Venus & Moon

Look outside & you'll see The moon is now back in the evening sky. The waxing crescent moon is right below bright Venus in the western sky after sunset. The planet Mars is just above Venus in the west. after sunset, the moon will be passing the planets Mars and Venus moving upward each evening. (I'd post a picture but my camera couldn't take a decent shot (& I couldn't  find one on the internet.) it's truly a beautiful sight !!

Flyby tonight

Feels like September or October  with this heat. (Or July everywhere else.) & look at that Moon! Definitely a harvest Moon, I've never seen it so big! There's going to be a flyby tonight too. The International Space Station will make a pass heading from West/SouthWest and traveling Northeast 10:23pm 40o (that's almost straight over head.) Lasting 6 minutes across the night sky. It will look like a yellowish-white light or ball, like an airplane but..it will not make a single sound! I'll be watching...

Lunar Eclipse 2015

The last Lunar Eclipse in North America for two years will be in the early morning of Saturday, April 4, 2015 at 4:55am and will last for 10 minutes in totality. The eclipse will start slowly at 3:00am until it reaches totality. 

Number of satellites orbiting the earth:

120

Map of Jupiter's Moon

Five Interesting Things

(The picture is of lightspeed)

The facts are:

1.) Einstein's Brain 

Einstein's autopsy was conducted in a lab at Princeton Hospital by pathologist Thomas Stoltz Harvey shortly after his death in 1955. Harvey removed and weighed the brain and then brought it to a lab at the University of Pennsylvania where he dissected Einstein's brain into several pieces; some of the pieces he kept to himself while others were given to leading pathologists. He claimed he hoped that cytoarchitectonics would reveal useful information. Harvey injected 11.4% formalin through the internal carotid arteries and afterwards suspended the intact brain in 10% formalin. Harvey photographed the brain from many angles. He then dissected it into about 240 blocks (each about 1 cm3) and encased the segments in a plastic-like material called collodion. Harvey also removed Einstein's eyes, and gave them to Henry Abrams, Einstein's eye doctor.

2.) Da Vinci's Inventions 

Da Vinci's designs were spectacularly ahead of his time. If they had actually been built, they might have revolutionized the history of technology. What were some of his most imaginative sketches, designs and inventions?

1.) The Parachute

2.) The Machine Gun

3.) The Diving Suit 

4.) The Armored Tank

5.) A Self-Propelled Cart

6.) The Aerial Screw (Helicopter)

7.) Ornithopter (Aeroplane)*

*It's wings were designed to flap.

3.) Life (as we know it)

Number of possible planets in our galaxy that might harbor life (as we know it) forming the molecule DNA  : 10, 000,000,000,000,000,000 (1 in a million stars) the first such life-like planet is (Kepler 22B) 600 light years away. 

What we are made of : hydrogen helium & carbon "Every molecule, every element in your body was generated sometime in the distant past by processes within stars."

These elements are abundant throughout the know universe. 

4.) Proof of Life (after death)

In physics, the law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system cannot change—it is said to be conserved over time. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed, but can change form, for instance chemical energy can be converted to kinetic energy in the explosion of a stick of dynamite.

 

5.) Top speed 

The speed of light in mph (miles per hour) is 670,616,629 mph.

The top (man-made) speed : On 

Oct 9, 2013 At 3:21 p.m. (EDT), NASA'S Juno Mission spacecraft will slingshot around Earth towards Jupiter, accelerating to 25 miles per second* along the way (fifty times faster than a speeding bullet) becoming the fastest man-made object in history. A .50-caliber bullet travels at about half a mile a second, by contrast -- nowhere near the blistering speed of Juno. In comparison to the speed of light = in a vacuum ; 186,282 miles per second. We have along way to go for warp speed. 

  

EARTH-GRAZERS (Minor Planets)

The Asteroids (Earth-grazers) I have not listed all asteroids, there are 26 that are considered major (I've listed 33). The Minor Planet Center has cataloged 279,722 minor planets which are asteroids, comets, and dwarf planets. Considering asteroids and comets are in some ways related bodies in the fact that they do not have hydrostatic equilibrium; we only have to subtract the four dwarf planets leaving us with 279,718 asteroids and comets discovered so far:

THE ASTEROIDS

*The Asteroids*

Were you once a Planet
torn apart?
Or are you the missing
Planet that never formed?
Were parts of you
captured mighty Jupiter
or nearby Mars?
Phobos and Deimos
your cousins?
Or are you a Hidalgo
of cosmic nobility?

The Apollo Belvedere or Apollo of the Belvedere—also called the Pythian Apollo, c.120-140bc marble, Vatican Museum,Vatican City

Venus & Cupid

Artist : David Peniston
Title : "Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination."
-Voltaire
Date : 2009
Medium : a collage by David Peniston, Source; Francois Boucher, "Venus as Protectress of The Arts of Music and Drawing", c. 1754, oil on canvas,
Size : 10 1/2 x 7 5/8 inches

Images for Mars

Symbols for Mars

Images of Mars in Art

Botticelli
Venus and Mars is a c. 1483 painting by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli. It shows the Roman gods Venus and Mars in an allegory of Beauty and Valour. Wikipedia

Poem for Mars

What can be said about the God of War?
He is the hardest to write a poem for
His only followers are panic and dread
If he got inside your head -
You were dead
His sphere aptly colored red
He left a wake of rotting corpses
Ruled his servants with fear and terror
His punishment for disobedience swift
Make no mistake
Mons Olypics (The largest mountain in our Solar System) is glorified on your surface, also, the deepest valley, larger (& longer) than the Grand Canyon also honored there
Your surface bears the scars of battle like the back of Achilles scales and rupes like canals....

News:

The annual Perseid meteor shower peaks tonight into early Sunday morning and if the sky above you is clear you are sure to enjoy a spectacular astronomical show. While the meteors are the main billing tonight, there are a few other players on the stellar stage. Look to the east early tomorrow morning before dawn as Jupiter, then the moon and finally Venus will rise, creating a nice diagonal line. Of course with any of these events in the sky the weather is the most important variable. It won't matter how great the meteors are if it's overcast. Much of Texas, the Ohio Valley, Tennessee, the northern parts of Alabama, Mississippi and the Rockies look to have favorable sky conditions. parts of Florida and a good deal of the West Coast will also be mainly clear.

This Sunday, August 5, The U.S. Is LANDING ON MARS!!

Images of Venus in Art

Alexandre Cabanel (1823-1889) The Birth of Venus, Oil on canvas,1863, 51 1/8 x 88 1/2 inches (130 x 225 cm) Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France

Symbol for Venus

Images of Venus

VENUS DATA

Origin of Name : [Roman] After the ancient Italian Goddess of spring and vegetation. The Romans later identified her with the Greek Goddess, Aphrodite; The Goddess of erotic and sensual love, also beauty. Aphrodite presided over, "rapture, embraces and caresses, wherever she walked, flowers sprang up and sparrows and doves flew about her." - Hesiod
aka : Aphrodite [Greek]
Symbol : (see insert) this symbol also is the symbol for Women
Sex : F, Planet No. : 2, Mean Dis : 108,200,000km, 67,200,000miles, A.U. : .72, Range : .72-.73 A.U., Dia : 12,108km 7,523miles, Comp : nickel-iron, silicates, Color : yellow, creamy-yellow, Mass* : .81, Gravity* : .91, Length of Rotation : 5,831 hours ( 243 days : Venus' days are longer than her year.) Length of Revolution : 224.7 days (@ a speed of 35km per sec) Atmosphere : thick CO2 (97%) H2 SO4 (Sulphuric acid clouds) plus small amounts of neon and argon nitrogen, Temp : 460 C (865 F) Day, Discovery : known since early Sumerian and Babylonian astrologers., Exploration : (see additional blog), Light/Time Dis : 6.01 min
*(that of Earth)

A Poem For Venus

VENUS (The Ultimate Femme-Fatale)

A Planet of Mystery
Earth's Sister
The morning star
Like a woman
An enigma, alluring
Veiled under a yellow cloud
If we lift the veil
A Planet of Women
Is revealed:
A vast plateau to the north
Is called Ishtar Terra
(The Babylonian Goddess of Love,
Fertility and Regeneration)
This is Ishtar's Reign
Another landmass is named
Aphrodite
(Greek Goddess of Sensual Love)
A Caldera is entitled Eve
A Monte; Rhea
After the Wife of Saturn
A Chasma is named Diana
(Goddess of the Hunt and
The Moon)
Venus,
Like any woman
Is unique and independent
Goddesses are a minority among Gods
She also revolves around The Sun
In her own way : retrograde
The Ultimate Femme-Fatale
Of Dawn and Dusk Skies
Her Beautiful and Mysterious atmosphere
Is a death trap
Of sulfuric acid,
carbon dioxide, neon
and argon nitrogen
Droplets of sulfuric acid
Continuously rain
In a thick atmosphere
With an air pressure of 90 times
That of Earth
She crushes the
Probes that
Are sent to her
Broken like Cupid's arrows.

A POEM FOR MERCURY

The Universe is Olympia
The Planets are the Gods
And Mercury is their messenger
The smallest and the swiftest
Of them all
The closest to the Sun
With wings on his helmet
And sandals
Moving around the Sun
In a speedy 88 days
Your distinguishing craters,
Scarps and rupes on your
Coppery surface are named
After famous Artists and
Musicians:
Renoir, Raphael and Beethoven
Honored there for all eternity
On a never changing surface
A dead world for dead artists...
An unseen planet,
Like a mirror image
On the other side of your orbit
Hiding in the shadow of the Sun
Was called Vulcan
By 19th century astronomers
Once lived there in
The imaginations of men.