Category Archives: Astronomy

Sunday Morning Coming Up, Down and Sideways

Posted on February 26, 2012 by | 12 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for stopping by for a read this morning.

Those of you who haven’t been getting enough magnetism in your areas will be glad to know we’ll be having a nice little geomagnetic storm today. 

CME TARGETS EARTH, MARS: A coronal mass ejection (CME) launched from the sun on Feb. 24th appears set to hit both Earth and Mars. According to analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab, the cloud should reach Earth today, Feb. 26th around 1330 UT, followed by Mars two days later.

The CME was hurled into space by a filament of magnetism, which rose up from the sun’s northestern limb and erupted on Feb. 24th: SDO movie. Although much of the cloud headed north, out of the plane of the planets, the cloud’s lower edge will dip down low enough to intersect Earth, Curiosity, and Mars.

http://spaceweather.com/

It couldn’t have come at a better time here.  The ranchers have been complaining something awful about the magnetic drought.

Meanwhile, it’s mostly business as usual here.  When I went out onto the porch to say my hellos to the felines it was all present and accounted for except the invader cat.  It was out there last night, but I figure it’s commuting to whatever place it has real people somewhere, keeping them on edge, then hurrying back here where things are really happening.  But that leaves it open to the possibility of missing something both places.

I’m thinking it will carry on this game as long as it thinks it can get by with it at both ends.

Those of you who believe radio waves are messing with your heads will be gratified to know there’s a place in the US where you can get away from it.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/15/west-virginias-quiet-zone-becomes-refuge-for-those-on-the-run/

West Virginia’s ‘Quiet Zone’ becomes refuge for those on the run from wireless technology

By posted Sep 15th 2011 3:12PM
 
 There’s a 13,000-square-mile section of West Virginia known as the Quiet Zone where there’s no WiFi, no cell service, and strict regulations placed on any device that could pollute the airwaves. Those unique conditions are enforced (and aided by the surrounding mountains) to protect the radio telescopes in the area from interference, and it’s hardly anything new — as The Huffington Post notes, Wired did an extensive profile of the zone back in 2004 (the area itself was established in 1958). But as the BBC recently reported, the Quiet Zone is also now serving as something of a refuge for people who believe that wireless technology makes them sick — a condition sometimes called Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (or EHS). Those claims are, of course, in dispute by most medical professionals, but that apparently hasn’t stopped folks from calling the local real estate agent “every other week or so” to inquire about a place in the zone.
 
For those who don’t want to migrate to West Virginia, however, experts suggest a person might  just hit the switch at the power pole and see whether it results in any improvement. 
 
One body of opinion leans to the thought that radio waves have a lot more influence on the human mind when they’re allowed to enter an antenna, swoop down through some receiver to an amplifier, then out to a speaker.  Then back through the air where they encounter a human ear.
 
Making sure those radio waves don’t get passage through and convert themselves to something the human mind can interpret into pictures and words, those experts say, interrupts the damage they can do, or at least reduces it.
 
My personal opinion is that I don’t know.
 
Old Jules
 
Today on Ask Old Jules:  Life in the 1960′s?

Old Jules, what was your life like in the ’60s?

 

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Posted in 2012, America, Animals, Astronomy, Country Life, Current Issues, Science, Senior Citizens

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Trapped by Time

Posted on February 25, 2012 by | 15 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

I had the vague, but mistaken notion I wouldn’t post on the blog today.  I awakened fresh and full of energy, went out onto the porch to chat with the cats and none were available for comment.  So I went back indoors, put coffee on, did my usual getting started routines and bounced around as though I’d become a young man of, say, 60 or 55 during the night.

By the time the coffee was prime, Hydrox spoke outside the front door.  But him being an old guy, when I let him in he promptly headed for the bed and crashed.  Caused me a moment of concern, because the cats here always demand a few moments of quality time, each, me talking to them, scratching them behind the ears, holding them upside down, then finally pulling their tails while they pretend anger and trying to get away.

But there he was, curled up on the bed without so much as a sidle-against-the-leg.

So I plunked down at the comp to begin the daily download ritual and glanced at the time.  3:35 AM.  Sheeze!  3:36 by the time I pulled my eyes away.  The damned computer clock must have gone wokkyjawed!  So I pulled up the sleeve of my sweatshirt far enough to show my watch, which promptly sided with the computer, despite the fact I’ve tried to treat it well.  All I demand of a watch is loyalty when it comes to a crunch, aside from occasionally telling me what time it is.

5:00 AM is when I get up.  Not sometime after 3:00.  I sometimes awaken at 4:30 and lie there a while savoring being alive, but I don’t hop out of bed like some fool and start making coffee.

So I’ve somehow hornswoggled myself.  Might just as well see what’s blogworthy, thinks I.

The NASA site reports Spitzer’s still out there dragging surprises out of the Universe:

NASA Telescope Finds Elusive Buckyballs in Space

Astronomers using NASA‘s Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered carbon molecules, known as “buckyballs,” in space for the first time. Buckyballs are soccer-ball-shaped molecules that were first observed in a laboratory 25 years ago. They are named for their resemblance to architect Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes, which have interlocking circles on the surface of a partial sphere. Buckyballs were thought to float around in space, but had escaped detection until now.

“We found what are now the largest molecules known to exist in space,” said astronomer Jan Cami of the University of Western Ontario, Canada, and the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. “We are particularly excited because they have unique properties that make them important players for all sorts of physical and chemical processes going on in space.” Cami has authored a paper about the discovery that will appear online Thursday in the journal Science.

But I see by the date that was 2010.  Nothing there worth blogging.  Out-of-date old news.  Sheeze.

Old Sol’s UV pics on spaceweather.com don’t get updated weekends, normally, so a person’s left looking at how it was October 25, 2005 compared to yesterday, instead freshly dressed and spiffed up for a Saturday in February, 2012. 

Any port in a storm, I reckons.

As you can observe for yourself, the drama continues.

Anyway, I see time’s moved right along and it’s 4:59 AM.  Won’t be long before the data’s posted on the various sites so I can download it.  Probably just time for another cup of coffee, another moseying around outdoors to see if any felines have discovered the world made it through the night.

5:04 AM, Yeah, Niaid’s up and around, came in and had her morning hissing/swatting match with Hydrox, rousted him off the bed and stole his place.  Now he’s wanting back outdoors to see what’s in the news.

The Invader-cat doesn’t know how things work around here yet, so it’s out there under the window meowing to itself in puzzlement, hoping I’ll be putting out some viddles.  And the various roosters must have picked up on the house activity noise enough to get them crowing, wondering what-the-hell’s going on.

About all I can tell you about what’s in store for today is a nap.  I don’t care what the Mayan calendar says.

Old Jules

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Today on Ask Old Jules:  Are We De-evolving?

Old Jules, are we de-evolving?
The rules of natural selection and competition don’t really exist now. Everything is pretty much given to you as long as you have money. Could this mean that humans could be different in the next hundred years?

 

15 Comments

Posted in 2000's, 2012, Animals, Astronomy, Country Life, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens, Solitude

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Disambiguating, De-Obfuscating and De-Horsemanurizing the Previous Post

Posted on February 23, 2012 by | 15 comments

I just got to say I love that word, disambiguating. 

Anyway, here’s Old Sol today.

And here he is October 23, 20o5.

Planetary positioning today

Planetary positions October 23, 2005, with particular emphasis on Saturn, Uranus and Earth/Mars positions.

Please don’t in any way interprete this to mean I believe you’re interested, or that I’m offering any sort of theory, opinion, statement or hypothesis.  I’m just posting some images of Old Sol’s face and the concurrent locations of celestial bodies relative to one another.

Further deponent sayeth not.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2000's, 2012, Astronomy

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Quick News Break – February 23, 2011

Posted on February 23, 2012 by | 5 comments

Good morning readers.  I’m obliged you came by for a read.  I wasn’t going to make another post for today, but I thought I’d better in case some of you haven’t been visiting spaceweather.com to keep current on news events.

As you can see, Old Sol has a few magnetic field issues he’s trying to work through.  Astrophysicists and Mayan priests are trying their best to walk him through the tough spots and get him back on track.

You’ve also probably been having nagging questions about what else is going on in the solar system.  Nothing to get excited about though.  Uranus and Saturn are standing off opposite one another with their seasonal spin axis configurations and their ‘not fully understood’ offset magnetic fields whirling around firing something a bit strange at one another and Old Sol just found himself downrange.  No big deal.  It will pass.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably also been asking yourself what the Galilean moons are up to today.  As you can see, Europa and Ganymede are somewhat lined up down-orbit, Io’s sort of off to the side and Callisto’s way-to-hell-and-gone back the other side of Jupiter.

Other than that, there’s not much going on.  I hope this helps you through the day.

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules: 

Mental Illness?

Old Jules, what is the most beautiful mental illness or mentally ill act there is?

 

5 Comments

Posted in Adventure, Astronomy, Country Life, Science

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Priorities Floating in a Syrup of Reality

Posted on January 23, 2012 by | 20 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming for a read.

Sometimes I surprise myself with how stupid I am.  Every time I get thinking I’ve plumbed the depths of human folly something comes along to prove there’s another layer down there for me to probe.  One of the ways it all manifests itself in my life has to do with sorting out priorities and shifting things around to accommodate critical paths.  When enough pressure builds behind a particular critical path stricture my focus is drawn there and I begin some new stupidity energy release intended to allow the dammed up whateverness to pass through.

At the moment the focus is computers.  The one I’m typing on is an old XP machine I bought at a garage sale a year-or-so ago for a strictly online machine for browsing and downloading data.  But gradually for the sake of speed and convenience I sneaked around and allowed myself to do other things with it project-wise.  Stupid stupid stupid stupid.

Now this machine is trying to take a hike into oblivion.  It wants to join the other two computer carcasses stacked over on the futon that once did what it does.  I bought an old XP in a thrift store for $50 to replace this one when I knew this one was going to retire, but a lot of files and settings in the one in front of me now need to be transferred to the next one.  One of those is the modem driver that allows that machine to use the external modem this one uses to go online.  It won’t recognize the modem, absolutely refuses to acknowledge there’s a modem connected to it.

Everyone tells me there’s nothing to transferring this stuff.  I’ve got a cable especially made with a CD to allow this comp to talk to that one and transfer what’s needed.  Both machines are reluctantly willing to admit they’re capable of doing it, each proclaims it’s ready and more than willing to do it.  But then, each points the finger of blame at the other, claiming the other one has something faulty causing it to drag its heels.  Neither will acknowledge a connection is live between them, thought the light on the cable says there is.

So I have a dying machine here I can’t get any of the downloaded or installed programs off of into the other machine, which is bad enough, but worse is the fact the replacement machine doesn’t even have the brainpower to recognize the phoneline modem.  So it’s not figuring on having to go online.

Meanwhile, the offline machine I use for actual heavy-lifting is off the table and residing over with the two carcasses because the power cord, the keyboard, the mouse and screen it uses are being used by the XP intended for the next online one.

A lot of the day yesterday was spent trying to get these two XPs to shake hands and talk to one another.  But today, I think this ‘new’ XP is going into the pile of carcasses where the heavy lifter is now, and the heavy lifter’s going back to work doing what it needs to be doing.

Wasted a lot of time getting there, and more time telling about it.

Stupid stupid stupid stupid.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Astronomy, Communication, Human Behavior, Internet

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Sunday Morning Newsiness January 22, 2012

Posted on January 22, 2012 by | 15 comments

Sometimes you can’t help being a little embarrassed for Old Sol, showing off just because he has a captive audience.

http://spaceweather.com/

But you have to admit, even the Chinese can’t do fireworks to compete.  Some things just can’t be pulled off with the combination of cheap labor and US politicians dancing for multi-national corporations and banks.

Old Sol’s got his own cheap labor, I’m guessing.

And if he does they’re not forever counting themselves up to calculate whether they could march four abreast into the sea without wearing thin on the patience of everyone else.

I’m in the doghouse with all the cats this morning, but especially with Hydrox.  The invadercat came in just at dark last night while I was feeding the can of cat food to the four belongers.  Sat there 20-30 feet off the porch just watching.

Irked the bejesus out of Hydrox, especially, because I was taking its picture and talking to it instead of running it the hell off.  This morning Hydrox is being standoffish and treating me with a disdain I rarely see in him.

But you’ve got to admit that looks like a pretty good cat, though I’m not going to let it stay around here.  I don’t need any more cats and it’s well enough groomed to argue it has a home somewhere, anyway.

Hydrox and the other can relax, once they’ve punished me a while for causing them a momentary doubt about feline population projections for 2012.

I’ve mentioned guineas a number of times here, but I suspect some of you folks might never have seen one.  They’re difficult to photograph because they’re constantly moving faster than you can realize until you try snapping a pic of them.

They look a bit like a cross between a turkey vulture and a pheasant.  Most biologists believe the species leaked over here from a parallel universe and they’ve never quite managed to get a grip on this reality.

The biologists might be correct, but my personal theory is that they escaped from a Larry Niven novel, one of the Tales of Known Space from the 1970s and 1980s.  Likely as not they were developed by the race that created the Bandersnatchi.

But what the hell do I know?

Old Jules

15 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Animals, Astronomy, Chickens, Country Life, Poultry

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Clearing the fingertip pile

Posted on January 20, 2012 by | 8 comments

Good morning readers.  I’m grateful you came by.  Lots of important stuff bogging down my fingertips this morning and I doubt I’ll get it all in here.  But the sooner begun, the sooner left unfinished, I reckons.

First, Old Sol:   http://spaceweather.com/

I’m not going to insult you by offering an explanation for this.  Undoubtedly you know the explanation already.

Later this morning I’ve got an emergency meeting with the feline and poultry astrophysicists here to kick around whatever needs kicking around about it.

He took a cheap shot, not only at us, but at Mars.  But that ain’t the half of it.

“INCREASING SOLAR ACTIVITY CLEANS UP SAT-DEBRIS: Earth’s atmosphere has been puffing up in response to increasing levels of UV radiation from sunspots. This is good news for satellite operators, because a puffed up atmosphere helps clean up low-Earth orbit. “The number of cataloged debris in Earth orbit actually decreased during 2011,” reports Nick Johnson in NASA’s Orbital Debris Quarterly newsletter. “[The figure below] illustrates how the rate of debris reentries from the Fengyun-1C anti-satellite test of January 2007 increased during the past year.”  http://spaceweather.com/

 So, we’ve got two issues here.  First, Old Sol’s got the planet Earth [that’s US] all puffed up, which is to say, even though he might be too convoluted and subtle to come out in the open and say it, Earth has it figured out.  If Earth’s puffed up about it, we can be assured we should be puffed up about it too.

Secondly, he’s screwing around with our space debris, shamelessly knocking it out of orbit.  Which really has the people who put it up there in a ring-tailed tizzy.  Humanity spent a lot of money and effort getting that stuff up there.  Then, in one year, Old Sol takes it upon himself to knock-it-the-hell out of the sky.

This puts a serious burr under my saddle and it should put one under yours, as well.  Just who the hell does he think he is, anyway?  We’re not talking committee decision here.  We’re talking unilateral usurpation of the Rights of Man to stick garbage in orbit and keep it the hell there as long as it suits our fancy.

But this has gotten longish.  I’m going to have to get into the other fingertip pile stuff in another post.  Maybe later today, maybe not.

Old Jules

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Posted in Astronomy

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Shiva’s Headband – Old Sol’s Magnificent Coronal Hole

Posted on January 14, 2012 by | 14 comments

http://spaceweather.com/

I mentioned the other day how Shiva the Cow Cat dropped the ball while we were praying up Old Sol.  I’m not going to say with certainty Shiva’s responsible for this, but if she is, I’m going to give her a special scratch behind the ears as a reward.

“CORONAL HOLE: NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory is monitoring a dark gash in the sun’s atmosphere–a coronal hole. It’s the dark vertical feature in this extreme UV image taken on Jan. 13th:

“Coronal holes are places where the sun’s magnetic field opens up and allows the solar wind to escape. This yawning hole is about 120,000 km wide and more than a million km long. Solar wind flowing from its UV-dark abyss will reach Earth on Jan. 16th or 17th, possibly sparking auroras for high-latitude sky watchers.”

Mayan calendar enthusiasts, on the other hand, choose to ignore the coincidence of Shiva’s lapse and attribute the hole to the obvious sinister consequences of the rock calendar having runned spang out of numbers.

Meanwhile, astrophysicists, unaware of Shiva’s blink, speculate it’s the work of Proxima Centauri, a hot tempered red dwarf cholla who hangs out in the same honkytonks  as Old Sol, and who has a long history with a switch-blade.

I’m leaning to Shiva doing it, but what the hell do I know?

Old Jules

  

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Posted in 2000's, Astronomy, Science

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The Price of Solitude

Posted on January 14, 2012 by | 23 comments

Good morning readers.  I’m obliged you came by this morning.

I’m having to re-boot my brain, trying to get a fix on this reality I live in this morning.  Spent the night busybusybusy in a sequencial dream I used to have, one of two, the first forty years of my life.  The guy I was in the dream had gotten a lot older these three decades I hadn’t been him, and so had the two others who showed up whom I’ve never known outside the dream.  But one of them turned over a D9 bulldozer, which slid down a slope about 30 feet and fell off a cliff.  I tried to warn him, but he ran down the slope, couldn’t stop, and went off the cliff too.

The guy I am in the dream spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get down that slope for a look, just to satisfy himself whether the obvious was true without going over himself.

Busybusybusy.  It wasn’t exactly old home week, but it never was.  From childhood until the age of 40 I knew those people in that dream but I never cared for them.  I thought they’d passed out of my life. 

I’ve been three weeks without seeing another human being, now I count it up.  Good things usually begin to happen in the mind after three days without seeing anyone, but a few spinoffs do eventually begin to happen triggering the awareness it’s time to have a few hours of human company.

Had an exciting day yesterday, for those of you interested, running some of the tests I mentioned a while back.  Most of the day spent running calculations for the barycentric centers of the solar system and earth at particular moments over the past 15-20 years, comparing it to concurrent events of a particular description.  It’s going to take a lot more work, but it’s looking fairly promising.

Maybe it was all that excitement caused the dream to start up again.  But at least one of those folks probably won’t be coming back into the dream.  I never cared much for him anyway.

Old Jules

23 Comments

Posted in 2000's, Astronomy, Communication, Human Behavior, Solitude

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Unforseen Consequences

Posted on January 11, 2012 by | 10 comments

That vertical rift you see on Old Sol this morning is a consequence of neglect.  While the Reiki cats and I were praying him up this morning Shiva the Cow Cat got distracted looking at the full moon still high on the other side of the sky.  She got out of harmony with the rest of us and the result speaks for itself.

Life’s full of that sort of thing here on this planet.  You can’t have any confidence you can get by with anything.  A couple of titanosaurs in Bolivia a few million years ago have themselves a secret rendezvous and next thing you know it surfaces and human beings are poking around nosing into their business.

Some Ichnogenus Gigandipus in Utah puts his foot off the designated pathway and a few million years later you’ve got the authorities swarming his footprints catching him out.

A lot of people think it’s just cameras, but that’s not right.  Do you think this guy in Kenya a million and a half years ago would have done anything different if he’d known it was going to come out someday?  He’d probably feel he pushed a stale yellow light that turned red before he got through the intersection and the camera got him.  He’s sitting out there somewhere fossilized waiting to get the ticket in the mail.

The planet and the Universe have us brainwashed into thinking we don’t leave any tracks.  But it’s a trick, and if we wake up to what we’re doing, say with our tracks of one sort, it sneaks in and preserves some other sort without our noticing it.

For instance, back when they started replacing real audience laughter and applause on television shows in the 1960s.  Who’d have dreamed they were teaching all the coming generations to be Pavlov’s dog with their emotions responses to what went on around them fed directly off a cathode ray tube?

That Santa Fe Trail on the image above is where the routes for land traffic from Saint Louis to Santa Fe converged before choo choo trains got into the act.  It’s the tracks of thousands of wagons, horses, mules and oxen branded into the landscape.

On the ground it’s abraded vertical walled arroyos a hundred yards wide.  You can follow it all the way from Santa Fe to Saint Louis if you know what you’re looking for.  And you’ll be able to do it again a thousand years from now if the mood strikes you and you have the time.

I’m just wondering what the consequences will be for Shiva the Cow Cat letting her attention drift over to the full moon.

Old Jules

 

10 Comments

Posted in 2000's, Animals, Astronomy, Human Behavior, New Mexico, NM, Science

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