The Flaming Lips Play Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon at Hollywood Forever Cemetery

photo by Colin Young-Wolff

The day began at sunrise, when the band joined up with Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros for a secret acoustic performance of "Do You Realize," using the cemetery's bell tower as an instrument.

The Oklahoma psychedelic rockers finished their two-night stint at Hollywood Forever Cemetery on Wednesday, June 15, by playing Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety, following by some of their own classic jams. Singer Peaches made a surprise appearance for a few songs. It was the perfect ending to a day that began at sunrise, when the band joined up with Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros for a secret acoustic performance of "Do You Realize," using the cemetery's bell tower as an instrument. For more on Tuesday night's show, see "The Flaming Lips @ Hollywood Forever Cemetery" and "Flaming Lips Stir Souls (Living and Dead) at The Hollywood Forever Cemetery."

Click here for the Full Article and 45 Pic Gallery: http://www.laweekly.com/slideshow/the-flaming-lips-play-dark-side-of-the-moon-at-hollywood-forever-cemetery-33566633/

Seeing red: How a lunar eclipse and volcanic ash create colourful phenomenon for moon-gazers

By Daily Mail Reporter
From http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

Red colour most vivid in Asia

Sky watchers were treated to a stunning lunar eclipse last night as ash in the atmosphere from a Chilean volcano turned it blood red.

Scientists said the specific phenomenon - known as a 'deep lunar eclipse' - often exudes a coppery colour. But the intensity of the colour depends on the amount of ash and dust in the atmosphere.

Luckily for moon-gazers, there was plenty of ash in the air so the moon appeared orange or red, especially in Asia.

Scroll down for video

The moon, photographed by an observer in Tel Aviv, exudes a reddish colour during a deep lunar eclipse last night

A composite picture showing the total lunar eclipse in the east of Beirut, Lebanon yesterday. People in the eastern half of Africa, the Middle East, central Asia and western Australia were able to enjoy the entire event

The lunar eclipse is seen over the Atomium in Brussels, in the early hours of the morning, local time

Air travellers haven't been so lucky: The ash has grounded hundreds of flights around the region.

The dramatic event, the longest total lunar eclipse since 2000, turned the moon blood red for 100 minutes during the period of totality.

But Europeans missed the early stages of the eclipse because they occurred before moonrise.

The eclipse began at 6.24pm and ended at midnight but sunset didn't occur in the UK until 9.19pm.

The Staten Island Ferry cruises along the water as the moon rises over Brooklyn as seen from Liberty State Park

The total lunar eclipse is seen above the old city walls during the Jerusalem Festival of Lights

The moon is seen during different stages of the total lunar eclipse in Gaza town in the Gaza Strip, which borders Egypt and Israel

A boat sails by Manila Bay, Philippines, at dawn this morning under a red moon, while an airplane lands at Fiumicino International airport in Rome, Italy, during the lunar eclipse

Scientists had reassured sky watchers that the eclipse could be safely observed with the naked eye.

People in the eastern half of Africa, the Middle East, central Asia and western Australia were able to enjoy the entire event.

However, those in the U.S. missed out as the eclipse occurred during daylight hours.

Moon caught in a crescent shape above Skopje, Macedonia

A partially eclipsed moon rises in the sky over Moscow, Russia, last night

This graph shows when the total lunar eclipse was visible on Earth

Today's Google Doodle paid tribute to the lunar eclipse with a video graphic

The moon is normally illuminated by the sun. During a lunar eclipse the Earth, sun and moon are in line and the Earth’s shadow moves across the surface of the full moon.

Sunlight that has passed through the Earth’s atmosphere makes the moon appear red, brown or black.

The moon travels to a similar position every month, but the tilt of the lunar orbit means that it normally passes above or below the terrestrial shadow. This means a full moon is seen but no eclipse takes place.

'Supermoon' Photos from Around the World: March 19, 2011

by Tariq Malik,
Managing Editor
from: SPACE.com

Click here for the Full GALLERY: http://www.space.com/11178-supermoon-photos-2011-skywatcher-images.html

Washington MoonriseCredit: Tim McCord

Skywatcher Tim McCord of Entiat, Washington caught this amazing view of the March 19, 2011 full moon - called a supermoon because the moon was at perigee, the closest point to Earth in its orbit - using a camera-equipped telescope.

Info about Perigee Moon: http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/03/18/nasa.moon/index.html?hpt=C2

Click here for this Amazing 25 Full Gallery of the SUPERMOON

Blue moon to shine on New Year's Eve

From: http://www.cnn.com/

This image of Earth and moon is a composite of two images sent back by the Galileo spacecraft.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Second full moon in December to light night sky
• Term "blue moon" has been around 400 years, professor says
• Meaning of the phrase has shifted over the years

(CNN) -- It happens only once in a blue moon -- and scientists say a blue moon is exactly what we'll see in the skies this New Year's Eve.

Don't expect an azure glow over our lunar satellite, however. The term "blue moon" simply refers to the second full moon in a calendar month, something that hasn't happened on a New Year's Eve for nearly 20 years, NASA says.

"December 1990 ended with a blue moon, and many New Year's Eve parties were themed by the event," said Professor Philip Hiscock of the department of folklore at Memorial University of Newfoundland, in Canada. "It was a lot of fun."

Most months have just one full moon, because the 29.5-day cycle of the moon matches up pretty well with the length of calendar months. Occasionally, there will be two full moons in a month, something that happens about every 2½ years, NASA says.

But a blue moon on December 31 is rare.

MOON MONIKERS

The Farmers' Almanac lists these Algonquin Indian names for the full moon of each month:
January: Wolf Moon
February: Snow Moon
March: Worm Moon
April: Pink Moon
May: Flower Moon
June: Strawberry Moon
July: Buck Moon
August: Sturgeon Moon
September: Corn Moon
October: Harvest Moon
November: Beaver Moon
December: Cold Moon
Source: www.farmersalmanac.com

Elvis Presley crooned about it when he sang the old Rodgers and Hart song "Blue Moon," in which he stood alone without a dream in his heart or a love of his own.

He struck a more hopeful tone in another tune, singing about his love returning to his arms "When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again." He also covered Bill Monroe's bluegrass classic, "Blue Moon of Kentucky."

It is possible for the moon to have a cerulean hue, NASA says, but that's sometimes caused by fine dirt circulating in the Earth's atmosphere or the dark blue tone of the sky.

A blue moon hasn't always meant the second full moon in a month. Hundreds of years ago, it simply meant "never" or "absurd," Hiscock said.

"The phrase 'blue moon' has been around a long time, well over 400 years, but during that time its meaning has shifted," he said. "I have counted six different meanings which have been carried by the term, and at least four of them are still current today. That makes discussion of the term a little complicated."

When the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa erupted in 1883, it put so much dust in the atmosphere that the moon actually appeared blue -- an event so unusual that the term "once in a blue moon" was coined, according to NASA's National Space Science Data Center. The effect lasted for almost two years, Hiscock said.

Full moons used to have 12 names, one for each month, such as "harvest moon," NASA said. The term "blue moon" referred to the 13th full moon in a year.

The term acquired its current meaning in the 1940s, after the Farmer's Almanac of Maine offered an astronomical definition of a blue moon "so convoluted that even professional astronomers struggled to understand it," NASA wrote on its Web site.

A writer at Sky and Telescope magazine in the late 1940s tried to explain the almanac's definition by saying it referred to the second full moon in a month.

"That was not correct, but at least it could be understood," NASA wrote. "And thus the modern blue moon was born."

Moon Rising - a collection of Full Moons

From: http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com

Image: Copyright by David Haworth

The iconic image of the Moon as it appears in E.T. – when the wide-eyed Elliot and lovable E.T. make their flight to the forest on a bicycle – has been described as one of the most magical moments in cinema. Yet Moons as big as the one said boy and alien are silhouetted against are not only the preserve of Hollywood’s trousers. Today’s astronomer-photographers are also able to capture the Earth’s satellite as it rises into the sky at such sizes – and what spectacle these images make.

Lick Observatory Moonrise, 2008

Image: Rick Baldridge

Viewed from a gem of spot at sunset, the gorgeous beast of a Full Moon above was shot as it rose behind Mount Hamilton, east of San Jose, California by Rick Baldridge. Reports NASA: “Captured in this lovely telescopic view, historic Lick Observatory is perched on the mountain’s 4,200 foot summit, observatory and rising Moon momentarily sharing the warm color of filtered sunlight.” The rising and setting of the Moon, like the comparable cyclical pattern of the Sun, is of course an illusion brought about by the fact that the Earth is spinning. It’s an illusion we’ll live with.

Full Moon Rising Over Lycabettus Hill, 2009

Image: Anthony Ayiomamitis

This next sweet shot from Anthony Ayiomamitis shows a massive Moon rising over Mount Lycabettus at the centre of Athens. At 918 feet high, it is the highest of the seven hills that characterise the Greek capital, and at its summit stands the Church of Saint George. Ayiomamitis explains that the sun had just set a few minutes earlier and the thronging tourists had set their sights on the Moon rising in the opposite direction. The image was taken from well over a kilometre away so as to match as closely as possible the apparent size of the Church and the 13-day old Moon.

Solstice Full Moon Rising at Sounion, 2008

Image: Anthony Ayiomamitis

The dazzling image above of the solstice Full Moon rising above Cape Sounion in southern Greece is another realised by photographer Anthony Ayiomamitis. Says NASA of the image: “The 2,400 year old Temple of Poseidon lies in the foreground, also visible to sailors on the Aegean Sea. In this well-planned single exposure, a telescopic lens makes the Moon loom large, but even without optical aid casual skygazers often find the Full Moon looking astonishingly large when seen near the horizon. That powerful visual effect is known as the Moon Illusion.”

Moonrise at End of Lunar Eclipse, 2007

Image: Ian Parker

The Moon Illusion is an optical illusion that has been known since ancient times and recorded by various different cultures, but which has been popularly misunderstood as being due to a real magnification effect caused by the Earth’s atmosphere. Not so. While the atmosphere does change the perceived colour of the Moon, it does not magnify or enlarge it. In fact, the Moon appears about 1.5% smaller when it is near the horizon than when it is high in the sky because it is further away by a distance of up to one Earth radius and also because of atmospheric refraction. So there.

Moonrise Over Copacabana, 2007

Photo: Bobesh

This last glowing shot of the Moon rising over Copacabana in New South Wales, Australia was taken five minutes after sunset with the sun setting behind the photographer, the rays of which can be seen reflecting off the balconies. Elsewhere, photographer Bobesh offers an explanation of how he achieves such huge Moons in his work. The main idea is that you get the objects in the foreground as small as possible, moving backwards such that the trees or buildings shrink in size while the Moon on the horizon stays the same size. It’s all about perspective.

All images used with explicit permission of the photographers.

Source: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Four of Saturn's moons parade by their parent

17-Mar-2009: A new Hubble image shows four of Saturn's moons circling the ringed planet On 24 February 2009, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured a photo sequence of four moons of Saturn passing in front of their parent planet. The moons, from far left to right, are the white icy moons Enceladus and Dione, the large orange moon Titan, and icy Mimas. Due to the angle of the Sun, they are each preceded by their own shadow. These rare moon transits only happen when the tilt of Saturn's ring plane is nearly "edge on" as seen from the Earth. Saturn's rings will be perfectly edge on to our line of sight on 10 August and 4 September 2009. Unfortunately, Saturn will be too close to the Sun to be seen by viewers on Earth at that time. This "ring plane crossing" occurs every 14-15 years. In 1995-96 Hubble witnessed the previous ring plane crossing, as well as many moon transits, and helped to discover several new moons of Saturn. Early 2009 was a favourable time for viewers with small telescopes to watch moon and shadow transits crossing the face of Saturn. Titan, Saturn's largest moon, crossed Saturn on four separate occasions: 24 January, 9 February, 24 February and 12 March, although not all events were visible from all locations on Earth. Italian Galileo Galilei — often referred to as the father of astronomy — was the first to observe Saturn through a telescope in 1610. Dutch mathematician and astronomer Christian Huygens discovered Titan in 1655 and, 350 years later, the ESA probe named for him touched down on Titan (on 14 January 2005), giving the world its first views of the surface of the mysterious, icy world. Giovanni Domenico Cassini, a French/Italian astronomer, discovered Dione (in addition to others) and the German-born Englishman, William Herschel, discovered Mimas and Enceladus. These pictures were taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on 24 February 2009, when Saturn was at a distance of roughly 1.25 billion kilometres from Earth. Hubble can see details as small as 300 kilometres across on Saturn. The dark band running across the face of the planet slightly above the rings is the shadow of the rings cast on the planet. Notes for editors: The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA. Image credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Links: NASA's release Contacts: Colleen Sharkey Hubble/ESA, Garching, Germany Tel: +49-89-3200-6306 Cell: +49-151-153-73591 E-mail: csharkey@eso.org Ray Villard Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md. Tel: +1-410-338-4514 E-mail: villard@stsci.edu Keith Noll Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md. Tel: +1-410-338-1828 E-mail: noll@stsci.edu

Images Image 1 Image 2 Image 3 Image 4 Image 5 Image 6 Image 7 Image 8 Image 9 Image 10 Videos Video 1 Text Text file 3 KB PDF file 120 KB Word file

The Scarab, a robotic rover that will explore the dark craters of the Moon

Carnegie Mellon University loves robots and, more than that, a challenge: How do you get at possible minerals around the Moon's crater-studded south pole where there's no light for energy, or to see what you're doing? The CMU team's solution is the Scarab, a fully autonomous prospector 'bot, that'll carry out its work using laser scanners to navigate the harsh terrain and a radioactive power source to keep itself going.

It needs to be able to core through a meter of possibly hard, icy soil to get at the pockets of hydrogen concentrations for study — and its wheels are the key. The dynamic platform allows the Scarab to move over slopes and jagged landforms, and acts as a stabilizer when the 'bot goes belly-down to drill. The Scarab will move along slowly, as its radioactive isotope power source only produces about 100 watts — or the power of your average light bulb — to keep the robotic rover moving and thinking. The good news? That source also lasts about 10 years, so it'll have plenty of time to do what it needs to do.

The Scarab is about to undergo field testing at a volcanic range in Hawaii to see if it's up to the task of exploring dark lunar craters. If it does well, it may win a golden ticket from NASA to head to the moon and start its studies. Click Continue for a snippet from the Discovery Channel detailing CMU's Scarab autonomous prospector.

Scarab, via EurekAlert!, via BotJunkie

Spacecraft Passes Just 16 Miles From Surface Of Saturns Moon

By Chris Laker

These are the stunning images captured by the Cassini spacecraft as it headed towards Saturn's moon Enceladus before it made a daring dive just miles from the surface.

Travelling at 40,000MPH and just 82,000ft over the moon, the 'white-knuckle' flyby was the closest yet past any of Saturn's moons.

Enlarge

This image was captured on Cassini's approach to the icy moon, 26,000 miles above the surface

Scientists are intrigued by the possibility that liquid water, perhaps even an ocean, exists beneath the surface of Enceladus.

To test their theory they sampled the composition of its water vapour geysers, which blast material 300 miles into space.

The team from Nasa will report detailed results from the flyby in November and early December.

Enlarge

This image of Enceladus was taken 16,000 miles above the surface. The spacecraft passed just 16 miles from the moon at its closest point

Prior to the mission, Tamas Gambosi, a scientist at the University of Michigan said: 'One of the overarching scientific puzzles we are trying to understand is what happens to the gas and dust released from Enceladus.

'We know that Enceladus produces a few hundred kilograms per second of gas and dust and that this material is mainly water vapor and water ice.'

British planetary scientist Geraint Jones added it would be 'a white-knuckle pass.'

Four more Enceladus flybys are planned in the next two years, bringing the total number to seven during Cassini's extended Equinox mission.

The Enceladus geysers were discovered by Cassini in 2005. Since then, scientists have been intrigued about what powers them, because the moon is so tiny, roughly the width of Arizona at only 500 kilometers (310 miles) in diameter.

Enlarge

The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft from NASA. Click enlarge for more detail

Cassini has been orbiting Saturn since 2004. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.

Saturn is the sixth planet in our solar system, known for its golden glow and spectacular planetary rings.

Enlarge

This picture, taken in 2006, shows the southern hemisphere of Enceladus. Many of the ancient craters remain pristine.

The most scientific interest in Saturn involves not the planet, but its moons, in particular the two largest , Titan and Enceladus.

A Cassini space probe sent to Titan's surface in 2004 revealed a world that looked a lot like home - a complex terrain of rivers, deserts scattered with dunes and lakes of liquid methane - the first open-body lakes to have been found anywhere other than Earth.

Scientists plan a further flyby of Enceladus at the end of the month, this time passing 122 miles from the surface.