ΚΡΟΝΟΣ!

In the shadow of +Saturn, unexpected wonders appear. The robotic +Cassini–Huygens spacecraft now orbiting Saturn drifted in giant planet's shadow for about 12 hours in 2006 and looked back toward the eclipsed +Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn, slightly scattering sunlight, in this exaggerated color image. Saturn's rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the image. Seen in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn's E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus and the outermost ring visible on this picture.

Far in the distance, at the left, just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot

What's that pale blue dot in this image taken from Saturn? Earth.

The robotic Cassini spacecraft looked back toward its old home world earlier this month as it orbited Saturn. Using Saturn itself to block the bright Sun, Cassini imaged a faint dot on the right of the above photograph. That dot is expanded on the image inset, where a slight elongation in the direction of Earth's+Moon is visible. Vast water oceans make Earth's reflection of sunlight somewhat blue. Earth is home to over seven billion humans and over one octillion Prochlorococcus.

Image Credit: CICLOPS, JPL, ESA, NASA, Cassini Imaging Team, SSI
Explanation of the image from: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap061016.html andhttp://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap060927.html

Chasing Summer : Lost in fog - Episode 9

4X Baja champions Kendall Norman and Quinn Cody are now 2,000 miles into their trip through Baja. After waking up in the gorgeous Scorpian Bay with some relaxing stand-up paddle boarding, the boys head through the salt flats to the lush oasis of San Ignacio and then into the deep fog of Guerrero Negro.

Offroad racing of the toughest kind. The Baja 1000 - absolute highlight for rally fans since 1967.

Ὁ Ἅγιος Ἰωάννης ὁ Θεολόγος ἡ Ἀπόστολος καὶ Εὐαγγελιστής

St. John the Theologian, the Apostle and Evangelist

Date. Feast: May 8 Date. Birth: Date. Assumption: Date. Translation relics: Patron: Other information: Celebrate name: Theologian, Theology, Theocharis

John the Evangelist, the beloved disciple of the Lord, "He epipeson upon the breast of Jesus" , is the one who wrote the Gospel of John, but all three Catholic Epistles that bear his name. The memory of the Apostle John is celebrated on September 26. Today's feast is associated with the emergence of miraculous powder (dust) from the tomb of the Evangelist, in the midst of miraculous action of the Holy Spirit, which the locals called it "earth mother" . John the Evangelist, because, after divine illumination, predicted that it would metastei from this life to eternal and infinite, were received by students and went out from Ephesus. There at one point advised him open grave. Once this happened, came in alive and slept in peace. This tomb now became a source of cure.the congregation of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist, eteleito the glorious temple, which is located in place called weeks, today Makrochori Constantinople. For this temple in the seventh, which existed in the late 4th century AD, we know from Socrates on this pedantic. 9 In the centuryThe temple of Theologos was haggard, perhaps because of earthquakes, weather influence and therefore built him a radical Basil of Macedon. Apolytikion. Tone b.Apostle beloved Christ to God, people, deliver accelerated inexcusable; to accept the incident, the epipesonta tῷ katadexamenos chest. Whom pleaded Theologian and persistent cloud nations have fun, and sought us peace, and great mercy. Kontakion equivalent. Tone b.the greatness you the stories Virgin? vryeis agar miracles, remedies and stems, and cherish for your souls, as a theologian and friend of Christ. Magnificat.Stone as the former tῷ Israel, seen of Theologian, the son of thy grave; charitable vryei tῷ kosmῳ agar, as a mother psthchotrofon, heavenly delight, theosdoton powder.

Becker Cadillac Escalade SUV for 99 Percent of the 1 Percent

Written by: Matthew Askari on May 6 2012 11:00 AM

We’re not a huge fans of the Cadillac Escalade—it’s luxurious sure, but it’s also huge, cumbersome, and gaudy. The Escalade ESV is all of these things and then some, as it is essentially a stretched out version of the Escalade. But the folks at Becker have taken the Cadillac Escalade ESV and done some silly things with it. So much so, that’d we actually love to ride in one.

Becker has stripped out the interior of Cadillac’s luxury SUV, and replaced it with plush reclining chairs, high definition screens, custom interior lighting, and internet access. Becker touts the package as the ultimate for the on the go professional. “The Becker Cadillac ESV allows you to transform travel time into some of the most tranquil, focused and productive time in your schedule.” Becker says its luxury conversion is “powerfully equipped with all the comforts and amenities of the office at your fingertips.” While it’s website doesn’t list specific pricing, Becker showed off a Mercedes-Benz JetVan Sprinter at the 2012 New York Auto Show that retails for $400,000. At that price, even some of the 1 percent would have to think about that purchase. And Becker plugs the relatively low-key aspect of driving, or more appropriately being driven, in this conversion, as from the outside it’s still just an elongated Escalade.

Source: Becker

AND Moutsi whine.

Mysteries of a Dark Universe

Watch this and other space videos at http://SpaceRip.com

DARK ENERGY in Full HD 1080p. Cosmology, the study of the universe as a whole, has been turned on its head by a stunning discovery that the universe is flying apart in all directions at an ever-increasing rate. 

Is the universe bursting at the seams? Or is nature somehow fooling us?

The astronomers whose data revealed this accelerating universe have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. 

And yet, since 1998, when the discovery was first announced, scientists have struggled to come to grips with a mysterious presence that now appears to control the future of the cosmos: dark energy.

On remote mountaintops around the world, major astronomical centers hum along, with state of the art digital sensors, computers, air conditioning, infrastructure, and motors to turn the giant telescopes. 

Deep in Chile's Atacama desert, the Paranal Observatory is an astronomical Mecca. 

This facility draws two megawatts of power, enough for around two thousand homes.

What astronomers get for all this is photons, tiny mass-less particles of light. They stream in from across time and space by the trillions from nearby sources, down to one or two per second from objects at the edge of the visible universe.

In this age of precision astronomy, observers have been studying the properties of these particles, to find clues to how stars live and die, how galaxies form, how black holes grow, and more. 

But for all we've learned, we are finding out just how much still eludes our grasp, how short our efforts to understand the workings of the universe still fall. 

A hundred years ago, most astronomers believed the universe consisted of a grand disk, the Milky Way. They saw stars, like our own sun, moving around it amid giant regions of dust and luminous gas. 

The overall size and shape of this "island universe" appeared static and unchanging.

That view posed a challenge to Albert Einstein, who sought to explore the role that gravity, a dynamic force, plays in the universe as a whole. 

There is a now legendary story in which Einstein tried to show why the gravity of all the stars and gas out there didn't simply cause the universe to collapse into a heap. 

He reasoned that there must be some repulsive force that countered gravity and held the Universe up.

He called this force the "cosmological constant." Represented in his equations by the Greek letter Lambda, it's often referred to as a fudge factor.

In 1916, the idea seemed reasonable. The Dutch physicist Willem de Sitter solved Einstein's equations with a cosmological constant, lending support to the idea of a static universe.

Now enter the American astronomer, Vesto Slipher. 

Working at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, he examined a series of fuzzy patches in the sky called spiral nebulae, what we know as galaxies. He found that their light was slightly shifted in color.

It's similar to the way a siren distorts, as an ambulance races past us. 

If an object is moving toward Earth, the wavelength of its light is compressed, making it bluer. If it's moving away, the light gets stretched out, making it redder. 

12 of the 15 nebulae that Slipher examined were red-shifted, a sign they are racing away from us.

Edwin Hubble, a young astronomer, went in for a closer look. Using the giant new Hooker telescope in Southern California, he scoured the nebulae for a type of pulsating star, called a Cepheid. The rate at which their light rises and falls is an indicator of their intrinsic brightness. 

By measuring their apparent brightness, Hubble could calculate the distance to their host galaxies.

Combining distances with redshifts, he found that the farther away these spirals are, the faster they are moving away from us. This relationship, called the Hubble Constant, showed that the universe is not static, but expanding.

Einstein acknowledged the breakthrough, and admitted that his famous fudge factor was the greatest blunder of his career.

DREAM PHOTO

DREAM PHOTO!WHY LIFE IS A DREAM!

Time-lapse movie of the coronal aurora appeared over Fairbanks, Alaska. Red aurora was also captured.
am AKST, January 22, 2012)