to five times the mass of Earth."

The Kepler mission launched in 2009 is already on track to finding such planets, he noted, and the James Webb Space Telescope currently scheduled to launch in 2014 will be able to characterize the atmospheres of at least a few super-Earths.

An obvious hope is to find a Goldilocks planet just right for life – a planet at the right distance from its star to not roast or freeze and just the right size to retain an atmosphere but not so large as to become a gas giant. "We're on a quest with a very high probability of success of finding a planet that's habitable or even inhabited with primitive life around other stars," Beichman said. "As we're progressing on that path, every time we round the bend along the way, we're finding fantastic new vistas."

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Ivan “Gus” Grissom

A star named Navi forms the middle point of W-shaped Cassiopeia, which is high in the north this evening. The name comes from Ivan “Gus” Grissom. He and his Apollo 1 crewmates named three stars for themselves as a joke. When they died in a launchpad fire, the names stuck.

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

ISS Tomorrow Morning

19 Feb -2.0 05:30:23 NNW 34

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

Double Cluster

Just above the W-shaped constellation Cassiopeia, toward neighboring Perseus, look for a faint smudge of light. Binoculars reveal dozens of individual stars packed together into two clusters. Together, they are known as the Double Cluster.

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

Fresh Firewood

Was out for a walk yesterday and took pictures of some of the wood I cut, split, and stacked this winter, since December:














- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

ISS Tomorrow Morning

17 Feb -2.1 06:19:02 NW 35

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

Caring for Pets Left Behind by the Rapture

For a fee, this service will place your dog or cat in the home of a caring atheist on Judgment Day

Many people in the U.S.—perhaps 20 million to 40 million—believe there will be a Second Coming in their lifetimes, followed by the Rapture . In this event, they say, the righteous will be spirited away to a better place while the godless remain on Earth. But what will become of all the pets?

Bart Centre, 61, a retired retail executive in New Hampshire, says many people are troubled by this question, and he wants to help. He started a service called Eternal Earth-Bound Pets that promises to rescue and care for animals left behind by the saved.

Promoted on the Web as "the next best thing to pet salvation in a Post Rapture World," the service has attracted more than 100 clients, who pay $110 for a 10-year contract ($15 for each additional pet.) If the Rapture happens in that time, the pets left behind will have homes—with atheists. Centre has set up a national network of godless humans to carry out the mission. "If you love your pets, I can't understand how you could not consider this," he says.

Centre came up with the idea while working on his book, The Atheist Camel Chronicles, written under the pseudonym Dromedary Hump. In it, he says many unkind things about the devout and confesses that "I'm trying to figure out how to cash in on this hysteria to supplement my income."

Whatever motivates Centre, he has tapped into a source of genuine unease. Todd Strandberg, who founded a biblical prophecy Web site called raptureready.com that draws 250,000 unique visitors a month, agrees that Fido and Mittens are doomed. "Pets don't have souls, so they'll remain on Earth. I don't see how they can be taken with you," he says. "A lot of persons are concerned about their pets, but I don't know if they should necessarily trust atheists to take care of them."

This paradox poses a challenge for Centre. He must reassure the Rapture crowd that his pet rescuers are wicked enough to be left behind but good enough to take proper care of the abandoned pets. Rescuers must sign an affidavit to affirm their disbelief in God—and they must also clear a criminal background check. "We want people who have pets and are animal lovers," Centre says. They also must have the means to rescue and transport the animals in their charge. His network consists of 26 rescuers covering 22 states. "They take this very seriously," Centre says.

One of Centre's atheist recruits is Laura, a woman in her 30s who lives near the buckle of the Bible Belt in Oklahoma, and who prefers not to give her last name. She has two dogs of her own and has made a commitment to rescue four dogs and two cats when—if—the time comes. "If it happens, my first thought will be, 'I've got work to do,'" Laura says. "The first thing I'll do is find out where I need to go exactly."

The rescuers won't know the precise location of the animals until the Rapture arrives, at which time they will contact Centre for instructions. "I've got to get to [the pets] within a maximum of 18 to 24 hours. We really don't want them to wait more than a day." A day she believes will never come.

Centre doesn't think he will ever have to follow through on the service he offers. But he believes in virtuous acts. His Web site directs about $200 a month in proceeds from Google ads to food banks in Minnesota and New Hampshire. And to pet owners, he has already delivered something of great value: peace of mind, for just 92 cents a month. "If we thought the Rapture was really going to happen," Centre says, "obviously our rate structure would be much higher."

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earthshine

Look for a very thin crescent Moon low in the southwest shortly after sunset this evening. As the sky grows darker, you may see the entire lunar disk. The dark gray portion of the disk is illuminated by "earthshine" -- sunlight reflected off Earth's surface.

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

World may not be warming, say scientists

The United Nations climate panel faces a new challenge with scientists casting doubt on its claim that global temperatures are rising inexorably because of human pollution.

In its last assessment the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the evidence that the world was warming was “unequivocal”.

It warned that greenhouse gases had already heated the world by 0.7C and that there could be 5C-6C more warming by 2100, with devastating impacts on humanity and wildlife. However, new research, including work by British scientists, is casting doubt on such claims. Some even suggest the world may not be warming much at all.

“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.

The doubts of Christy and a number of other researchers focus on the thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to collect temperature data over the past 150 years.

These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from site to site.

Christy has published research papers looking at these effects in three different regions: east Africa, and the American states of California and Alabama.

“The story is the same for each one,” he said. “The popular data sets show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development.”

The IPCC faces similar criticisms from Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph, Canada, who was invited by the panel to review its last report.

The experience turned him into a strong critic and he has since published a research paper questioning its methods.

“We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the IPCC’s climate data are contaminated with surface effects from industrialisation and data quality problems. These add up to a large warming bias,” he said.

Such warnings are supported by a study of US weather stations co-written by Anthony Watts, an American meteorologist and climate change sceptic.

His study, which has not been peer reviewed, is illustrated with photographs of weather stations in locations where their readings are distorted by heat-generating equipment.

Some are next to air- conditioning units or are on waste treatment plants. One of the most infamous shows a weather station next to a waste incinerator.

Watts has also found examples overseas, such as the weather station at Rome airport, which catches the hot exhaust fumes emitted by taxiing jets.

In Britain, a weather station at Manchester airport was built when the surrounding land was mainly fields but is now surrounded by heat-generating buildings.

Terry Mills, professor of applied statistics and econometrics at Loughborough University, looked at the same data as the IPCC. He found that the warming trend it reported over the past 30 years or so was just as likely to be due to random fluctuations as to the impacts of greenhouse gases. Mills’s findings are to be published in Climatic Change, an environmental journal.

“The earth has gone through warming spells like these at least twice before in the last 1,000 years,” he said.

Kevin Trenberth, a lead author of the chapter of the IPCC report that deals with the observed temperature changes, said he accepted there were problems with the global thermometer record but these had been accounted for in the final report.

“It’s not just temperature rises that tell us the world is warming,” he said. “We also have physical changes like the fact that sea levels have risen around five inches since 1972, the Arctic icecap has declined by 40% and snow cover in the northern hemisphere has declined.”

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts has recently issued a new set of global temperature readings covering the past 30 years, with thermometer readings augmented by satellite data.

Dr Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, said: “This new set of data confirms the trend towards rising global temperatures and suggest that, if anything, the world is warming even more quickly than we had thought.”

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Stunningly Preserved 165-Million-Year-Old Spider Fossil Found

Scientists have unearthed an almost perfectly preserved spider fossil in China dating back to the middle Jurassic era, 165 million years ago. The fossilized spiders, Eoplectreurys gertschi, are older than the only two other specimens known by around 120 million years.

The level of detail preserved in the fossils is amazing, said paleontologist Paul Selden of the University of Kansas and lead author of the study appearing Feb. 6 in Naturwissenschaften. “You go in with a microscope, and bingo! It’s fantastic.”

The fossils were found at a site called Daohugou in Northern China that is filled with fossilized salamanders, small primitive mammals, insects and water crustaceans. During the Jurassic era, the fossil bed was part of a lake in a volcanic region, Selden said.

Spider fossils from this period are rare, because the arachnids’ soft bodies don’t preserve well. The pristine fossil pictured in these photos was probably created when the spider was trapped in volcanic ash. The ultrafine clay particles squashed the spider without breaking up the animals’ delicate cuticle as more coarse sediment would, Selden said.

E. gertschi shows all the features of the modern members of the family, found in North America, suggesting it has evolved very little since the Jurassic period, Selden said. “The scimitar-shaped structure you notice out of the male is so distinctive,” he said. “Looking at modern ones, you think, well, it’s just a dead ringer.”

The findings also suggest this family of spiders, the Plectreuridae, was once much more widespread than it is today. Currently, the family has only been found living in California, Arizona, Mexico and Cuba. Yet 165 million years ago, they lived on a small continent called the North China Block.

“At some point something caused their range to contract to this part of southern North America,” Selden said. He speculates that changes in vegetation during an ice age or other climactic event wiped them out in other areas, “but they were still happy in these arid areas of the Southwest.”

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Bellatrix

Harry Potter fans may boo when they hear its name, but one of the stars of Orion is nothing to sneer at. It is one of the hottest, brightest stars in the neighborhood. Bellatrix forms Orion’s right shoulder. As night falls, it is directly above Orion’s Belt.

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

A mammoth discovery: Adams County man uncovers bone that may come from mammoth

Ken Lessnau's walk in the woods might have yielded an important find of Wisconsin's prehistory.

Lessnau is a wood-carving artist who lives half a block from Goose Lake in Adams County. He said he was walking late last year near his home in an area that was marked with a sign stating "public hunting" when he happened upon a crater-like hole filled with water.

Sticking out of the water, and about two-thirds submerged, was an item that looked to Lessnau like a giant bone.

The rock-like item - measuring about 33 inches long - is likely the mineralized tibia of a juvenile mastodon or mammoth, said archaeologist Constance Arzigian of the Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

She based her tentative conclusion on photos taken by the Daily Register of the bone, including one depicting Lessnau holding it in his arms.

"It's really cool," she said Monday. "We're thinking it's a tibia, and it could very well be a mastodon or a mammoth."

Mastodons and mammoths were elephant-like mammals that became extinct at the end of the Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago. Both species were known to have lived in what is now Wisconsin, Arzigian said. Mastodons, which tended to eat shrubbery, lived in wooded areas, while mammoths were eaters of small plants and gravitated toward prairies.

Arzigian said the item is too large to be the bone of any mammal currently indigenous to Wisconsin. The calcified appearance of the item, particularly at what appears to be a broken end, suggests that the bone is thousands of years old.

Although many teeth from these creatures have been found in Wisconsin, she said, intact fossilized samples of their bones are relatively rare.

That's why Arzigian said she hopes that Lessnau will find out, definitively, whether the land where the item was found is publicly or privately owned.

There's a possibility, she said, that state paleontologists or archaeologists will want to excavate the area, because there may be more mammoth or mastodon parts there - maybe even a complete or nearly complete skeleton.

Lessnau, 59, said he was born and raised in Racine and moved to the Oxford area in July.

A wood-carver by trade, Lessnau described himself as an artist and a loner.

He said he roams wooded areas or walks railroad tracks and riversides from time to time in search of unusual pieces of wood to carve, or anything else that will get his imagination flowing. One of the things he found on a past walk is a five-leaf clover, which he keeps in his freezer.

"Whatever I can find," he said, "and it'll give me an idea to make something. I'm an artist. You find something weird, and then you make something out of it."

When he first saw the bone-like item, Lessnau said, he thought it was an unusually shaped piece of wood. He said he used a rope to hoist the item, which weighs about 30 pounds, into the bed of his pickup truck.

Lessnau said the walk in the woods took place just before the snow began to fly, and he hasn't been back to the place where he found the item. He'd planned to go back and look for more bones as soon as the ground thaws.

Arzigian said if the item turns out to be the mineralized bone of an extinct prehistoric mammal - and its shape, size and texture make it likely that it is - trained scientists excavating the area would be able to find not only other parts of the animal, but also evidence of where it had roamed, what it might have eaten and how it died.

One of Wisconsin's best-known mastodon finds took place near Boaz in Richland County. The Boaz Mastodon was found in 1897 after a heavy rainfall, when farmers checking for flood damage discovered the bones sticking out of a washed-away creek bank. The skeleton is about two-thirds complete, although the tusks were never found. The Boaz skeleton is housed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Geology Museum.

According Arzigian, one of the most recent discoveries of mammoth remains in Wisconsin took place in Kenosha. In 1991, a team led by archaeologist Dan Joyce, curator of exhibits and collections for the Kenosha Public Museum, used a detailed map, drawn almost 30 years earlier, to locate the spot where a farmer found a mammoth bone, and later some tusk fragments.

The 1990s excavation led not only to an 80 percent-complete mammoth skeleton (and evidence that it was butchered by human hunters), but also the bones of another mammoth that is 90 percent complete, and one of the largest mammoth skeletons ever excavated.

If what Lessnau discovered is indeed a mastodon or mammoth bone, Arzigian said, "this would be a very, very rare find."

Still not knowing exactly what he had, Lessnau took the bone-like item to the Adams-Marquette Veterinary Service clinic on state Highway 82 in Oxford about 10 days ago.

"I go for a walk every noon," said veterinarian Dr. Don Pfund. "I was all bundled up and headed out the back door, and he drove up and said, ‘Are you a veterinarian?'"

Pfund said he was and said Lessnau asked for help identifying the object.

"First time I had ever seen him," Pfund said. "Totally out of the blue."

"I said, ‘It's not out of a chicken,'" he joked. "It's way too big for a horse."

But he said he was positive the object was a bone of some sort, broken at the growth plate, and suggested to Lessnau that it might be from a woolly mammoth.

"The problem wasn't in figuring out if it was a bone or not. The problem was: What bone is it?" he said.

Pfund said he visited an active excavation site, The Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, S.D., last summer with three of his grandchildren. He said he also visited the place about a decade ago. Pfund is semiretired and lives in Iowa but rents a place in Wisconsin Dells for about four months in winter and helps in the clinic.

Lessnau said his attempts to contact officials with the state of Wisconsin, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Milwaukee Public Museum have been in vain so far.

"The curiosity is killing me," he said. "I want to find out what it is."

He said he's shown his find to a few visitors.

"It's a conversation piece," he said.

source....

- Thanks Matt!

A Gorgeous Frosty Morning!

It snowed the first few days of this week. Not a blizzard, and not even enough to keep my little ATV out of the woods, but just enough to freshen things up a bit.






And this morning after milking the cows I emerged from the barn to a beautiful frosty morning!








- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

Returning Wisconsin National Guard soldiers may still enjoy a deer hunt

Wisconsin service members deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan during Wisconsin’s 2009 deer hunting season could have an opportunity to participate in the state’s deer hunting tradition under a new Department of Natural Resources effort to match vets wanting to catch up on deer hunting with Wisconsin farmers who have agricultural deer damage shooting permits.

“Last year, Wisconsin had the largest operational deployment of our National Guard since World War II. More than 4,000 Wisconsin soldiers and airmen performed dangerous missions in service to our country,” Gov. Jim Doyle said. “These newest combat veterans missed what is a lifelong tradition for many -- the fall deer hunt. With the help of state farmers, that's a problem we can fix.”

“Farmers are in a unique position to offer a hunting opportunity to returning soldiers,” said DNR Secretary Matt Frank. “We've invited farmers who hold deer damage tags to share some of those tags with soldiers and we're working with the National Guard to get the word out to returning soldiers.”

“What a great gesture by the Wisconsin DNR,” said Command Sgt. Major George Stopper. “A lot of our veterans are outdoor enthusiasts. Had they not been deployed, many of them would have been out enjoying the hunt. By linking the soldiers up with farmers that already hold permits, I feel you've definitely provided a great opportunity to all concerned."

An invitation has been sent to several hundred farmers across the state enrolled in the deer damage program asking them to consider sharing deer damage tags with returning soldiers. The program is completely voluntary. So far, 95 soldiers have expressed interest in hunting; nine farmers have volunteered a total of 50 tags for the program, and DNR has been able to match 22 of them up.

Deer damage tag holders can contact the DNR call center toll-free at 888-936-7463 or contact Laurie Fike at laurie.fike@wisconsin.gov with their name, county, deer shooting permit number and the number of tags they would like to share. The call center is open 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week. It is hoped that the first hunts can be scheduled early in February.

Interested soldiers should also contact the call center. Call center customer service staff will take their information and the soldier will be called back with the name and contact information of a participating damage tag holder. It is then up to individual soldiers and farmers to arrange the details of their hunts to suit both their needs.

The Governor thanked Senator Kathleen Vinehout and Representative Chris Danou who worked with the Department to develop the hunt for returning vets.

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Rigel

Rigel, the brightest star of Orion, marks the hunter’s foot. It is to the lower right of Orion’s Belt early this evening. Rigel is a blue supergiant, so it is much bigger and heavier than the Sun. It also is thousands of degrees hotter, so it shines blue-white.

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

Is Blogging A Slog? Some Young People Think So

Could it be that blogs have become online fodder for the -- gasp! -- more mature reader?

A new study has found that young people are losing interest in long-form blogging, as their communication habits have become increasingly brief, and mobile. Tech experts say it doesn't mean blogging is going away. Rather, it's gone the way of the telephone and e-mail -- still useful, just not sexy.

"Remember when 'You've got mail!' used to produce a moment of enthusiasm and not dread?" asks Danah Boyd, a fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Now when it comes to blogs, she says, "people focus on using them for what they're good for and turning to other channels for more exciting things."

Those channels might include anything from social networking sites to others that feature games or video.

The study, released Wednesday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, found that 14 percent of Internet youths, ages 12 to 17, now say they blog, compared with just over a quarter who did so in 2006. And only about half in that age group say they comment on friends' blogs, down from three-quarters who did so four years ago.

Pew found a similar drop in blogging among 18- to 29-year-olds.

Overall, Pew estimates that roughly one in 10 online adults maintain a blog -- a number that has remained consistent since 2005, when blogs became a more mainstream activity. In the U.S., that would mean there are more than 30 million adults who blog.

"That's a pretty remarkable thing to have gone from zero to 30 million in the last 10 years," says David Sifry, founder of blog search site Technorati.

But according to the data, that population is aging.

The Pew study found, for instance, that the percentage of Internet users age 30 and older who maintain a blog increased from 7 percent in 2007 to 11 percent in 2009.

Pew's over-18 data, collected in the last half of last year, were based on interviews with 2,253 adults and have a margin of error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points. The under-18 data came from phone interviews with 800 12- to 17-year-olds and their parents. The margin of error for that data was plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

So why are young people less interested in blogging?

The explosion of social networking is one obvious answer. The Pew survey found that nearly three-quarters of 12- to 17-year-olds who have access to the Internet use social networking sites, such as Facebook. That compares with 55 percent four years ago.

With social networking has come the ability to do a quick status update and that has "kind of sucked the life out of long-form blogging," says Amanda Lenhart, a Pew senior researcher and lead author of the latest study.

More young people are also accessing the Internet from their mobile phones, only increasing the need for brevity. The survey found, for instance, that half of 18- to 29-year-olds had done so.

All of that rings true to Sarah Rondeau, a freshman at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.

"It's a matter of typing quickly. People these days don't find reading that fun," the 18-year-old student says. She loves Facebook and has recently started using Twitter to share pictures of her dorm room and blurbs about campus life, which are, in turn, shared on the Holy Cross Web site for prospective students.

Meanwhile, New Yorker Jackie Huang hasn't made a posting on her long-form blog in two years, and she now uses Facebook and Twitter because her friends do -- though she's still not too hot on tweeting.

Now 25, she started blogging when she was a college freshman, using Xanga and then Wordpress to tell friends, family and a few strangers about anything from travel experiences to pop culture to politics.

"My blog was my own little soapbox," says Huang, who now works for a communications agency. "Unfortunately, I don't think I'm interesting enough for my followers to want to know where I am every hour of the day and what I'm thinking. I'm not Ashton Kutcher, and I don't post racy pictures of Demi Moore in her skivvies."

Few doubt that blogging will die. Lenhart suspects that those who blog for personal reasons may focus more on events -- a wedding, a trip, a baby's birth.

Arax-Rae Van Buren, who writes about trends, travel and food on her Kiss and Type blog, is relaunching her site with a mobile audience in mind. "It is imperative that the site design is translatable to a phone," says the 24-year-old New Yorker.

There also are early signs that "microblogging" on sites such as Twitter might actually create long-form bloggers out of people who get frustrated by the constraints of the 140-word limit. Already, sites such as Tumblr and FriendFeed have emerged to allow for expansion of thought and content, though it remains to be seen whether those services will catch on with younger people.

"Blogging is actually a quite involved form of self-expression. It takes a lot of time and effort," says Eszter Hargittai, an associate professor of communications studies at Northwestern University.

She and other tech experts also suspect that fewer young people have an interest in sharing their every thought with the whole world.

"Five years ago blogging was a club," says Sifry of Technorati. "There was this wonderful, delicious feeling of being able to talk privately or semi-privately with people who shared your interests. And there were few consequences of being able to share with your friends on a blog.

"I think we're seeing a deeper awareness of the perception of privacy and how that can affect your life if it's violated."

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Betelgeuse

Betelgeuse, the bright orange star that marks the shoulder of Orion, the hunter, is high in the southeast at nightfall, above the band of three stars that marks Orion’s Belt. Over the past decade, Betelgeuse has shrunk by about 15 percent, but astronomers are not sure why.

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

The ancient text has no known title, no known author, and is written in no known language: what does it say and why does it have many astronomy illustrations? The mysterious book was once bought by an emperor, forgotten on a library shelf, sold for thousands of dollars, and later donated to Yale. Possibly written in the 15th century, the over 200-page volume is known most recently as the Voynich Manuscript, after its (re-)discoverer in 1912. Pictured above is an illustration from the book that appears to be somehow related to the Sun. The book labels some patches of the sky with unfamiliar constellations. The inability of modern historians of astronomy to understand the origins of these constellations is perhaps dwarfed by the inability of modern code-breakers to understand the book's text. The book is in Yale's rare book collection under catalog number "MS 408."

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a giant stellar nursery

The Orion Nebula is a giant stellar nursery -- a cocoon of gas and dust that has given birth to thousands of stars. It is in the south on winter evenings. The nebula is a faint smudge of light just below the three bright stars that mark Orion’s Belt.

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

ISS Tomorrow Morning

10 Feb -2.0 05:17:12 NNE 32

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

California's hand-held cellphone ban hasn't reduced crashes, study says

The accident rate before and after the law took effect has not significantly changed, according to the Highway Loss Data Institute. Some traffic safety experts say the report is far from conclusive.

Think your commute is safer now that California requires drivers to use hands-free cellphones?

Maybe not.

A new study from the Highway Loss Data Institute released Friday found that the rate of crashes before and after the landmark law took effect in 2008 has not significantly changed.

The research also found that California's auto accident trends before and after the cellphone law took effect mirror those of neighboring states such as Arizona and Nevada, which don't have hand-held phone bans.

"This is making us reexamine some of the assumptions," said Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and its affiliate, the data institute. "We've all assumed, because we could measure it pretty well, that maybe cellphone use was a bigger distractor than other things, and I think this data shows us that no, it's not."

Lund was quick to point out that the study does not suggest that driving with a cellphone, hand-held or hands-free, is safe. "No one should kid themselves that this isn't a distraction, because it is," Lund said.

The report offers ammunition to what some critics have long maintained: That requiring headsets alone would not reduce accidents because drivers could still become distracted even while using a hands-free device.

The findings are sure to heighten debate about the cellphone law, though some traffic safety researchers said the report is far from conclusive.

Steven Bloch, a senior researcher at the Automobile Club of Southern California, said the sample sizes in the study were not large enough to be ultimately conclusive.

"This is interesting, not definitive," Bloch said.

The insurance institute, which receives claims information from more than 80% of the nation's auto insurers, looked at data on crashes involving insured cars and concluded that there is no evidence that the hands-free rule is reducing crashes. About 1.7 million claims were used for the study, according to officials with the group.

In California, there were slightly more than eight crashes per 100 vehicles 18 months before the ban on hand-held phones went into effect. Twelve months after the law, there were about 7.5 crashes per 100 vehicles, the study shows.

Authors of the study pointed out that the slight decline in crashes follows a similar trend in neighboring states where there is no such ban. In Arizona, Nevada and Oregon (which recently passed its own ban), there were a little more than seven crashes combined per 100 vehicles 18 months before the ban was passed in California. Twelve months after the California ban, there were a little more than five crashes combined per 100 vehicles in those three states, the study shows.

As the California Legislature passed the law, increasing research showed that the risk doesn't come from whether one or both hands are on the wheel, but whether a driver's mind is focused on the road.

Some experts say the largest danger is "cognitive capture," which means drivers are blind to driving cues because they're consumed by conversations, particularly emotional ones.

Backers of the law are not convinced by the report.

State Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), who sponsored the bill to ban hand-held cellphones, said the study was "largely a nonevent" because the data sets used were limited. He cited evidence showing a decline in traffic fatalities in the first six months after the law took effect.

In response to the study, the Governors Highway Safety Assn. issued a statement saying the research "raises as many questions as it answers."

"We need more research and data to determine whether or not hand-held bans should be implemented across the country. GHSA urges states to pass texting bans but hold off on addressing other cell use until some clarity is achieved," according to a statement.

Russ Rader, a spokesman for the insurance institute, said the study shows that lawmakers need to think more comprehensively about distracted driving.

"We're not saying cellphone use is less risky than we thought," Rader said. "What we're seeing in this study is that the hand-held cellphone laws are not reducing crashes."

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Orion, the hunter

The most beautiful of all the “connect-the-dots” constellations is in grand view on winter evenings. Orion, the hunter, is in the southeast at nightfall, and wheels high across the south later on.

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

A Sure Sign Of Spring

When I was cutting today the end got nipped off a little white pine branch. The sap is flowing.


One of the reasons why I prefer to leave the dead trees standing and use them for firewood only after they have fallen on their own.


Running the saw in the snow.


- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

Blushing Pluto? Dwarf planet takes on a ruddier hue: NASA

Pluto, the dwarf planet on the outer edge of our solar system, has a dramatically ruddier hue than it did just a few years ago, NASA scientists said Thursday, after examining photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

They said the distant orb appears mottled and molasses-colored in recent pictures, with a markedly redder tone that most likely is the result of surface ice melting on Pluto's sunlit pole and then refreezing on the other pole.

The remarkable color shift, which apparently took place between 2000 and 2002, confirms that Pluto is a dynamic world undergoing dramatic atmospheric changes and not simply a ball of ice and rock, according to scientists at the US space agency.

They said they will compare Hubble pictures taken in 1994 with some from 2002 and 2003, as they search for more signs of seasonal change, including evidence that Pluto's northern polar region has gotten brighter, while the southern hemisphere has darkened.

"The Hubble observations are the key to... showing how it all makes sense by providing a context based on weather and seasonal changes, which opens other new lines of investigation," said the leader of the study, principal investigator Marc Buie of the Southwest Research Institute in the western US city of Boulder, Colorado.

Pluto -- declassified as a full-fledged planet in August 2006 -- has a 248-year orbit and an axial tilt which, unlike Earth, alone drives the seasons. The icy orb's seasons are asymmetrical because of its elliptical orbit.

Spring transitions to polar summer quickly in the northern hemisphere, because Pluto is moving faster along its orbit when it is closer to the sun, NASA said.

Scientists are hoping to collect additional riveting snapshots of Pluto when NASA's next space probe, dubbed New Horizons, flies by the dwarf planet in 2015.

Hubble underwent repair during a space shuttle mission last year that left it with a new camera and spectrograph, as well as spruced up scientific instruments.

The repair job marked the end of NASA's human missions to the beloved Hubble. Launched in 1990, the telescope was repaired and upgraded in 1993, 1997, 1999, 2002 and 2008.

Last year's final upgrade extended the life of Hubble another five years.

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Sirius

Look well up in the south around 10 p.m. for Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. From latitudes south of about Los Angeles, the second-brightest star, Canopus, twinkles below Sirius, quite low above the southern horizon.

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

ISS Tomorrow Morning

8 Feb -2.8 06:03:40 W 43

- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

LOOKOUT! That Tree Is A Deathtrap!

It's odd how often I run into hollow trees. Of course, if they were healthy, then I guess they wouldn't be dead! Just cutting the notch, and they start to fall already, pinching the bar. Most of the time it's hard to tell what they are going to do. Sometimes they shatter and come crashing down without warning. I can usually tell beforehand if they are hollow, but not always, like this one.


It was an absolutely gorgeous day to cut wood! The old maul handle is finally starting to get just a tiny bit of play in it. After 25 years the epoxy is shrinking. I bet within 10 years I will have to replace the handle. I should just buy a Fiskars if I am going to have to replace the handle on that old maul every 35 years, or it will put me in the poorhouse!


And I did cut a fair amount of it today. I'm almost caught up with what I've burned, sold, and given away. One more day should do it, depending on how much I sell tomorrow. Then I can start stacking the excess in the woods again.


Dropped these two trees and skillfully missed the apple tree in the foreground. Even if I do say so myself!


Today it was my ATV that got hit by my wild split pitching!


Not bad, these gloves made it almost two winters. I'll have to reach into the grab-bag and pull out another pair.


Today wasn't all wood cuttin'. I took some airplane pictures too.


Way, way up there. 40x worth. Picture starts to get a little grainy.


Somebody was having a little air to air combat practice!


- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill

The strangest liquid: Why water is so weird

We are confronted by many mysteries, from the nature of dark matter and the origin of the universe to the quest for a theory of everything. These are all puzzles on the grand scale, but you can observe another enduring mystery of the physical world - equally perplexing, if not quite so grand - from the comfort of your kitchen. Simply fill a tall glass with chilled water, throw in an ice cube and leave it to stand.

The fact that the ice cube floats is the first oddity. And the mystery deepens if you take a thermometer and measure the temperature of the water at various depths. At the top, near the ice cube, you'll find it to be around 0 °C, but at the bottom it should be about 4 °C. That's because water is denser at 4°C than it is at any other temperature - another strange trait that sets it apart from other liquids.

Water's odd properties don't stop there (see "Water's mysteries"), and some are vital to life. Because ice is less dense than water, and water is less dense at its freezing point than when it is slightly warmer, it freezes from the top down rather than the bottom up. So even during the ice ages, life continued to thrive on lake floors and in the deep ocean. Water also has an extraordinary capacity to mop up heat, and this helps smooth out climatic changes that could otherwise devastate ecosystems.

Yet despite water's overwhelming importance to life, no single theory had been able to satisfactorily explain its mysterious properties - until now. If we can believe physicists Anders Nilsson at Stanford University, California, and Lars Pettersson of Stockholm University, Sweden, and their colleagues, we could at last be getting to the bottom of many of these anomalies.

Their controversial ideas expand on a theory proposed more than a century ago by Wilhelm Roentgen, the discoverer of X-rays, who claimed that the molecules in liquid water pack together not in just one way, as today's textbooks would have it, but in two fundamentally different ways.

Key to the understanding of water's mysteries is the way its molecules - made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom - interact with one another. The oxygen atom has a slight negative charge while the hydrogen atoms share a compensating positive charge. As such, the hydrogen and oxygen atoms of neighbouring molecules are attracted to one another, forming a link called a hydrogen bond.

Hydrogen bonds are far weaker than the bonds that link the atoms within molecules together, and so are continually breaking and reforming, but they are at their strongest when molecules are arranged so that each hydrogen bond lines up with a molecular bond (see diagram). The shape of a water molecule is such that each H2O molecule is surrounded by four neighbours arranged in the shape of a triangular pyramid - better known as a tetrahedron.

At least, that's the way the molecules arrange themselves in ice. According to the conventional view, liquid water has a similar, albeit less rigid, structure, in which extra molecules can pack into some of the open gaps in the tetrahedral arrangement. That explains why liquid water is denser than ice - and it seems to fit the results of various experiments in which beams of X-rays, infrared light and neutrons are bounced off samples of water.

True, some physicists had claimed that water placed under certain extreme conditions may separate into two different structures (see "Extreme water"), but most had assumed it resumes a single structure under normal conditions.

Then, 10 years ago, a chance discovery by Pettersson and Nilsson called this picture into question. They were using X-ray absorption spectroscopy to investigate the amino acid glycine. The peaks in the X-ray absorption spectrum can shed light on the precise nature of the target substance's chemical bonds, and hence on its structure. Importantly, the researchers had got hold of a new, high-power X-ray source with which they were able to make more sensitive and accurate measurements than had ever been possible. They soon realised that the water containing their glycine sample was producing a far more interesting spectrum than the amino acid. "What we saw there was sensational," Nilsson recalls, "so we had to get to the bottom of it."

Dramatic implications

The feature that sparked their interest was a peak in the absorption spectrum that is not predicted by the traditional model of liquid water. In fact, in a paper published in 2004 they concluded that at any given moment 85 per cent of the hydrogen bonds in water must be weakened or broken, far more than the 10 per cent predicted by the textbook model (Science, vol 304, p 995).

The implications of this finding are dramatic: it suggests that a total rethink of the structure of water is needed. So Nilsson and Pettersson turned to other X-ray experiments to confirm their claims. Their first move was to enlist the help of Shik Shin of the University of Tokyo, Japan, who specialises in a technique called X-ray emission spectroscopy. The key thing about these spectra is that the shorter the wavelength of the X-rays in a substance's emission spectrum are, the looser the hydrogen bonding must be.

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