Thanks to the Daily Galaxy for this magical tour of the Pelican Nebula:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtKUuAM3zDY]

Spaceweather.com has been covering the mystery of an increased frequency of “noctilucent”, or night-shining clouds and has a posted a gorgeous gallery of images. These gorgeous clouds, which are formed from ice particles, are brighter and seen at lower latitudes than ever before according to this article from Scientific American.

Nasa’s principal investigator reports:

“It is clear that PMCs are changing … and we do not understand how, why or what it means,” said AIM principal investigator James Russell III of Hampton University. “These observations suggest a connection with global change in the lower atmosphere and could represent an early warning that our Earth’s environment is being altered.”

Russell also believes that these clouds could be used to shield the Earth from the effects of global warming. “”If these clouds were to continue to grow and cover broad areas of Earth, they would form something like a thin, semi-transparent umbrella,” he told New Scientist. “They would reduce the amount of solar rays making it to the ground, so they could actually reduce the effects of global warming.”

This photo from NASA’s Astrology Photo of the Day site was digitally enhanced, but that doesn’t make it less spectacular (click it to view it in its total majesty).

click image to enlarge!!

Thanks to my editor CK for this article about these astounding images from the new Japanese telescope called Hinode:

The restless bubbling and frothing of the Sun’s chaotic surface is astonishing astronomers who have been treated to detailed new images from a Japanese space telescope called Hinode.

The observatory will have as dramatic an impact on our understanding of the Sun as the Hubble Space Telescope has had on our view of the universe beyond, scientists told a NASA press conference in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday.

“Everything we thought we knew about X-ray images of the Sun is now out of date,” says Leon Golub from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US. “We’ve seen many new and unexpected things. For that reason alone, the mission is already a success.”

:snip:

Another surprise sighting is that of giant magnetic field loops crashing down onto the Sun’s surface as if they were collapsing from exhaustion, a finding that Golub describes as “impossible”. Previously, scientists thought they should emerge from the Sun and continue blowing out into space.

“Almost every day, we look at the data and we say – what the heck was that?” says Golub, a member of the XRT science team.

read more…
and watch the movie!! (if you can, the servers must be very busy)

Thanks to Universe Today for this fantastic photo of Supernova 1987A (click photo to enlarge).

It’s hard to say whether supernovas contain any astrological symbolism that we can use, but there’s no doubt about the gamma ray energy that is released from these powerful explosions may have an effect that reaches us here on earth. Metaphysician Moira Timms writes:

Bioelectrically sensitive herself, Timms is conducting research with a local utility company in Eugene, Oregon to determine the effects of pulsed fields on human bioelectric systems. The weakening of the earth’s magnetosphere means that more ultraviolet and cosmic rays are penetrating the planet, affecting our biosystems, she notes. With the advent of the Blue Star Supernova’, which occurred on February 23, 1987, every person on the planet was potentially bombarded with more neutrinos (subatomic, massless, chargeless particles) than the sun will radiate in its entire ten-billion-year lifetime! Immediately thereafter, we were showered with ultraviolet, infrared, X and gamma rays that supposedly produced as much radiation as all the stars and galaxies in the visible universe combined!

Timms states that, Unquestionably, our subtle, or etheric bodies were influenced, our DNA, our psyches, even the core of Earth that generates the magnetic field which energizes the planetary grid. Mythically speaking, neutrinos can be seen as the spirit force of the stars or, as Keys to Enoch author J.J. Hurtak sees it, as seeds of light’. Neutrinos may be what ancient alchemists referred to as scintillae or infinitesimal sparks of light that emanated from the spirit of God as seed ideas of nature’, the origin of species’, the vital force urging organisms toward completion. Coverage of the supernova in Scientific American included the statement that supernovas make and expel the seeds of life. According to Timms, who discusses psychologist Carl Jung’s theories on the subject in her book, The psychological meaning of these seeds of light is clear, they are germinal luminosities emanating from the darkness of the unconscious as well as the external seeds of light from supernovas in the darkness of deep space.

from an article from Atlantis Rising online magazine.

from spaceweather.com: Comet McNaught and the Southern Lights:

Comet McNaught is only visible in the Southern Hemisphere now (click image to enlarge).

Photo from spaceweather.com