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)