The Sun is waking up

June 13, 2010 By

solar flare

Recent solar flare

Solar scientists met last week to discuss the higher levels of solar activity that are likely as we move out of the Solar Minimum of the past few years.  The head of NASA’s Heliophysics Division says “our technological society has developed an unprecedented sensitivity to solar storms.”

Spaceweather reports an M2-class flare on June 12th that hurled a billion-ton coronal mass ejection into space, and a new sunspot has emerged with a series of its own eruptions.   Solar flares have been connected with weather extremes, and there have been some powerful lightning storms over the past few days.

There are proven connections between Jupiter and sunspots, so the fact that the Sun is erupting into flares at the time that Jupiter conjoins Uranus in the fiery sign of Aries is an interesting coincidence.

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The planet of transformation is always transforming

February 5, 2010 By

Fans of the planet Pluto will find this pretty interesting:

Pluto is not simply a ball of ice and rock but a dynamic world that undergoes dramatic atmospheric changes. While they believe the changes are driven by the seasons, it may mostly come from how quickly things can change on Pluto. The seasons are propelled as much by the planet’s 248-year elliptical orbit as its axial tilt — unlike Earth where the tilt alone drives seasons. On Pluto spring transitions to polar summer quickly in the northern hemisphere because Pluto is moving faster along its orbit when it is closer to the Sun.

“If Earth had such an extreme orbit, and we were experiencing a nice springtime day with 60-70 degree F temperatures, as the orbit changed it could suddenly drop to -90 degrees F,” said [Mike] Brown.

Here’s a NASA video of Pluto taken from the Hubble images.

One of the more fascinating things about astrology is the synchronicity between the physical characteristics of the planets, the names assigned to them by astronomers, and the astrological correlations.  Mars, the planet named for the God of War, appears reddish in color and as we now know, shows signs of ancient devastation.  The astrological Mars rules aggression and warfare.  Uranus, the planet with the most eccentric orbit (it orbits laterally rather than vertically) is associated with eccentric behavior.  Now we discover that Pluto, the planet that rules endings and new beginnings, is itself always transforming itself.

What an amazing Universe we live in!

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NASA and Mercury Retrograde

May 13, 2009 By

NASA seems to really like Mercury retrograde.  NASA first launched the Discovery space shuttle on August 30, 1984 when Mercury was retrograde.  The Discovery launched the Hubble telescope on April 24 1990 when Mercury was retrograde.

After the initial launch of the Hubble scientists discovered that the optical mirror was flawed.  Because the Hubble was supposed to be shooting photographs of deep space, this was a real problem.

Often Mercury Retrograde periods can be used to repair problems from previous Mercury Retrograde events.  For example, in July of 2006 problems during Mercury Rx kept the Discovery from a successful launch, and the December launch, also during Mercury Rx was successful.

Yesterday, with Mercury Retrograde,  the Atlantis space shuttle was launched with a crew to repair the Hubble telescope.  Immediately after its launch scientists discovered some damage to the exterior of the shuttle but it was termed “minor.”

This is a good illustration that Mercury Retrograde periods do not necessarily need to be feared.  Yes, problems occur but they are rarely fatal.

Joseph Mina adds in the comments:

NASA was created by an act of Congress on July 29, 1958. At that time, Mercury at 2 Virgo conjuncted Pluto at 1 Virgo, both sextile Neptune at 2 Scorpio. Just prior, on July 20th, Mercury entered its retrograde shadow at 24 Leo with the retrograde station occurring on August 9 at 7 Virgo. So Mercury Retrograde would be a natural rhythm for NASA. Add the Scorpion juice of the Pluto conjunction to the mix and you have some high octane rocket propellant. One other interesting astrological point – Chiron in the July 29 chart is 21 Aquarius. As transiting Chiron is now moving back and forth over that degree with Jupiter, a renewed energy is building to take NASA in a different direction. Very happy the Hubble Telescope repair is underway. The images coming from that device over the past 19 years have redefined our understanding of the Universe in extraordinary ways.

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Earth: The new Mars?

June 30, 2008 By

New evidence supports the theory that Mars may have been the home to life forms at one time:

NASA researchers want to determine whether the planet could support, or ever has supported, life. The nutrients are among a few positive indicators they have gleaned since the Phoenix Mars Lander began collecting and testing soil samples last month. Early findings, including ice crystals and nutrients, point toward water — the chemical basis for life.

Phoenix co-investigator William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead TEGA scientist, called the data “spectacular.”

“At this point, we can say that the soil has clearly interacted with water in the past,” he said. “We don’t know whether that interaction occurred in this particular area in the northern polar region, or whether it might have happened elsewhere and blown up to this area as dust.”

read more here…

For years scientists have speculated that Mars was formerly a wet planet. Some UFO-logists and conspiracy theorists have hypothesized that life on earth was seeded from Mars when the planet ran out of water and its inhabitants relocated to a lusher, greener planet. We now have evidence thatleaky seas could render the Earth as dry as Mars (this will be in a billion years so there’s no need to panic just yet!).

What pleases me is the ever-growing pool of evidence that what seemed far-fetched ten years ago (life on Mars) is no longer so far-fetched. As we shift into the Aquarian Age our minds will have to expand to accommodate new paradigms of information and reality!

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MARVELS Searches For New Planets

May 11, 2008 By

The possibility of additional solar systems brings up an interesting possibility: could there be a different astrological system for each one? A completely unique set of “myths” and legends, and patterns of time that link the citizens of those systems to life itself?

From NASA:

You know the planets of our solar system, each a unique world with its own distinctive appearance, size, and chemistry. Mars, with its bitter-cold, rusty red sands; Venus, a fiery world shrouded in thick clouds of sulfuric acid; sideways Uranus and its strange vertical rings. The variety is breathtaking.

Now imagine the variety that must exist in hundreds of solar systems. There may be worlds out there that make Venus seem hospitable and Uranus positively upright. Only 20 years ago, astronomers were unsure whether any such worlds existed beyond our own solar system. Now, they’ve found more than 280 of them, each with its own planetary “personality,” each a fascinating example of what a world can be.

Yet the heyday of planetary discovery is only just beginning. This fall, astronomers will start a massive search for new planets by observing about 11,000 nearby stars over 6 years. This number dwarfs the roughly 3,000 stars that astronomers have searched to date for the presence of planets. Scientists estimate that the NASA-funded project, called MARVELS (Multi-object Apache Point Observatory Radial Velocity Exoplanet Large-area Survey), will find at least 150 new planets—perhaps many more.

“We’re looking in particular for giant planets like Jupiter,” says Jian Ge, principal investigator for MARVELS and an astronomer at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Ge likens big planets to “beacons of a lighthouse” signaling the presence of entire solar systems. “Once we find a big planet around a star, we know that smaller planets could be there, too.”

MARVELS will do much more than just catalogue a few hundred more planets. By surveying the Jupiter-like planets around such a large number of stars, MARVELS aims to give astronomers the data they need to test competing theories for how planetary systems form and evolve.

Image: Artist T. Riecken’s concept of planets orbiting a distant sun-like star.

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Tsunami on the Sun

April 4, 2008 By

Thanks to Julie for bringing this to my attention:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu2kdDxcfLU&hl=en]

Astronomers have captured the first footage of a solar “tsunami” hurtling through the Sun’s atmosphere at over a million kilometres per hour.

The event was captured by Nasa’s twin Stereo spacecraft designed to make 3D images of our parent star.

Naturally, this type of tsunami does not involve water; instead, it is a wave of pressure that travels across the Sun very fast.

In a solar tsunami, a huge explosion near the Sun, such as a coronal mass ejection or flare, causes a pressure pulse to propagate outwards in a circular pattern. …

“In half an hour, we saw the tsunami cover almost the full disc of the Sun, nearly a million kilometres away from the epicentre.”

Read more here…

New Scientist adds:

“The fact that this region of the Sun spewed out two major flares just a day apart “implies that there must have been some kind of tremendous energy buildup”, Balasubramaniam [of the National Solar Observator in Sunspot New Mexico] told New Scientist.

The buildup of energy is thought to be related to the twisting of the Sun’s magnetic field. Such a large buildup and release of energy on the Sun is a rare occurrence, and especially unusual around solar minimum, when the Sun is normally at its quietest.

Electromagnetic activity on the Sun has been known to cause disruptive effects on earth satellites and other devices, and the energy field surrounding the human body has an electromagnetic component which is tuned in to electrical waves that are all around us. Events like this are a fascinating way to look at the connection between the Sun’s energy and our own electrical fields.

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