Auroral Show To Dazzle Just Before the New Year; Best View From the ISS (forbes.com) 28
An anonymous reader writes: When the Sun emits a flare or a mass ejection in the direction of Earth, these fast moving particles are when Earth's magnetosphere and atmosphere are of the utmost importance for shielding us. The magnetic field bends these ions harmlessly away from our planet, only funneling a small fraction down into a ring surrounding the poles. The atmosphere absorbs the impact, shielding all living creatures below from this radiation, while simultaneously putting on a show. Thanks to a coronal mass ejection on the 28th, the northern and southern lights will put on quite a display on the night of the 30th for all skywatchers at or above 50 degrees latitude, with chances that observers further towards the equator might have something to see, too. But the best views of all will belong to the unshielded astronauts aboard the ISS, who will pass around the Earth a full 7 times during our "night," and at the peak of the storm.
Excellent - if only I had a time machine (Score:5, Informative)
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Would have been helpful to post this, um, yesterday?
Why? It's another Forbes link. Don't even bother trying to go to TFA, just read the comments here which are more insightful and don't require you to rm your hosts file.
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Anti ad-blocking (Score:1)
fuck you, fuck javascript, fuck compromising my computer so you can be fucking lazy and not sell your own fucking ads that you can guarantee are not laden with malware and don't auto-play bandwidth-devouring video ads with shitty blaring audio.
I'll wait for Starts to post it to his own blog or I just won't fucking read it from now on. Thanks, I seriously love reading your stuff man, but fuck Forbes right in the eyesocket.
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In case you haven't seen it yet: See Comet Catalina tomorrow morning before dawn [www.cbc.ca]
I'd post this as a story but it would probably go front-page on the 2nd.
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Note: Not just tomorrow/today. It's just that the comet will be close to Arcturus as seen from Earth.
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That sounds nice, but I nearly went blind [imgur.com] last time the internet told me to view some astronomical event!
As funny as that stupid headline is, the real mess on that page is your fonts! Seriously google for .fonts.conf or try this for a good start:
<?xml version='1.0'?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM 'fonts.dtd'>
<fontconfig>
<dir>~/.fonts</dir>
<match target="font">
<edit mode="assign" name="rgba">
<const>rgb</const>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="font">
<edit mode="assign" name="hinting">
<bool>true</bool>
</
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In case you haven't seen it yet: See Comet Catalina tomorrow morning before dawn [www.cbc.ca]
I'd post this as a story but it would probably go front-page on the 2nd.
Actually, comet Catalina is expected to be brightest next week, when it is closest to Earth. And it could have a gas outburst at any time, which will make it much brighter no matter when that occurs.
Unshielded? (Score:5, Informative)
They're not "unshielded" - the Van Allen belts [wikipedia.org] - which trap a good proportion of the charged particles from the sun - are a fair bit further out than the ISS. Ok, they might be less shielded when they orbit over the poles, but still.
Why not link to the source? (Score:2)
Happy New Year (Score:2)
I'm watching Dick Clark on New Year's Rockin' Eve and he's not looking so good:
http://static.comicvine.com/up... [comicvine.com]
Thanks for the info (Score:2)
I'll be sure to park my time machine on the International Space Station.