Being the recipient of a new evening gown, she has requested a formal dinner. Now, if you knew my daughter very well, you would realize this is not the norm. No matter what we do, though, we always have a very good time. Throughout the years, we have had parties involving roller skating, ice skating, pizza, expensive restaurants, picnics; you name it.

I can report, tomorrow night, there will be tuxedos and evening gowns. Shall I dare say a few gloves will be spotted as well?

I know this is a silly post. I just get excited over making a fuss once in a while. If one can honor a daughter's birthday wish, it is a good thing. She brings such joy to many lives.

Curious Cometary Knots in the Helix Nebula
Credit: C. R. O'Dell and K. Handron (Rice University), NASA

Explanation: What causes unusual knots of gas and dust in planetary nebulas? Seen also in the Ring Nebula, the Dumbbell Nebula and the Eskimo Nebula, the knots' existence was not initially predicted and their origins are still not well understood. Pictured above is a fascinating image of the Helix Nebula by the Hubble Space Telescope showing tremendous detail of its mysterious gaseous knots. The above cometary knots have masses similar to the Earth but have radii typically several times the orbit of Pluto. One hypothesis for the fragmentation and evolution of the knots includes existing gas being driven out by a less dense but highly energetic stellar wind of the central evolving star. The Helix Nebula is the closest example of a planetary nebula created at the end of the life of a Sun-like star. The Helix Nebula, given a technical designation of NGC 7293, lies about 700 light-years away towards the constellation of Aquarius.

DEN OEVER, The Netherlands (Reuters) - A Viking ship made from ice-cream sticks set sail for England from the Netherlands on Tuesday.

The 15-metre (50-foot) long ship, named after the Norse god Thor, is made from 15 million recycled ice-cream sticks glued together by U.S.-born stuntman Robert McDonald, his son and more than 5,000 children.

"If you can dream it you can do it ... I want to teach children that anything is possible," McDonald said.

Badly injured as a child in a gas explosion that killed the rest of his family, he has loaded his ship with cuddly toys and plans to reach London and visit children in hospitals.

He and his crew hope to cross the Atlantic later on the ancient Viking route to North America via Iceland and Greenland.

(Reporting by Catherine Hornby; Editing by Charles Dick)

sad news here....... sudden.... unexpected.... young..... brilliant..... shocked..... sad.....

It is currently 64 degrees Fahrenheit (17.7 Celsius). It feels amazingly wonderful although it is not my preference for February. I would prefer it to be cooler. We are expecting a thunderstorm in about an hour. I love thunderstorms so my night is looking pretty good. I've been outdoors enjoying it all in short sleeves. I'll be reading now and awaiting the storm.

How about you? What is your ideal temperature? Do you prefer it to be warm and balmy, blistering hot, cold for a nice fire or moderate?

 

That's right, boys and girls. It isn't just Valentine's Day. It's time to wish Peter a very happy birthday. Come on and show him some love. 

Press Release

Credit Suisse Shows Its Colors - Setting the Mood for a Festival of Football

Zurich's city hall was aglow this evening with artistic imagery. For 45 minutes, or half of a football match, Gerry Hofstetter, an internationally acclaimed light artist, illuminated Zurich's city hall and Credit Suisse's head office as part of an initiative sponsored by the bank. The illumination of the venerable seat of the Zurich cantonal parliament is the first event in a unique light art extravaganza that will be staged throughout Switzerland. Credit Suisse will be illuminating cantonal landmarks and the bank's nearby buildings in all 26 cantons until March 7, under the motto "Football is lighting up Switzerland." The order of illumination follows the pattern set out in the Swiss passport, where each successive page is devoted to a different canton.

Enquiries:

• Credit Suisse Media Relations, Tel. +41 844 33 88 44, media.relations@credit-suisse.com

When is the last time something rang clear and true in your life and you made immediate changes? What resulted?

Venus and Jupiter converging but still far apart on Jan. 23rd. Photo credit: Thierry Demange of Strasbourg, France. [Larger image]

January 29, 2008: Wake up before dawn on an arctic-cold February morning .... and go outside?

This Friday you'll be glad you did.

The two brightest planets in the Solar System, Venus and Jupiter, are converging for a spectacular close encounter. The best time to look: Friday morning, February 1st. Venus and Jupiter will be so close together, you can hide them behind the tip of your index finger held at arm's length: sky map.

You'll need a clear view of the southeastern horizon to see the show. Venus and Jupiter will be hanging low, like landing airplanes, easily hidden behind tall buildings or trees. So go out beforehand (at noon when it is warmer) and find a gap to look through so you won't have to hunt for one in the dark on Friday.

It's worth the effort because Venus and Jupiter will be less than 1^o apart, like twin headlights piercing the rosy glow of sunrise. It's a beautiful scene. In fact, you may not be able to take your eyes off of it. Venus and Jupiter are literally spellbinding.

There is a physiological basis for this phenomenon. When two planets appear so close together, they grab an extra share of your brain's attention. Consider the following:

"Your eye is like a digital camera," explains Dr. Stuart Hiroyasu, O.D., of Bishop, California. "There's a lens in front to focus the light, and a photo-array behind the lens to capture the image. The photo-array in your eye is called the retina. It's made of rods and cones, the fleshy organic equivalent of electronic pixels."

Right: The fovea is responsible for our central, sharpest vision. [More]

Near the center of the retina lies the fovea, a patch of tissue 1.5 millimeters wide where cones are extra-densely packed. "Whatever you see with the fovea, you see in high-definition," he says. The fovea is critical to reading, driving, watching television. The fovea has the brain's attention.

The field of view of the fovea is only about five degrees wide. On Friday morning, Venus and Jupiter will fit together inside that narrow angle, signaling to the brain, "this is worth watching!"

If you can tear your eyes off Venus and Jupiter, glance to the right: Another close encounter is underway. The crescent Moon appears directly beside the red giant star Antares. With only 2^o between them, the Moon and Antares will fit inside your fovea as well.

Friday morning should not be missed, but if you do miss it, don't worry, the show continues as February unfolds. Venus and Jupiter will remain relatively close together for several days to come while the Moon moves in to join them. Mornings of note include Sunday, Feb. 3rd, when the Moon, Venus and Jupiter arrange themselves in a slightly-bent line, and Monday, Feb. 4th, when the trio form one of the most exquisite celestial triangles you'll ever see.

What is/are your favorite virtue(s)?

I found this photograph to be interesting. At a glance a number of things come to mind. How would you identify it? Any guesses? 

Say it ain't so!

http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/books/12/13/terry.pratchett/index.html

"It's the Geminid meteor shower," says NASA astronomer Bill Cooke of the Marshall Space Flight Center. "Start watching on Thursday evening, Dec. 13th, around 10 pm local time," he advises. "At first you might not see very many meteors—but be patient. The show really heats up after midnight and by dawn on Friday, Dec. 14th, there could be dozens of bright meteors per hour streaking across the sky."

Right: A Geminid meteor in 2006 photographed by Christopher Colley of Lombard, Illinois. [Larger image]

The Geminids are not ordinary meteors. While most meteor showers come from comets, Geminids come from an asteroid—a near-Earth object named 3200 Phaethon.

"It's very strange," says Cooke. How does an asteroid make a meteor shower?

Comets do it by evaporating. When a comet flies close to the sun, intense heat vaporizes the comet’s "dirty ice" resulting in high-speed jets of comet dust that spew into interplanetary space. When a speck of this comet dust hits Earth's atmosphere traveling ~100,000 mph, it disintegrates in a bright flash of light—a meteor!

Asteroids, on the other hand, don't normally spew dust into space—and therein lies the mystery. Where did Phaethon's meteoroids come from?

One possibility is a collision. Maybe it bumped against another asteroid. A collision could have created a cloud of dust and rock that follows Phaethon around in its orbit. Such collisions, however, are not very likely.

Cooke favors another possibility: "I think 3200 Phaethon used to be a comet."

Exhibit #1 in favor of this idea is Phaethon's orbit: it is highly elliptical, like the orbit of a typical comet, and brings Phaethon extremely close to the sun, twice as close as Mercury itself. Every 1.4 years, Phaethon swoops through the inner solar system where repeated blasts of solar heat could easily reduce a flamboyant comet to the rocky skeleton we see today.

If this scenario is correct, Phaethon-the-comet may have produced many rich streams of dust that spent hundreds or thousands of years drifting toward Earth until the first Geminid meteors appeared during the US Civil War. Since then, Geminids have been a regular shower peaking every year in mid-December.

3200 Phaethon is now catalogued as a "PHA"—a potentially hazardous asteroid whose path misses Earth's orbit by only 2 million miles. It measures 5 km wide, about half the size of the asteroid or comet that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, and can be seen through backyard telescopes—in fact, now is a good time to look:

"3200 Phaethon is flying past Earth just a few days before this year’s Geminid meteor shower," notes Cooke. On Dec. 10th, Phaethon will be about 11 million miles away shining like a 14th magnitude star in the constellation Virgo: ephemeris. That's too dim for the naked eye, he says, but a good target for amateur telescopes equipped with CCD cameras.

Cooke doesn't expect the flyby to boost the Geminids—"11 million miles is too distant to affect meteor rates"—but the Geminids don't really need boosting. "It's always a great shower," he says. "Don't miss it."