Falling through planet Earth's predawn skies toward its close encounter with the Sun on November 28, Comet ISON is coming to life. The much anticipated comet has now been reported to have substantially increased in activity, surging to naked-eye visibility for dark sites and sprouting a more complex tail. ISON's tail stretches over two degrees in this telephoto skyview from southern Kenya, captured on the morning of November 14. Shown in two panels, the enlarged negative version on the right makes details of the long tail easier to trace, including the tail's separated filaments toward the top of the frame. A sungrazer and first time visitor to the inner solar system, the possibility of ISON's survival to become a bright comet in planet Earth's December skies remains a question.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3092184/posts
(AP) Nick Risinger has always gazed up at the sky. But last year the amateur astronomer and photographer quit his day job as a Seattle marketing director and lugged six synchronized cameras about 60,000 miles to capture an image of the entire night sky.
Risinger, 28, set up his rack of cameras in high-elevation locales in the Western U.S. and South Africa, timing photo shoots around new moons when nights were long and dark. He programmed his six cameras to track the stars as they moved across the sky and simultaneously snapped thousands of photos. (TheBlaze)
http://skysurvey.org/
Earlier this year, Russian scientist Leonid Sokolov of St. Petersburg State University announced his calculations that the asteroid Apophis will pass within 18,000 miles of Earth, close enough to knock geosynchronous satellites out of the sky.
Villard warns, however, that when Apophis comes screaming by on Easter Sunday, April 13, 2036, there's no guarantee it won't stray from course and strike the planet.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=258105
AS REPORTED BY STARWARS AS A TIE FIGHTER:
http://starwarsblog.starwars.com/index.php/2011/01/05/tie-fighter-spotted-during-eclipse/
The silhouette of the Moon taking a dark bite out of the Sun is obvious enough, as are some interesting sunspots on the Sun’s face… but wait a sec… that one spot isn’t a spot at all, it’s the International Space Station! This was a double eclipse!
That’s why Thierry sojourned to Oman; due to the geometry of the ISS orbit, it was from there that he had the best chance of getting a picture of the station as it passed in front of the Sun during the relatively brief duration of the actual solar eclipse. But talk about brief; the ISS was in front of the Sun for less than second, so not only did he have one chance at getting this spectacular once-in-a-lifetime shot, but he had only a fraction of a second to snap it!
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/01/04/insanely-awesome-solar-eclipse-picture/
TAMPA - Scientists say the magnetic north pole is moving toward Russia and the fallout has reached -- of all places -- Tampa International Airport.
The airport has closed its primary runway until Jan. 13 to repaint the numeric designators at each end and change taxiway signage to account for the shift in location of the Earth's magnetic north pole.
The closure of the west parallel runway will result in more activity on the east parallel runway and more noise for residential areas of South Tampa.
The busiest runway will be re-designated 19R/1L on aviation charts. It's been 18R/36L, indicating its alignment along the 180-degree approach from the north and the 360-degree approach from the south.
Later this month, the airport's east parallel runway and the seldom used east-west runway will be closed to change signage to their new designations.
The Federal Aviation Administration required the runway designation change to account for what a National Geographic News report described as a gradual shift of the Earth's magnetic pole at nearly 40 miles a year toward Russia because of magnetic changes in the core of the planet.
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2011/jan/05/shift-of-earths-magnetic-north-pole-impacts-tampa-/
- 19 25 12 -89 46 03 - the first large object
- 16 19 35 -88 43 10 - a cylindrical object
- 02 26 39 -89 43 13 - the object as a circle
SETI Astrophysicist Craig Kasnov has announced the approach to the Earth of 3 very large, very fast moving objects. The length of the "flying saucers" is in the range of tens of kilometers. Landing, according to calculations of scientists, should be in mid-December 2012. Date coincides with the end of the Mayan calendar.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2639654/posts
