Amazing View!

What's happened to these clouds? Normal cloud bottoms are flat because moist warm air that rises and cools will condense into water droplets at a very specific temperature, which usually corresponds to a very specific height. After water droplets form that air becomes an opaque cloud. Under some conditions, however, cloud pockets can develop that contain large droplets of water or ice that fall into clear air as they evaporate. Such pockets may occur in turbulent air near a thunderstorm, being seen near the top of an anvil cloud, for example. Resulting mammatus clouds can appear especially dramatic if sunlit from the side. These mammatus clouds were photographed last August over Olympic Valley, California, USA.

Fireworks in the sky!!

Giant Ring of Black Holes

Just in time for Valentine's Day comes a new image of a ring -- not of jewels -- but of black holes. This composite image of Arp 147, a pair of interacting galaxies located about 430 million light years from Earth, shows X-rays from the NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (pink) and optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope (red, green, blue) produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute, or STScI.

Arp 147 contains the remnant of a spiral galaxy (right) that collided with the elliptical galaxy on the left. This collision has produced an expanding wave of star formation that shows up as a blue ring containing in abundance of massive young stars. These stars race through their evolution in a few million years or less and explode as supernovas, leaving behind neutron stars and black holes.

A fraction of the neutron stars and black holes will have companion stars, and may become bright X-ray sources as they pull in matter from their companions. The nine X-ray sources scattered around the ring in Arp 147 are so bright that they must be black holes, with masses that are likely ten to twenty times that of the sun. 



An X-ray source is also detected in the nucleus of the red galaxy on the left and may be powered by a poorly-fed supermassive black hole. This source is not obvious in the composite image but can easily be seen in the X-ray image. Other objects unrelated to Arp 147 are also visible: a foreground star in the lower left of the image and a background quasar as the pink source above and to the left of the red galaxy.

Infrared observations with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and ultraviolet observations with NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) have allowed estimates of the rate of star formation in the ring. These estimates, combined with the use of models for the evolution of binary stars have allowed the authors to conclude that the most intense star formation may have ended some 15 million years ago, in Earth's time frame. 

These results were published in the October 1st, 2010 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. The authors were Saul Rappaport and Alan Levine from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, David Pooley from Eureka Scientific and Benjamin Steinhorn, also from MIT.

Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/MIT/S .Rappaport et al., Optical: NASA/STScI

HANNY'S VOORWERP

 Hanny's Voorwerp, Dutch for "Hanny's Object", is enormous, about the size of our own Milky Way Galaxy. Glowing strongly in the greenish light produced by ionized oxygen atoms, the mysterious voorwerp is below spiral galaxy IC 2497 in this view from the Hubble Space Telescope. Both lie at a distance of some 650 million light-years in the faint constellation Leo Minor. In fact, the enormous green cloud is now suspected to be part of a tidal tail of material illuminated by a quasar inhabiting the center of IC 2497. Powered by a massive black hole, the quasar suddenly turned off, leaving only galaxy and glowing voorwerp visible in telescopes at optical wavelengths. The sharp Hubble image also resolves a star forming region in the voorwerp, seen in yellow on the side near IC 2497. That region was likely compressed by an outflow of gas driven from the galaxy's core. The remarkable mystery object was discovered by Dutch schoolteacher Hanny van Arkel in 2007 while participating online in the Galaxy Zoo project. Galaxy Zoo enlists the public to help classify galaxies found in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and more recently in deep Hubble imagery.//via apod/NASA

Asteriod Watch today Wednesday 9th Feb 2011

http://bit.ly/fCngiR

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An asteroid about the size of a car will pass close by Earth today Wednesday (Feb. 9), the second space rock in five days to fly near – but pose no threat of hitting – our planet.
The asteroid is called 2011 CA7 and will fly within 64,300 miles (103,480 kilometers) of Earth today, according to an alert from NASA's Asteroid Watch program. It is about 9 1/2 feet across (nearly 3 meters) and was discovered by astronomers earlier this month.
The asteroid will make its closest pass by Earth at around 2:25 p.m. EST (1925 GMT), according to the small-body database overseen by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Brent Spiner & Maude Maggart - DREAMLAND

This is a poem I wrote....not that I am this romantic!!.

To my soul mate

When I am in your presence

My heart begins to tremble

I feel so weak in the knees

And my legs start to shamble

When I look into your beautiful eyes

They remind me of blue summer skies

When your lips kiss mine

Our energies and souls entwine

And we are in heaven divine

When you hold me close to your body

I know that you can never be replaced by anybody

Our connection together is so strong

It’s like a de-ja vu feeling – we belong!

Our love is like the words of a song

My heart has felt this all along

My love for you is so strong

I know this feeling is so not wrong.

I think about you all the time

You are constantly in my head

I cannot imagine a life without you

I dare say I rather be dead!

You are my prince in shining armour

You swept me off my feet-quite the charmer!

You made all my dreams come true

The day that I met you!

Promise me that we shall stay together

Our love bearing all kinds of weather

Brushing away all troubles with a feather

Loving each other forever and ever!

      

                            Jacqueline Sammut

My Grandmother’s diaries



          Much to my regret, I had just put my mother in an elderly home.  She needed 24 hour care with her deteriorating mental health and as I worked long shift hours; I could not risk leaving her all alone. 

            I decided one evening after work to go up in the attic and clear out some of her things.  She never liked throwing things away, and the mess there was shocking.   While going through the stuff, my eyes caught sight of an old wooden box.  I dragged it beside me and opened the dusty lid.  It contained three small books and when I opened one of them I realized that they were my grandmother’s diaries!

          I could not believe what I was reading!  My grandmother had had a secret love affair back in 1922 with her local parish priest.  Oh my God!  What was she thinking ? – I thought to myself.  I always knew that my grandmother had been a single parent and that she was brave enough to bring up her daughter all alone in a difficult time, but could this priest be my grandfather?

           She really seemed to have been in love…” I know I am living in sin, but he is my only true love.  His handsome good looks and his amazing charm, makes me dream…his angelic face with his devilish grin makes me go weak in the knees…..I want to drown in his blue eyes every single day….and if I have to sin to make this happen …..than so be it!”

          What an amazing and shocking discovery!   Now I had a dilemma ahead of me.  I wanted to investigate this further and discover if this priest was indeed my grandfather, however how could I do this without hurting anyone? – the priest’s integrity for example!  And how could I ever tell my mother, that her birth might have been the result of a forbidden love affair; without driving her further into insanity?

           After much thought, my decision was a hard one. I threw the diaries in the lit fire of my fireplace…this had to remain a secret, whatever had happened in the past can never be changed so why dwell on it? And my grandmother’s soul can now rest in peace!   

Written by Jacqueline Sammut         

(fiction story)

        

           

LOST ON AN ISLAND



Days have passed.  I was stuck on this deserted Island and no one knew of my existence.  I was becoming desperate and my mind was going insane.

             I searched long and far and I have not found any food, or drinking water on this Island; who wrote Robinson Crusoe clearly had a vivid imagination! 

             My throat was so tight and dry that I could feel myself nearly choking.  And my stomach was so tight that it actually ached.  My body was tired – tired of searching for food and tired from sleepless nights.  And my mind was going insane, from hallucinating, from terror of the night, and from knowing that I was slowly dying an inhuman death, all alone on this uninhabited land.  I decided to challenge death and end my misery before my time came. 

            I made a solid rope out of long bamboo shoots, which I cut into long thin strips and twisted them all together to make a rope.  This would hold my weight I thought.   I climbed up high on to a tree and tied the rope tightly on to a thick outstretched branch.  Then I tied the other end of the rope to my neck.  All I had to do was jump and I would be free of this agony.  I looked down to assure myself that I was high enough, then I closed my eyes, feeling my heart pumping vigorously; took a deep breath and without hesitating I leaped off the tree.  All I heard was a snap then total darkness.

          I woke up startled, grasping for air, instinctively my hand flew up to my neck.  It was all a bad dream I assured myself.  I was at home, in my own bed….just a bad dream, I told myself again.  I turned to switch on the bed side lamp, while brushing off with my hand, beads of sweat that were on my forehead.  It was then that my eyes rested on a return flight ticket to the Caribbean.  That following morning I was due to fly off to a Caribbean Island.  I had been waiting all my life for this dream holiday ………now I was not so sure anymore!!

         

Written by Jacqueline Sammut
(fiction story)

A SPECIAL FRIEND



     Life was horrible at the time.  The source of my problem- drug abuse!  My aim in life then?  I was hell bent on destroying it.  

     I drugged myself as often as I could and I stole all that I could put my hands on to obtain drugs.  Drugs ruled my life.  They became my friends.  I found contentment in them and for a few hours a day I was free of anxiety and pain.  Why had they become my friends?  Because I had none!  All my so called friends and family had vanished from the face of the Earth, when I needed them the most. 

     And so my journey deep into the abyss of drugs continued and so did my crimes.  I was in a deep hole; too deep to crawl out of.  I got caught, red handed stealing and as delirious as I was, I turned violent on the police force.  I emptied all my bullets on them.  Fortunately, no one was killed.  That earned me the privilege of solitary confinement in prison. 

     My only possession – a small book, given to me, named ‘The Bible’.  I was an atheist.  At the time, I thought that all religions were a bunch of abracadabra or hocus-pocus!   Too much solitude turned me to this book and I started reading.   It was better then talking to the rats and cockroaches that surrounded me in my small cell.

     I was going through my rehabilitation program during my imprisonment and many times I felt weak and miserable.  I would have traded my right arm for a piece of rope, so that I could turn it around my neck and hang.  The more wretched I became the more drawn to this small book with powerful words I became!

     Then one night I heard a voice saying,” My son, you are not alone.  Do not despair.  I am your friend and I shall never abandon you”.  Was I in a delirium state again?  Whatever it was, I had never felt so loved before and I vowed never to forget that voice and that moment.  I converted and swore to myself that once out of prison, I would do something good with my life.

     Now I know that there is no one more special then God.  I know that he shall always be my friend, my wall of support.  He is and always will be my special friend!

Written by Jacqueline Sammut

(fiction story)

 Why would a cloud appear to be different colors? A relatively rare phenomenon known as iridescent clouds can show unusual colors vividly or a whole spectrum of colors simultaneously. These clouds are formed of small water droplets of nearly uniform size. When the Sun is in the right position and mostly hidden by thick clouds, these thinner clouds significantly diffract sunlight in a nearly coherent manner, with different colors being deflected by different amounts. Therefore, different colors will come to the observer from slightly different directions. Many clouds start with uniform regions that could show iridescence but quickly become too thick, too mixed, or too far from the Sun to exhibit striking colors. This iridescent cloud was photographed last year from the Top of the World Highway outside Dawson City, in the Yukon Territory in Northern Canada

Gene Roddenberry

 From Rodenberry's vision-It is a post scarcity society: There is no poverty and no hunger-will this ever happen??

Live Long and Prosper

Be always honest and don't judge anyone, live and let live....let everyone live the way they want....as long as they are not hurting anyone by their actions,leave people alone!!! .......my quote!