Just Where We Live

Mind the lightning discharges, Nile and auroras! Better start appreciating our pixel in the vast universe!

Just our little planet at night.

Vimeo - The ISS flyby of Earth

Wikipedia? Wikipedia

Ok, I came across this wikipage that is particularly interesting.

I need a bigger purse.

I've always searched for interesting lists of interesting wiki articles. Well, wiki did it. Itself.
I was lost for hours and I just have to archive it. Awesome.

Wiki - Unusual articles

Orphan planets discovered

Floating in space. Alone. Without their fellow planet sisters and brothers. Lost in darkness.
Forever.
If I was an orphan planet I would be one very emotional planet.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/18may_orphanplanets/ -News from NASA.
http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/ - Exoplanet related NASA site.

I got you!

I've been trying for some time to photograph the sunspots with my DSLR and 18-200 lenses. Today, I finally got it! The sky was clear and there was some activity on the Sun.
You can't see much but I still think it's awesome to take photo of the Sun's activity with regular DSLR and basic lenses. We're talking 150 million kilometers here!
I used welding glass for safety reasons and to darken the very bright Sun. Don't photograph without protection (mylar foil or welding glass) as you can and will seriously hurt your eyes.

Do you see it?

Let me help you.

Now you better see it!

And for comparison an animated picture from Spaceweather.com

Next stop: Prominence.

Fusion?

After the Japanese earthquake accident world environmentalists want to shut down most of the world's nuclear reactors. I don't know if they know that shutting down nuclear plants means that we will become slaves of electricity. High demand and low supply pushes the price up. Way up.
So fission hasn't got such bright future ahead. How about fusion?

Fission is a nuclear reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into smaller parts. Heat/energy is released.  That's as detailed as I'd like to go. On the other hand, fusion is opposite of fission, the atomic nuclei merge together to form a single heavier nucleus. In that process large amount of energy is released.


ITER

ITER is actually what I wanna archive here. ITER or International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor is huge research and engineering project that is currently building tokomak (fusion reactor). I did not know that it was already designed and in production. It will produce 500 MW of output power for 50 MW input power in up to 1000 seconds. 10:1 ratio. (nuclear plants produce circa 500-1000 MW per year)
That is just experimental and electricity won't be actually added to electrical network.
ITER is scheduled to begin operating in 2018-19 (some say 2016). I wonder how it goes. I sure would wanna look at this archive post in 6 years!

The ITER.

Natural fusion reactor - The Sun.

One way of using fission.

ITER - Official ITER homepage.
ITER Wiki - Wiki article with cool timeline.

Wiki Attack:
Fusion Power Wiki
Nuclear Fusion Wiki
Nuclear Fission

Sprite!

I am beginning to think that I am addicted to deceiving titles! Sprites... so rare and so awesome!

This could actually be addendum to my Atmospheric Optics post. Sprites are special kinds of lighting that occur high above thunderstorm clouds (shelf clouds).
It is believed that sprites are formed only during really large storms - hence the rarity. Sprites often come in clusters. I would really like to see one day this amazing red thing! A friend of mine once caught it on the photo - blew my mind.

Sheer awesomeness.

Mind the blue jet.

Sprite observation.

Space Weather - Space weather archive about sprites.
Wiki - Wiki article about sprites.
Eurosprite - Blog about following sprites.

Super Full Moon

Beware!
On March the 19th we'll be able to observe the biggest and brightest moon in almost 20 years!
Moon's orbit has an oval shape which of course means that sometimes the Moon is farther and sometimes it's closer to the Earth.
On March the 19th it's gonna be the closest in 17 years - meaning it is going to be 30% brighter and 14% bigger (visually of course). This event happens only in once about 18 years so be sure you don't miss it!
It is recommended that you look it at the sunset - just above the horizon - as it will appear even bigger because of foreground objects.

Explanation of this phenomena in more detail in the video below:

NASA Science - NASA Science article
APOD - [will add astronomy picture of the day as I'm pretty sure the super moon will be published there] [edit: added the link]