Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Post Your Community Calendar Event Here
If you have an event to add to our community calendar, post it here.
full Moon passes through Taurus
The full Moon passes through Taurus tonight. Its brightest star, Aldebaran, is a little to the lower right of the Moon in early evening, with the small dipper-shaped Pleiades star cluster to the upper right of the Moon.
- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill
- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill
Hundreds of birds seem to mourn deaths of fellow ravens
Ravens have feelings, too, at least judging from an eerie scene Tuesday morning on Minnie Street in east Fairbanks.
After two ravens roosting on top of a power transformer were electrocuted, hundreds of ravens showed up within a minute or two and started silently circling overhead and perching in nearby trees.
Rod Stephens, owner of Rod’s Saw Shop across the street, saw the scene play out before his eyes after a man pulled into the shop and reported seeing sparks flying on top of the transformer.
“I walked out there and there were all these birds just circling. There were ravens in all the trees,” he said. “It was weird.”
Stephens estimated the number of ravens at “a couple hundred.”
“It was like that movie, ‘The Birds,’” he said. “I walked out and wasn’t sure if they were going to start dive-bombing me.”
One of the electrocuted ravens had fallen to the ground and the other was still caught in the wires and transformer, Stephens said.
Ben Brees, a computer technician at Geek City across the street from Stephens’ shop, was driving to work when he saw what he described as “a vortex of ravens circling” next to the computer store.
“I could see them a half-mile away,” Brees said. “It was a funnel of black birds. I pulled up to the building right as they were circling.”
The birds only hung around for a few minutes before flying off, Stephens said.
“They said their respects and moved on,” he said.
There were no power outages reported as a result of the birds being electrocuted, said Corinne Bradish, spokeswoman for Golden Valley Electric Association.
It’s not uncommon for squirrels and birds to get electrocuted while perching on or crossing electrical wires, power poles and transformers, Bradish said. The company notifies the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service whenever ravens are killed, she said.
Travis Booms, the nongame biologist at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Fairbanks, wasn’t surprised to hear ravens had been electrocuted. More ravens are probably electrocuted in Fairbanks than people think, he said.
“They’re the same size as a lot of raptors that we know get electrocuted on a regular basis, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if ravens get electrocuted on a pretty regular basis,” he said.
The fact that incident attracted dozens of other ravens to the scene intrigued Booms.
“I’ve never heard of ravens holding funerals,” he said. “It wouldn’t surprise me if the birds that got zapped were still alive and were acting erratically. That would attract the attention of other ravens.”
source....
After two ravens roosting on top of a power transformer were electrocuted, hundreds of ravens showed up within a minute or two and started silently circling overhead and perching in nearby trees.
Rod Stephens, owner of Rod’s Saw Shop across the street, saw the scene play out before his eyes after a man pulled into the shop and reported seeing sparks flying on top of the transformer.
“I walked out there and there were all these birds just circling. There were ravens in all the trees,” he said. “It was weird.”
Stephens estimated the number of ravens at “a couple hundred.”
“It was like that movie, ‘The Birds,’” he said. “I walked out and wasn’t sure if they were going to start dive-bombing me.”
One of the electrocuted ravens had fallen to the ground and the other was still caught in the wires and transformer, Stephens said.
Ben Brees, a computer technician at Geek City across the street from Stephens’ shop, was driving to work when he saw what he described as “a vortex of ravens circling” next to the computer store.
“I could see them a half-mile away,” Brees said. “It was a funnel of black birds. I pulled up to the building right as they were circling.”
The birds only hung around for a few minutes before flying off, Stephens said.
“They said their respects and moved on,” he said.
There were no power outages reported as a result of the birds being electrocuted, said Corinne Bradish, spokeswoman for Golden Valley Electric Association.
It’s not uncommon for squirrels and birds to get electrocuted while perching on or crossing electrical wires, power poles and transformers, Bradish said. The company notifies the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service whenever ravens are killed, she said.
Travis Booms, the nongame biologist at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Fairbanks, wasn’t surprised to hear ravens had been electrocuted. More ravens are probably electrocuted in Fairbanks than people think, he said.
“They’re the same size as a lot of raptors that we know get electrocuted on a regular basis, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if ravens get electrocuted on a pretty regular basis,” he said.
The fact that incident attracted dozens of other ravens to the scene intrigued Booms.
“I’ve never heard of ravens holding funerals,” he said. “It wouldn’t surprise me if the birds that got zapped were still alive and were acting erratically. That would attract the attention of other ravens.”
source....
Monday, November 30, 2009
The Wait Is Over
It's good to be swinging my old maul again! Two months of not cutting any wood. The traditional gun deer season ended yesterday and today signaled my return to making firewood. I milked the cows this morning and after chores I took Mrs. Quads to town so she could do a little Christmas shopping. Then had time to cut some wood before tonight's milking.
And there's plenty more ready and waiting!
- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill
And there's plenty more ready and waiting!
- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill
Mummy's CT scans show heart disease came before fast food
Her name was Lady Rai. She was a nursemaid to an Egyptian queen who lived three centuries before the reign of Pharaoh Ramses I. And she suffered from heart disease.
The evidence lies in a CT scan of Lady Rai's mummified remains, researchers here said Tuesday. Using 21st-century science, they peered through her tattered wrappings and into her ancient arteries. There, they found evidence of the same kind of plaque that doctors now diagnose every day.
What's more, they found it in someone who lived 3,500 years before fast food, sedentary living and cheap cigarettes. The research suggests that while modern risk factors may account for the current epidemic of heart disease, the ailment predates them.
"To me, it means we're all susceptible," says researcher Randall Thompson of the Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Mo., who presented the findings at an American Heart Association meeting. "To a certain extent, this may be a disease of being human."
The images of Lady Rai are part of a series made in February by a team of cardiologists, imaging experts, Egyptologists and preservationists at the Museum of Antiquities in Cairo. The team examined 22 mummies, dating from 1981 B.C. to A.D. 364. They found heart tissue or blood vessels in 13; in four, they found intact hearts.
Three of the mummies had atherosclerosis, a buildup of fat, cholesterol and calcium inside their arteries. Another three had probable atherosclerosis. Calcified blockages were more common in mummies who were estimated to have died after the age of 45, researchers say.
The images of Lady Rai betrayed classic evidence of calcified plaque in the aorta, which appears as a bright spot on the CT image. "It's just what you'd see in a living patient," Thompson says. "We don't know whether she died of a heart attack or not, but we can tell that she had the disease process that leads to heart attacks."
The most ancient mummy with evidence of heart disease died between 1530 B.C. and 1570 B.C., the researchers say.
The project got its start when senior author Gregory Thomas of the University of California-Irvine visited the museum with Egyptian cardiologist Adel Allam.
When Allam, a devout Muslim, left the museum briefly to pray, he noticed a CT scanner in a trailer parked out back. The scanner had been used for other research. The idea for the project was born.
The project was funded by the National Bank of Egypt, the Mid America Heart Institute and scanner maker Siemens.
Each of the mummies was slid intact into a donut-shaped, six-slice CT scanner for a sequence of X-rays. "We didn't have to tell them to hold their breath," joked collaborator Samuel Wann of the Wisconsin Heart Hospital.
source....
The evidence lies in a CT scan of Lady Rai's mummified remains, researchers here said Tuesday. Using 21st-century science, they peered through her tattered wrappings and into her ancient arteries. There, they found evidence of the same kind of plaque that doctors now diagnose every day.
What's more, they found it in someone who lived 3,500 years before fast food, sedentary living and cheap cigarettes. The research suggests that while modern risk factors may account for the current epidemic of heart disease, the ailment predates them.
"To me, it means we're all susceptible," says researcher Randall Thompson of the Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Mo., who presented the findings at an American Heart Association meeting. "To a certain extent, this may be a disease of being human."
The images of Lady Rai are part of a series made in February by a team of cardiologists, imaging experts, Egyptologists and preservationists at the Museum of Antiquities in Cairo. The team examined 22 mummies, dating from 1981 B.C. to A.D. 364. They found heart tissue or blood vessels in 13; in four, they found intact hearts.
Three of the mummies had atherosclerosis, a buildup of fat, cholesterol and calcium inside their arteries. Another three had probable atherosclerosis. Calcified blockages were more common in mummies who were estimated to have died after the age of 45, researchers say.
The images of Lady Rai betrayed classic evidence of calcified plaque in the aorta, which appears as a bright spot on the CT image. "It's just what you'd see in a living patient," Thompson says. "We don't know whether she died of a heart attack or not, but we can tell that she had the disease process that leads to heart attacks."
The most ancient mummy with evidence of heart disease died between 1530 B.C. and 1570 B.C., the researchers say.
The project got its start when senior author Gregory Thomas of the University of California-Irvine visited the museum with Egyptian cardiologist Adel Allam.
When Allam, a devout Muslim, left the museum briefly to pray, he noticed a CT scanner in a trailer parked out back. The scanner had been used for other research. The idea for the project was born.
The project was funded by the National Bank of Egypt, the Mid America Heart Institute and scanner maker Siemens.
Each of the mummies was slid intact into a donut-shaped, six-slice CT scanner for a sequence of X-rays. "We didn't have to tell them to hold their breath," joked collaborator Samuel Wann of the Wisconsin Heart Hospital.
source....
Sunday, November 29, 2009
stargazers
For stargazers, no time is as spectacular as late fall and early winter, when the evening sky abounds with bright stars, such as Rigel and Betelgeuse in Orion, Aldebaran in Taurus, Capella in Auriga, and Sirius and Procyon in Canis Major and Canis Minor.
- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill
- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill
Top 10 Reasons Why the World Won't End in 2012
In the early days of computers, when hard drives weighed as much as a piece of furniture, a popular phrase was "Garbage-in, Garbage-out" (GIGO). It meant that computers would unquestioningly process the most nonsensical of input data and produce nonsensical output.
"GIGO" describes the abysmal lack of intelligent thought and critical thinking on the Internet when it comes to all the hysteria about the end of the world coming on December 21, 2012 -- just in time to ruin Christmas.
I'm getting e-mail about this weekly and I expect the nonsense to ratchet up.
This latest installment in decades of flaky astronomical apocalypse predictions is loosely based on the Mayan calendar that marks the end of a 5,126-year era. Apparently the Mayans knew something about the heavens we don't, according to numerous hot-selling 2012 doomsday books on the market. Our multi-billion dollar telescopes, space probes, and 6,000 professional astronomers somehow just can't keep up with the mystic knowledge of an ancient superstitious culture.
With the much-ballyhooed release of the film "2012" opening on November 13, end of world chatter will be the topic from backyard cookouts, to bars, to wine and cheese parties.
I am listing the 10 most popular 2012 end-of-world scenarios and providing a quickie reference guide to use in politely dismissing any friends, relatives, or in-laws whose brains have turned into a pile of GIGO mush after being suckered by the End of Days hype.
The ten top 2012 doomsday scenarios:
10. Changes in the Sun's magnetic field will lead to powerful flares.
So what else is new under the sun? The sun goes though a well-documented 11-year sunspot cycle that is driven by its magnetic field entangling, reforming and flipping polarity. Yes, the peak of the next cycle is in 2012 (or 2013), and some predictions suggest it might be 30 to 50 percent stronger than the last peak.
But experts say it will certainly not be the biggest peak ever recorded.
The bottom line is that no dragon's breath of flame will stretch across 100 million miles of space and blowtorch Earth. The largest solar flare recorded to date, on Nov. 4, 2003, spewed several billions of tons of plasma in Earth's direction. The flare's X-ray radiation that impacted our protective atmosphere had the equivalent radiation of 5,000 suns.
We're still here.
9. The Earth's magnetic field will reverse.
Don't hold you breath. The last field reversal happened nearly 800,000 years ago. Fred Flintstone and our other ancestor cavemen survived. Geological evidence shows that the field has reversed its orientation tens of thousands of times over Earth history. Yet there is no definitive evidence that a magnetic field reversal has ever caused any mass extinction due to increased cosmic ray influx.
8. The Earth's rotation axis will tip.
This isn't nearly as easy as tipping cows. Unlike Mars, which does go though wide excursions in it axial tilt, Earth's tilt is kept steady by the gravitational influence of the moon. An object the size of Mars would have to hit Earth to transfer enough momentum to knock us out of kilter. But Mars-sized protoplanets were kicked into interstellar space over 4 billion years ago. The solar system doesn't make "planets-gone-wild" anymore.
7. A grand alignment of Jupiter and Saturn will gravitationally perturb Earth.
For the past several decades there have been doomsday claims that the combined gravity from grand planetary alignments will cause geologic and meteorological upheavals on Earth.
None are scheduled for 2012.
In 1962 an extremely rare grand conjunction of the classical naked-eye planets drove astrologers crazy. The conjunction happened on Feb. 4-5 and was accompanied by a solar eclipse! The most infamous grand conjunction was in 1982 and popularized in a book called "The Jupiter Effect," which predicted earthquakes and massive tides. Life went on as usual both years. The moon has a vastly greater gravitational influence on Earth than Jupiter. It's called location, location, location! At a whopping distance of 400 million miles from Earth, Jupiter's tug is pretty wimpy.
6. The Sun will align with the galactic equator on the winter solstice.
So what? These are simply coordinates in the sky. It has no physical reality any more than the intersection of Broadway and 7th Avenue at Times Square influences the geology of Manhattan Island. This is greatly confused with the fact that the sun's position actually oscillates up and down as it orbits the galaxy, like a horse on a carousel.
We pass through the galactic plane every 35 to 40 million years. It's possible that an increased number of comets might be hurled towards the Earth because of gravitational interaction with the densest parts of our galaxy during this passage. But we are talking about the consequences spanning many thousands of years, not crashing down on our heads in any one specific year.
5. The black hole in the galactic center will affect us.
The Milky Way's black hole has no influence on the galactic disk. The black hole is three million solar masses. The Milky Way is several trillion solar masses when we add the tug of dark matter. Any gravitational influence of the black hole over the galaxy would be like the tail wagging the dog. The Milky Way's collision with the Andromeda galaxy will dump gas into the black hole and it will blaze as a quasar. But that's several billion years away.
4. An asteroid will smash into Earth.
A threatening near-Earth asteroid that's gotten the most press is the 900-foot wide Apophis. But its chances of collision have been downgraded to 1 in 250,000 at its next close approach in 2029. In theory, an uncharted asteroid or comet could come out of the blue tomorrow. But if we don't know about it today, the Mayans certainly didn't know about it 1,200 years ago. Earth-killer impacts are tens of millions of years apart. So there's no reason to be a doomsday clock-watcher.
3. The rogue planet Nibiru will swing by Earth.
There isn't such a planet any more than the planet Naboo from the Star Wars trilogy is real. Purported Internet pictures of the interloper are photographic lens flares or hoaxes. Don't believe every dot you see photographed in the sky.
2. Supernovae or hypernovae will irradiate Earth.
There are no stars that are so close to Earth that radiation from their supernova demise would seriously affect us. The nearest candidate, the red giant Betelgeuse, is predicted to explode in the next 1,000 years. The monster star Eta Carinae is also on a short fuse. Neither doomed star has a spin axis precisely aimed at Earth, so we don't have to worry about being fried by a narrow beam of gamma rays ejected from the core's implosion. In fact the kinds of stars that shoot out these Death Star beams are uncommon in the Milky Way. Earth has a one percent chance of getting zapped over 10 billion years. Scratch gamma ray bursts off of your homeowner's insurance policy.
1. A cloud of negative energy engulfs the solar system.
Wow! A dark cloud with a bad attitude! This sound suspiciously like a Star Trek episode. Dark energy is all around us already, but it is not packaged into clouds. The same goes for dark matter.
source....
"GIGO" describes the abysmal lack of intelligent thought and critical thinking on the Internet when it comes to all the hysteria about the end of the world coming on December 21, 2012 -- just in time to ruin Christmas.
I'm getting e-mail about this weekly and I expect the nonsense to ratchet up.
This latest installment in decades of flaky astronomical apocalypse predictions is loosely based on the Mayan calendar that marks the end of a 5,126-year era. Apparently the Mayans knew something about the heavens we don't, according to numerous hot-selling 2012 doomsday books on the market. Our multi-billion dollar telescopes, space probes, and 6,000 professional astronomers somehow just can't keep up with the mystic knowledge of an ancient superstitious culture.
With the much-ballyhooed release of the film "2012" opening on November 13, end of world chatter will be the topic from backyard cookouts, to bars, to wine and cheese parties.
I am listing the 10 most popular 2012 end-of-world scenarios and providing a quickie reference guide to use in politely dismissing any friends, relatives, or in-laws whose brains have turned into a pile of GIGO mush after being suckered by the End of Days hype.
The ten top 2012 doomsday scenarios:
10. Changes in the Sun's magnetic field will lead to powerful flares.
So what else is new under the sun? The sun goes though a well-documented 11-year sunspot cycle that is driven by its magnetic field entangling, reforming and flipping polarity. Yes, the peak of the next cycle is in 2012 (or 2013), and some predictions suggest it might be 30 to 50 percent stronger than the last peak.
But experts say it will certainly not be the biggest peak ever recorded.
The bottom line is that no dragon's breath of flame will stretch across 100 million miles of space and blowtorch Earth. The largest solar flare recorded to date, on Nov. 4, 2003, spewed several billions of tons of plasma in Earth's direction. The flare's X-ray radiation that impacted our protective atmosphere had the equivalent radiation of 5,000 suns.
We're still here.
9. The Earth's magnetic field will reverse.
Don't hold you breath. The last field reversal happened nearly 800,000 years ago. Fred Flintstone and our other ancestor cavemen survived. Geological evidence shows that the field has reversed its orientation tens of thousands of times over Earth history. Yet there is no definitive evidence that a magnetic field reversal has ever caused any mass extinction due to increased cosmic ray influx.
8. The Earth's rotation axis will tip.
This isn't nearly as easy as tipping cows. Unlike Mars, which does go though wide excursions in it axial tilt, Earth's tilt is kept steady by the gravitational influence of the moon. An object the size of Mars would have to hit Earth to transfer enough momentum to knock us out of kilter. But Mars-sized protoplanets were kicked into interstellar space over 4 billion years ago. The solar system doesn't make "planets-gone-wild" anymore.
7. A grand alignment of Jupiter and Saturn will gravitationally perturb Earth.
For the past several decades there have been doomsday claims that the combined gravity from grand planetary alignments will cause geologic and meteorological upheavals on Earth.
None are scheduled for 2012.
In 1962 an extremely rare grand conjunction of the classical naked-eye planets drove astrologers crazy. The conjunction happened on Feb. 4-5 and was accompanied by a solar eclipse! The most infamous grand conjunction was in 1982 and popularized in a book called "The Jupiter Effect," which predicted earthquakes and massive tides. Life went on as usual both years. The moon has a vastly greater gravitational influence on Earth than Jupiter. It's called location, location, location! At a whopping distance of 400 million miles from Earth, Jupiter's tug is pretty wimpy.
6. The Sun will align with the galactic equator on the winter solstice.
So what? These are simply coordinates in the sky. It has no physical reality any more than the intersection of Broadway and 7th Avenue at Times Square influences the geology of Manhattan Island. This is greatly confused with the fact that the sun's position actually oscillates up and down as it orbits the galaxy, like a horse on a carousel.
We pass through the galactic plane every 35 to 40 million years. It's possible that an increased number of comets might be hurled towards the Earth because of gravitational interaction with the densest parts of our galaxy during this passage. But we are talking about the consequences spanning many thousands of years, not crashing down on our heads in any one specific year.
5. The black hole in the galactic center will affect us.
The Milky Way's black hole has no influence on the galactic disk. The black hole is three million solar masses. The Milky Way is several trillion solar masses when we add the tug of dark matter. Any gravitational influence of the black hole over the galaxy would be like the tail wagging the dog. The Milky Way's collision with the Andromeda galaxy will dump gas into the black hole and it will blaze as a quasar. But that's several billion years away.
4. An asteroid will smash into Earth.
A threatening near-Earth asteroid that's gotten the most press is the 900-foot wide Apophis. But its chances of collision have been downgraded to 1 in 250,000 at its next close approach in 2029. In theory, an uncharted asteroid or comet could come out of the blue tomorrow. But if we don't know about it today, the Mayans certainly didn't know about it 1,200 years ago. Earth-killer impacts are tens of millions of years apart. So there's no reason to be a doomsday clock-watcher.
3. The rogue planet Nibiru will swing by Earth.
There isn't such a planet any more than the planet Naboo from the Star Wars trilogy is real. Purported Internet pictures of the interloper are photographic lens flares or hoaxes. Don't believe every dot you see photographed in the sky.
2. Supernovae or hypernovae will irradiate Earth.
There are no stars that are so close to Earth that radiation from their supernova demise would seriously affect us. The nearest candidate, the red giant Betelgeuse, is predicted to explode in the next 1,000 years. The monster star Eta Carinae is also on a short fuse. Neither doomed star has a spin axis precisely aimed at Earth, so we don't have to worry about being fried by a narrow beam of gamma rays ejected from the core's implosion. In fact the kinds of stars that shoot out these Death Star beams are uncommon in the Milky Way. Earth has a one percent chance of getting zapped over 10 billion years. Scratch gamma ray bursts off of your homeowner's insurance policy.
1. A cloud of negative energy engulfs the solar system.
Wow! A dark cloud with a bad attitude! This sound suspiciously like a Star Trek episode. Dark energy is all around us already, but it is not packaged into clouds. The same goes for dark matter.
source....
Saturday, November 28, 2009
ISS Tonight
28 Nov -1.6 16:45:58 WNW 36
- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill
- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill
New Milky Way Image Shows Best of All Spectra
A new multi-telescope image has revealed the beauty of the center of the Milky Way across the electromagnetic spectrum.
The Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes teamed up with the Chandra X-ray Observatory to provide a glimpse of our galaxy that shows far more than our human eyes can see.
The effort allows a tremendous amount of data to be grasped in one glorious, mind-blowing space photo. Spitzer investigated the infrared light (red in the final image) emanating from the region, which largely comes from glowing dust clouds created by stellar radiation and wind. Chandra captured the X-rays (blue and violet in the final image) emanating from stellar explosions and the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. And the Hubble looked at the near infrared light closest to the visible part of the spectrum (yellow in the final image) to reveal hundreds of thousands of stars.
source....
Friday, November 27, 2009
M33
M33 — a galaxy that looks like a smaller version of our own — is in the small, faint constellation Triangulum, which is high in the east at nightfall. Through binoculars, the galaxy looks like a faint, fuzzy patch of light.
- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill
- Quads, hailing from Grand Marsh Observatory atop Elk Castle Hill
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)