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Monday, December 01, 2008

LOST....

....and found. (I'm watching LOST right now, which gave me the idea for the title) That's kinda how this blog must feel right now, what with the incessant political talk recently, then a flurry of amusing vids, then a bit of a dry spell. Now, I've "found" my blog again, ha ha. Anyway, I've found a couple more humorous vids, so just for kicks, here is a little taste of funny. Note: turn up your volume, because this vid is a tad quiet, and the effect is so much funnier if you can hear the music. I promise, no blood curdling screams or monsters that pop up at the end to scare you.



Okay, enough of that. The main reason I posted tonight was to remind my faithful readers (all two of you, ha ha) of the stellar display in the heavens this evening. And yes, that was an intentional pun (stellar display, the heavens.....sheesh, when you have to explain it, either the audience is dumb, or your humor is. My money's on the latter) Anyhoo, tonight, three objects meet up in a triangular display in the southish-westish or therabouts. Go outside and you can see them - the Moon, and two nearby stars that are pretty dang bright. Wait a sec - that's no star, that's a space station! (obligatory Star Wars nerdy humor).

The Moon is easy to discern. The two others swarming the Moon are Venus and Jupiter. Jupiter is the dimmer of the two, while Venus outshines everyone (except for the Moon). Venus appears much brighter because it is very close - far closer than Jupiter. Right now, Venus' distance from Earth is about 93 million miles and change. Jupiter, on the other hand, is more than 540 million miles from us. So Venus is really bright, but Jupiter, although more distant, manages to shine pretty bright itself simply because it is HUGE! Volume-wise, you could fit roughly 317 Earths inside the beast. It's equatorial diameter is over 44,000 miles, while the polar diameter is about 41,500 miles. (The difference is due to Jupiter's rapid rotation. It takes almost 10 hours to make one rotation - the great speed kinda squashes Jupiter at the poles, while it bulges near the equator.

Uhh, I went OT. So Jupiter is big - which means it reflects more light, but it's distance dims it somewhat. That being said, go out and look up - it's a pretty cool display tonight.

(and those lucky few of you living in Western Europe or North African will be able to watch the Moon occult Venus. But not here in the states. :(

2 comments:

Heather said...

Ooo, I saw that.

I walked out of the subway and looked up at the sky and saw a fantastic sliver of a moon. I noticed the other two lights and wondered for a moment if they were oddly aligned planes (I live on a flight path). And then I remember they talked about this on the news. I was happy to get a chance to see it. It wasn't long before the celestial show sunk below the buildings in the distance.

Heather said...

Ooo, I bet you read about the shuttle landing, too. I didn't realize it cost THAT much (over a million) to send a shuttle from CA to FL. Yikes. If memory serves, they piggyback it on another plane. . . Have they thought of a military cargo hop? Anyway, back to doing what I should be doing!