Tag: NASA

Air Elementals

Air Elementals

 

At their most powerful, these are manifest as the sudden tossing of a pile of leaves, as high winds, storms, sand storms, dust clouds, whirlwinds, hurricanes, tornadoes, rainbows, comets and shooting stars. You can experience air elemental if you are standing on the deck of a ship in a high wind; see their patterns in the clouds outside the cabin of an aircraft during turbulence; and witness them on swinging bridges and in all high, open places, especially in unsettled weather.

They are also expressed through the power and flight of the eagle, hawk and birds of prey in swooping flocks of birds, as butterflies and as the mythical Native North American Thunderbird.

Starlight, Star Bright Spell (Snow Moon)

Starlight, Star Bright Spell

(Snow Moon)

 

Cast this spell to fill yourself with bright star power.

At midnight, look your window or doorway at the stars for a few minutes. Then draw a magick circle and call in the elements. Light a white candle, dedicating it to the stars. Say:

Starlight, Star bright, you are the star I see tonight
 I wish I may, I wish I might, be forever divine starlight.
 

Now inhale deeply and imagine a burst of starlight filling your lungs. Holding your breath causes the light to expand and move throughout your body. When you exhale, any negative feelings and thoughts are released through your breath.

Imagine you are a star whose light keeps growing brighter and brighter. You are a beacon in the night sky, shining as an example for all to see. You are making every effort to be the person you purport to be. Your ideal and real are continually moving closer to being one.

When you are done, bid farewell to the elements, pull up the circle, and allow the candle to burn down safely.

Astronomy Picture of the Day – Teimareh Petroglyphs and Star Trails

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos!Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is  featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2012 July 12

Teimareh Petroglyphs and Star Trails  

Image Credit & Copyright: Babak Tafreshi (TWAN)

Explanation: Engraved in rock, these ancient petroglyphs are abundant in the Teimareh valley, located in the Zagros Mountains of central Iran. They likely tell a tale of hunters and animals found in the middle eastern valley 6,000 years ago or more, etched by artists in a prehistoric age. In the night sky above are star trails etched by the rotation of planet Earth during the long composite exposure made with a modern digital camera. On the left, the center of the star trail arcs is the North Celestial Pole (NCP), the extension of Earth’s axis into space, with Polaris, the North Star, leaving the bright, short, stubby trail closest to the NCP. But when these petroglyphs were carved, Polaris would have made a long arc through the night. Since the Earth’s rotation axis precesses like a wobbling top, 6,000 years ago the NCP was near the border of the constellations Draco and Ursa Major, some 30 degrees from its current location in planet Earth’s sky.

Astronomy Picture of the Day – A Morning Line of Stars and Planets

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos!Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2012 July 11

 A Morning Line of Stars and Planets

 Image Credit & Copyright: Yuri Beletsky (Las Campanas Observatory,  Carnegie Institution for Science)

Explanation: Early morning dog walkers got a visual treat last week  as bright stars and planets appeared to line up. Pictured above, easily visible from left to right, were the  Pleiades open star cluster,  Jupiter,  Venus, and the  “Follower” star  Aldebaran, all seen before a starry background. The image was taken from the  Atacama desert in western  South America.  The glow of the rising Sun can be seen over the eastern horizon. Jupiter and Venus will  continue to dazzle pre-dawn strollers all over planet Earth  for the rest of the month,  although even now the  morning planets are seen projected away from the line connecting their distant stellar  sky mates.

Calendar of the Sun for Friday, July 6th

Calendar of the Sun

Solstitium

Colors:

Green and gold
Element: Earth
Altar: Upon cloth of green and gold set flowers and herbs in pots, a bowl of rainwater, a large pitcher of manure tea, and several empty baskets.
Offerings: Water and fertilizer, to be added to the garden.
Daily Meal: Vegetarian.

Solstitium Invocation

Earth, you begin to give forth your bounty!
Like the maiden blossoming into the mother,
Like the youth growing into the father,
You yield your children up to us
For our sustenance and health,
As we are also your children.
We will not waste your gifts!
We will nurture what you bring forth
With the labor of our hands,
That those gifts shall be sustained
Year after year, and that you shall
Never be exhausted.
We will not be ungrateful, O Earth whose life is ours,
But we will give back as much as we take,
For this is the way of balance.

Chant:
Life harnessed
Call the sun to us
Sacred harvest
You are one with us

(Two who have been chosen to do the work of the ritual take up the rainwater and the manure tea, and carry them out to the garden, where they are ceremonially poured around the roots of the herbs and vegetables. All others follow with the empty baskets, and harvest some thing from the garden, whether a token or a main part of the next meal. After this, each should do some part of the work of further watering, or fertilizing, or mulching, to give back to the earth as much as is taken away.)

[Pagan Book of Hours]

[Pagan Book of Hours]

Astronomy Picture of the Day – In the Shadow of Saturn’s Rings

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2012 July 3

In the Shadow of Saturn’s Rings 

 Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/J. Major

 Explanation: Humanity’s  robot orbiting Saturn has recorded yet another amazing view. That robot, of course, is the  spacecraft Cassini, while the new amazing view includes a  bright moon,  thin rings,  oddly broken clouds, and  warped shadows. Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, appears above as a featureless tan as it is continually shrouded in thick clouds. The rings of Saturn are seen as a thin line because they are so flat and imaged nearly edge on. Details of Saturn’s rings are therefore best visible in the  dark ring shadows seen across the giant planet’s cloud tops. Since the ring  particles orbit in the same plane as Titan, they appear to skewer the foreground moon. In the upper hemisphere of Saturn, the clouds show many details, including  dips in long bright bands  indicating disturbances in a high altitude jet stream. Recent precise measurements of how much Titan  flexes as it orbits Saturn hint that  vast oceans of water might exist deep underground.

Solar fireworks might be heading our way for the 4th

Solar fireworks might be heading our way for the 4th

 

A solar flare disrupts radio communication in Europe and is expected to light up the sky in the coming days. Msnbc.com’s Richard Lui reports.

By Alan Boyle

The sun sent out a flare powerful enough to disrupt radio communications over Europe today, along with an eruption of electrically charged particles that just might sweep past Earth’s magnetic field in time to spark a Fourth of July show of auroral fireworks.

The M5.6-class solar flare, observed by NASA’s Solar Dynamic Observatory at 6:52 a.m. ET (10:52 GMT), was almost powerful enough to cross over from the medium M-class category to an extreme X-class event, SpaceWeather.com’s Tony Phillips noted. “A pulse of X-rays and UV radiation from the flare illuminated Earth’s upper atmosphere, producing waves of ionization over Europe,” he wrote.

Such waves can spark bursts of radio static, as recorded by Rob Stammes in Norway and noted by the National Weather Service’s Space Weather Prediction Center. “Radio blackout storms have been observed in the past 24 hours,” the center reported on its Facebook page.

SpaceWeather.com says the solar eruption threw out a coronal mass ejection, or CME — not directly toward Earth, but in a southerly celestial direction. In the video above, you can see the solar material blurping downward and outward from a monster sunspot region known as AR 1515.

Phillips writes that the “south-traveling cloud could deliver a glancing blow to our planet’s magnetosphere on July 4th or 5th.” However, the Space Weather Prediction Center says the CME “is not expected to disturb the field during the forecast period.”

The sun is in the midst of an upswing in its 11-year activity cycle, heading toward an expected maximum in 2013. Right now there are five sunspot regions on the sun’s Earth-facing side, and two of them — 1513 and 1515 — are considered capable of sending out M-class flares. Such flares are generally associated with moderate disruption of radio communication and navigation systems. As for today’s CME, the most likely effect will be heightened displays of the northern and southern lights.

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CME or not, it looks as if it’s a good week for auroras, judging from the pictures being sent in to SpaceWeather.com’s real-time image gallery. The prime time for auroras generally begins at just about the time of night that the fireworks shows are finishing up. And there’s more to see besides the fireworks: This happens to be a great week for seeing the full moon and Mars in sunset skies, or seeing Jupiter and Venus just before dawn. Sky and Telescope has the week’s rundown.

So if you’re out and about on the night of the Fourth, sit back and enjoy the fireworks — whether they’re terrestrial or celestial in origin. And if you happen to snap a great picture of the northern or southern lights, please share it with us via our FirstPerson photo upload page. If we get some good ones, we’ll pass ’em along after the Fourth.

 

To read entire article and view film, visit here.