Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the Pleiades can be seen without binoculars from even the depths of a light-polluted city. Also known as the Seven Sisters and M45, the Pleiades is one of the brightest and closest open clusters. The Pleiades contains over 3000 stars, is about 400 light years away, […]
J.W. Marriott, who heads the Marriott hotel chain, praised Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for bringing “positive attention” to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Marriott is a personal friend of Romney and, like Romney, a Mormon. “Today we see the church coming out of obscurity, and we see that 90 percent of […]
Rev. Sun Myung Moon has died Sunday at age 92. The controversial founder of the Unification Church was known for attracting young converts in the 1970s and for conducting mass weddings. Sun Myung Moon was born in 1920 to a poor family in what is now North Korea. His life took a dramatic turn on […]
[Click on image for high resolution ] Rising at sunset, the gorgeous Full Moon of August 31 became the second Full Moon in a month. According to modern reckoning, that makes it a Blue Moon. In fact, parts of the Full Moon do look a little blue in this sharp lunar portrait. Taken just hours […]
For the first time in the nation’s political history, the Republican ticket will be absent a Protestant as either the presidential or vice presidential candidate. Mitt Romney is Mormon and Paul Ryan is Catholic. Yet the Protestant, even evangelical heavy Iowa and Nebraska delegates who are filling the convention hall in downtown Tampa seemed unfazed […]
PASADENA, Calif. — Posing for portraits for NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, Saturn and its largest moon, Titan, show spectacular colors in a quartet of images being released today. One image captures the changing hues of Saturn’s northern and southern hemispheres as they pass from one season to the next. A wide-angle view in today’s package captures […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION] Why is the sky near Antares and Rho Ophiuchi so colorful? … Fine dust illuminated from the front by starlight produces blue reflection nebulae. Gaseous clouds whose atoms are excited by ultraviolet starlight produce reddish emission nebulae. Backlit dust clouds block starlight and so appear dark. Antares, a red […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR FULL IMAGE] The idea of a giant tower that can carry us from Earth to outer space is legend, and it probably will be for a long time. But a company has successfully Kickstarted what they say is their first step to building one on the Moon. At $8,000, the project […]
The light peak is Mt. Sharp — an eventual destination of the Curiosity rover. … Curiosity’s is already on the move crossing the intermediate gravel field toward an interesting terrain feature named Glenelg. Curiosity has also already started analyzing its surroundings by zapping a nearby rock with its laser to analyze the chemical composition of […]
BILL MAHER: Do you think that they have a messiah complex, because I always heard that Obama was “The One,” you know. REIHAN SALAM: He hasn’t pledged to lower the level of the seas yet. MAHER: Okay, but wait. This is what Ann Romney, I heard Ann Romney say this week. She was interviewed on […]