The night sky as art courtesy of NASA and Australian photographers

South-east Queensland

Victoria

The anti-science brigade ramps it up

If you thought that the current climate of anti-science couldn't get much worse than aggressive creationism, intelligent design and climate change denialism, then you have obviously missed a website set up to promote a book and November 2010 conference in Indiana USA.

Galileo Was Wrong: The Church Was Right

First Annual Catholic Conference on Geocentrisim

Galileo Was Wrong is a detailed and comprehensive treatment of the scientific evidence supporting Geocentrism, the academic belief that the Earth is immobile in the center of the universe. Garnering scientific information from physics, astrophysics, astronomy and other sciences, Galileo Was Wrong shows that the debate between Galileo and the Catholic Church was much more than a difference of opinion about the interpretation of Scripture.

Scientific evidence available to us within the last 100 years that was not available during Galileo's confrontation shows that the Church's position on the immobility of the Earth is not only scientifically supportable, but it is the most stable model of the universe and the one which best answers all the evidence we see in the cosmos.

At this rate it won't be long before these jolly souls join the flat earthers in positioning themselves for a comeback via a membership drive.

The University of Western Australia has a survey Attitudes Towards Science currently online:
This study explores people’s beliefs about a wide range of topics, ranging from scientific propositions to claims made in the media and on the internet. In addition, the survey is interested in your attitudes towards your own life and issues confronting modern societies at the moment. The survey consists of around 40 questions and should take less than 10 minutes to complete.

Bolt's lack of research exposed yet again

If the rest of the Australian mainstream media and blogosphere made as many factual errors as journalist Andrew Bolt there would barely be a handful of people left in this country who were using the Internet to read news and current affairs.

Crikey's Pure Poison outed Bolt for his latest blunder in The Herald-Sun on 31 August 2010 set out here:

Something a little more likely and potentially a lot more devastating for the global warming alarmists to fret over:

An asteroid more than a mile wide is heading for earth, posing the greatest threat yet by an object approaching the planet, scientists have warned.

The asteroid – called 2002 NT7 – was spotted only three weeks ago, but could strike on 1 February 2019, the US space agency Nasa said…

Gerrit Verschuur, an astrophysicist and radio astronomer at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, said the impact would create a fireball so intense it would kill anyone who could see it, after which material thrown into the air would shower half the world with flaming debris. "It would be as if the sky itself had caught fire," he said.

The heat would set fire to forests and cities, after which dust would fill the atmosphere, obscuring the sun for a month. That in turn would kill plants and animals, so that only creatures that lived underground would have a strong chance of survival.

Same apocalyptic scenario as the global warmists' own, but missing that vital ingredient for a new mass faith - a narrative of human sin and the punishment to come.

(Thanks to reader Warwick.)

Now a sensible person would have looked at that link to Newshoggers and double checked with NASA and its Near Earth Object Program, but not Mr. Bolt - that would have spoiled his dig at climate change science.

For those who are interested in seeing how few objects pose a real risk there is NASA's Sentry Risk Table . As I write there is only one risk impact on a scale of 0 to 10 that is presently indicated as meriting "careful monitoring" and, it is not Bolt's asteroid of doom (discovered in 2002) and it is not due until sometime between 2048 and 2057.

In fact the asteroid Bolt mentions seems to have been removed from the Sentry Risk Table sometime between mid-2002 and 2004 because the risk was so low as to be negligible over the next one hundred years.

NASA turns poet

 

Rumbles without sound

Auroras rain down
Magnetic fields shake
Beware the spacequake

Vortices swirl
plasma a'twirl
Richter predicts
a magnitude six

This month NASA decided to explain spacequakes

with information, graphs and 

a little poetry. 

While we are sleeping a total eclipse of the sun is occurring in the South Pacific on 11-12 July 2010

Animated map from NASA
While the NSW North Coast and the rest of Australia sleeps the Sun will be giving a spectacular light show for those lucky enough to live elsewhere in the Pacific Ocean on 11 July 2010 according to ABC News:

The Moon's umbral shadow will cross the South Pacific Ocean making landfall on the Cook Islands at 8:22am local time on Sunday morning (4:22 am Monday AEST). It will then travel over Easter Island and end soon after reaching Patagonia in southern Chile and Argentina.

The next partial eclipse which we will possibly be able to see here on the east coast will be on 14 November 2010 but the next total eclipse won't be until 22 July 2028.

First, the Moon's cool shadow will sweep across the landscape, bringing a breeze of its own to compete with the sea's. Attentive observers might notice shadow bands (a well-known but mysterious corrugation of the Moon's outermost shadow) rippling across the beach as the temperature and direction of the wind shifts. The ensuing darkness will have an alien quality, not as black as genuine night, but dark enough to convince seabirds to fly to their island roosts. As their cries subside, the sounds of night creatures come to the fore, a noontime symphony of crickets and frogs.
Next comes the moment that obsesses eclipse chasers: The corona pops into view. When the Moon is dead-center in front of the sun, mesmerizing tendrils of gas spread across the sky. It is the sun's outer atmosphere on full display to the human eye.

Solar eclipse over Cook Islandson 22 July 2009 from NASA files

Cultural dimension to glimpsing infinity

Looking unnervingly like Dr. Who's crack in the universe, this composite picture of nearly 14 billion year-old remnant light from that big bang thought to have created us all. Produced by the Planck telescope.

Click on image to enlarge

The space telescope was launched in May last year on a mission to survey the "cosmic microwave background" – ancient light left over from the big bang.
The bright streak across the middle of the picture is our own galaxy, the Milky Way, viewed edge-on. The intense light comes not from stars but from the radiation released by the dust and gas clouds that stretch between them. [The Guardian U.K. 4 July 2010 text and photograph]

Scientific exploration as art

Three images from Space Telescope's Top 100 Hubble photographs from outer space

Here comes the sun......

New images and movies courtesy of NASA at

First Light for the Solar Dynamics Observatory

Centuries old celestial dust trails to produce Orionid meteors visible in both hemispheres 21-23 October 2009 [links to sky maps]

Orionid 2008 from NCDCR

In the International Year of Astronomy Australians will be able to see what is predicted to be a splendid celestial night show from 21 to 23 October 2009 peaking on Thursday night.

Radiating out across the sky from a point between the constellations Gemini and Orion and just below Betelgeuse (Orion's red star) will be meteors caused by ancient debris from Halley's Comet.

On average the Orionid shower produces 20 meteors every hour at its peak (less seen with the naked eye in Australia) and 2am to 4am looking east to north-east is probably the best time for viewing from the Southern Hemisphere.

NASA information page
Sydney Observatory night sky map for October 2009 This star chart shows the stars and constellations visible in the night sky for Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra, Hobart, Adelaide and Perth for October 2009 at about 8.30 pm (summer time). For Darwin and similar locations the chart will still apply, but some stars will be lost off the southern edge while extra stars will be visible to the north. Stars down to a brightness or magnitude limit of 4.5 are shown on the star chart. To use this star chart, rotate the chart so that the direction you are facing (north, south, east or west) is shown at the bottom. The centre of the chart represents the point directly above your head, called the zenith point, and the outer circular edge represents the horizon.
Orionid Sky Map 1
Orionid Sky Map 2

Bright winding ribbon discovered at edge of solar system - it's the Universe waving Earth goodbye

This week NASA announced the discovery of a bright winding ribbon within the heliosphere surrounding our solar system.

One jaded local (tiring of the uphill battle to get government to do something about actually reducing national, state and regional carbon emission levels rather than just talking around the problem) suggests that this ribbon is the Universe giving one last wave goodbye to an Earth choking to death on greenhouse gases and other pollutants.

Funniest line of the week.......

From The Borowitz Report:

Elsewhere, NASA bombed the moon, saying it was the one spot President Bush missed.

Best political & intergalactic tweets seen recently and other stray thoughts

rod3000 Can I suggest NSW Cabinet have a caged death match? Last one standing gets to be Premier for 18 months. ....from Tweetie

Since when is dying at 77 years and 6 months of age considered an "untimely death", when average male expectancy in the United States is in the vicinity of 77.7 years?

A Scots farmer is now officially riding on the sheep's back as he took home a record £231,000 for a stud ram, named Deveronvale Perfection.

GODWIN Grech, the Treasury official at the centre of the fake email affair, proposed a fee deal to the merchant bank running the OzCar fund whose chairman was a key backer and personal donor to Malcolm Turnbull.The effect of the deal was to enable Credit Suisse, the bank hired by Treasury to implement OzCar, to maintain its $5 million in fees, despite the fund being scaled back from $2 billion to $1.3bn. The Weekend Australian can reveal that John O'Sullivan, the chairman of investment banking for Credit Suisse, donated more than $20,000 to the Wentworth Forum, the Opposition Leader's political fighting fund. According to The Australian on 29th August 2009.

Australia spammed outerspace on 28 August 2009 with 25,800 messages from Earth to Gliese 581d, a planet outside our solar system which may support life of some sort. These messages will take 20 years to reach this planet - at which time expect an intergalactic spam filter to activate.

Best intergalactic tweet from the Hello from Earth project:
"Yidigunmardin nuruku yajingewa wuremulu jandange. Our dream, we're telling to them young kids. We're talking all this dream for the future.
Yidumduma Bill Harney
Wardaman people, near Katherine, Australia"

Senator "Barney Rubble" Joyce (playfully rewriting history) reduces investigations into Australia's breach of UN sanctions against Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq to merely a matter of; "The main issue with AWB was there was a concerted effort, a political motive to get rid of Australia's single desk".

Amusing DIGG cover headline for article in the Seattle Weekly, USA; Gays Too Late To Ruin Marriage, Straights Beat You To It

The UK Telegraph posed the question last Saturday; "It's a question that all animal-loving Christian evangelicals must address: who will look after their pets on Earth when the Rapture comes and they are taken up to heaven?"

Thoughts of the Global Financial Crisis & Climate Change not bringing you down? Then try NASA's Asteroid Watch

Pic from Astronomy 1307

Thoughts of the Global Financial Crisis & Climate Change not bringing you down?
Feeling rather guilty because there are still some days when you wake up smiling?
The answer is a mouse click away!
The US Government space agency NASA has gone all Flash Gordon over at Asteroid Watch:
"Nuclear explosions and spacecraft impacts are two of the more relatively mature options for deflecting Earth-threatening objects and they have been studied in some detail (for example, see Ref. 1). Another option has been suggested for the small subset of asteroids that might also pass close to the Earth a few years prior to the predicted Earth impact. For these unique cases, the pre-impact close encounter affects the asteroid's motion so strongly that a relatively tiny change in its velocity prior to the close approach will be multiplied several fold during the flyby, thus allowing the asteroid to miss the Earth on the next pass. In these relatively infrequent cases, even the very modest gravitational attraction between the asteroid and a nearby "micro-thrusting" spacecraft (nicknamed a "gravity tractor") could provide enough of a change in the asteroid's velocity that an Earth collision could be avoided (see Ref. 2). Successful mitigation requires that a threatening asteroid must be discovered and physically characterized soon enough to allow the appropriate response; the current NASA Near-Earth Object Observations program is operated with this in mind. But, since the number of near-Earth asteroids increases as their sizes decrease, we are most likely to be hit by the relatively small objects that are most difficult to find ahead of time. As a result, consideration must also be given to the notification and evacuation of those regions on Earth that would be affected by the imminent collision of a small, recently-discovered impactor. However, if the object could be found far enough ahead of time and our space technology used to deflect it from the Earth threatening trajectory, it would be a tremendous demonstration of our space-faring capabilities!"

Yup! Always knew that a hot rock banging on the noggin was a

B-I-G threat to my peace of mind 'n' life and limb.

Hello from Earth 12 August 2009: phones are now open to contact E.T.

If the Universe was unaware of our existence in the past then it won't be after today as the Australian Department of Innovation, Science and Industry invites all to send a short message to the nearest Earth-like planet that we know Gliese 581 d.

August 2009 is Perseid Meteor Shower Month

Gibbous Moon photograph at Google Images

The Earth is currently passing through Comet Swift-Tuttle's dust and debris tail.
From 11-13 August numerous meteors will be visible travelling across the sky from 3am onwards if you live north of Brisbane and above that latitude elsewhere in Australia.

However, we will all be able to see the 55% gibbous Moon which will be in the sky over the same period.

First Dog and Ned the Bear with a few home truths about the Moon and Mars...

Sometimes when the mainstream media is in full flight commemorative flight as it was last week over the 40th anniversary of the U.S. landing on the Moon, one can sometimes feel out of sync with supposed public sentiment when thoughts and memories don't appear to coincide with mass recollection.

However, in this instance all those not in lock step were rescued by First Dog on the Moon and Ned the Bear.

Click on images to enlarge

Thank the gods for Australian cartoonists.

Cartoons from First Dog at Crikey and Ned the Bear

Longest solar eclipse of the century on evening of Tuesday 21 and sunrise of Wednesday 22 July 2009 (beginning in India)

2003 total solar eclipse in Antarctica

At sunrise on July 22, 2009, (the evening of July 21 PDT), the moon's umbra—the cone-shaped part of the moon's shadow—will fall on India's Gulf of Khambhat. The shadow will sweep across Asia and the South Pacific before leaving the earth near the Marshall Islands about 3½ hours later. The path of totality will cover a distance of approximately 9,500 miles (15,200 km). The maximum duration of totality is an exceptionally long 6 minutes and 39 seconds, which will come while the shadow is over the Pacific.

Unfortunately it doesn't look like Australia will get much of a view, however more information can be found at Eclipse and NASA, including animations and models.

The Moon...........

Earth's Moon from NASA archives

Forty years ago today the Americans first successfully landed men on the Moon.

That this anniversary is marked by humankind's inability to come to terms with the fact that dangerous global warming is occurring here on Earth demonstrates that while space exploration may have added to the sum of scientific knowledge it remains somewhat peripheral to life on the home planet.

NASA Apollo 11 video, audio tapes and transcripts here.

NASA features NSW night sky as December smiley face picture

Smile in the Sky Credit & Copyright: Mike Salway

Explanation: At sunset, Monday's western sky showed off stunning colors and dramatic clouds reflected in Brisbane Water on the Central Coast of New South Wales, Australia. It also featured the remarkable conjunction of the crescent Moon, Venus, and Jupiter forming a twilight smiley face. While the gathering of the two bright planets and Moon awed skygazers around planet Earth, astronomer Mike Salway reports taking special pains to record this gorgeous view, braving mosquitos and rain squalls along a soggy shore. His southern hemisphere perspective finds brilliant Venus at the highest point in the celestial grouping. For now, a bright pairing of Venus and Jupiter continues to dominate the western horizon after sunset but the Moon has moved on and tonight is near its first quarter phase. [NASA APOD]

A News.com.au collection of readers photographs found here.