Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

California Dreamin’

UPDATE: (This is your Cap’n Speaking) Fix4RSO managed to come up with his own California dreamers at the beach – cute li’l kids! I bet they’ve grown a lot by now, too.

Hey — thanks to FIX4RSO for the honorable mention! A very beautiful picture of the Hotel del Coronado, which of course, we do recognize (been there, done that).

Yep, we like the Eagles, but the Mamas and Papas had it going also. We happened to be at the dentist today (in the people’s Republic of Santa Monica) for cleaning and checkups – we drove up there in our little Chrysler Sebring — on the way back, the Cap’n drove along the beach and I snapped this picture of the late afternoon Sun on a 75 degree California Dreamin’ afternoon.

Oh, and don’t forget about our other weather.

20 Nov 2006 by California Photography

The Great Orion Nebula

APOD has a nice astrophoto of the Great Orion Nebula today.

I highly recommend watching the The San Diego Supercomputer Center’s great video Volume Visualization of the Orion Nebula to get an amazing perspective on this immense phenomenon.

The Great Nebula in Orion, an immense, nearby starbirth region, is probably the most famous of all astronomical nebulas. Here, glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1500 light-years away. In the above deep image, faint wisps and sheets of dust and gas are particularly evident. The Great Nebula in Orion can be found with the unaided eye just below and to the left of the easily identifiable belt of three stars in the popular constellation Orion. In addition to housing a bright open cluster of stars known as the Trapezium, the Orion Nebula contains many stellar nurseries. These nurseries contain hydrogen gas, hot young stars, proplyds, and stellar jets spewing material at high speeds. Also known as M42, the Orion Nebula spans about 40 light years and is located in the same spiral arm of our Galaxy as the Sun.

Image, story courtesy APOD and NASA.

20 Nov 2006 by Astronomy Photography Science

2006 Leonids Meteor Shower

Late Wednesday night, as Damsel and I were walking the dogs, the skies were exceptionally clear for the urban Los Angeles area. We were looking towards the “Seven Sisters” near the zenith when we saw a shooting star. It was probably an early Leonid meteor. This weekend will be a good time to look skyward, especially in the wee hours before dawn when the radiant (located in the constellation Leo) will be above the horizon and your part of the Earth will be plowing head-on into the dust trail left by comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle.

Image: A Leonid “green fireball” meteor. (Courtesy NASA)

According to experts, you just might be able to see up to a hundred meteors per hour — that’s better than one a minute!

Continue reading…

17 Nov 2006 by Astronomy Science Space Rocks

Climate Clues

I recently read a report on the CO2 Science website in which the author analyzed a paper published in Space Science Reviews about solar influence on the climate over the past several thousand years.

The study provides more evidence of the actual effects taking place as a result of solar fluctuations; it completely disarms the notion of the “hockey stick” climate model and discredits politically-motivated and disingenuous individuals and groups who claim that warming is largely the result of human industrial activities.

In spite of each additional Climate Clue, global warming alarmists remain clueless. Read on . . .

Continue reading…

16 Nov 2006 by Global Warming Science Whacko Politics

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