NASA: Coolest Outer Space Pic You'll See All Day

[Click to enlarge image.]



Suitable for desktop background use.

Explanation: On April 12th, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alexseyevich Gagarin became the first human in space. His remotely controlled Vostok 1 spacecraft lofted him to an altitude of 200 miles and carried him once around planet Earth. Commenting on the first view from space he reported, "The sky is very dark; the Earth is bluish. Everything is seen very clearly".

Alan Shepard, the first US astronaut, would not be launched until almost a month later and then on a comparatively short suborbital flight. Born on March 9, 1934, Gagarin was a military pilot before being chosen for the first group of cosmonauts in 1960. As a result of his historic flight he became an international hero and legend. Killed when his MIG jet crashed during a training flight on March 27, 1968, Gagarin was given a hero's funeral, his ashes interred in the Kremlin Wall. On yet another April 12th, in 1981, NASA launched the first space shuttle.

A good reminder that, regardless of what the trendy atheists claim, there are some things bigger than man.




by Mondoreb
image/source: APOD: Yuri's Planet
hat tip: Some unknown Farker


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DBKP Today in Weird History: January 28, 2008

SPACE, WAR, TERRORISM, DISASTERS, CLINTON, OUCH, AUTOGRAPHS, TRY TRY AGAIN, DOMINOES, PRO WRESTLING, EXECUTIONS, TRIALS, IMMIGRANTS, MAINSTREAM MEDIA, REBELS, ABORTION, SPORTS, COLLEGE, POLITICS, 90210, PROGRESS, CREATED, JEWS, ROYALS, BORN, BIRTHDAYS, DEATH



SPACE

1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center, killing all seven of its crew members: flight commander Francis R. "Dick" Scobee; pilot Michael Smith; Ronald McNair; Ellison Onizuka; Judith Resnik; Gregory Jarvis; and schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe.

WAR!

1915 1st US ship lost in WWI, William P Frye (carrying wheat to UK).

1944 683 British bombers attack Berlin.

1945 During World War II, Allied supplies began reaching China over the newly reopened Burma Road.

1973 A cease-fire officially went into effect in the Vietnam War.

2003 President Bush, girding the nation for war, said in his State of the Union address that Saddam Hussein had shown "utter contempt" for the world community and had to be held to account.

2007 U.S.-backed Iraqi troops attacked insurgents allegedly plotting to kill pilgrims at a major Shiite Muslim religious festival; Iraqi officials estimated some 300 militants died in the daylong battle near Najaf. (A U.S. helicopter crashed during the fight, killing two American soldiers.)

TERRORISM

1982 US General Dozier freed from Red Brigade of Padua Italy.

DISASTERS

1393 Fire during Royal Ball at Paris, 4 die (Ball of the Ardents).

1978 Fire swept through the historic downtown Coates House hotel in Kansas City, Mo., killing 20 people.

1981 Olympic Glory tanker at Galveston Bay, Texas, spills 1 million gallons of oil in a ship collision.

1994 Helicopter crashes into office building in San Jose CA, 1 dead.

CLINTONS

1998 The day after denying he "had sexual relations with that woman, Monica Lewinsky", President Bill Clinton barnstormed in the nation's heartland, where he was warmly received; accompanying him was Vice President Al Gore, who urged Americans to "join me in supporting him and standing by his side." The day before, Clinton delivered both his denial of the Lewinsky affair and his State of the Union address.

OUCH!

1962 Johanne Relleke gets stung by bees 2,443 times in Rhodesia & survives.

AUTOGRAPHS

1978 Ted Nugent autographs a fan's arm with his knife.

TRY TRY AGAIN

1984 Mr Glynn Wolfe marries for non-bigamous record 26th time, Las Vegas NV.

DOMINOES

1984 Record 295,000 dominoes toppled, Fuerth, West Germany.

PRO WRESTLING

1987 Wrestler Jim Neidhart indicted for assaulting a flight attendant.

EXECUTIONS

1829 William Burke murderer/body snatcher, executed in Edinburgh.

TRIALS

1950 Preston Tucker, auto maker, found not guilty of mail fraud.

IMMIGRANTS

1915 US President Wilson refuses to prohibit immigration of illiterates.




MAINSTREAM MEDIA

1973 "Barnaby Jones" premieres on CBS TV.

1978 "Fantasy Island" starring Ricardo Montalban premieres on ABC TV.

REBELS

1810 Andrew Hofer Tyrolian rebel against French & Bavarians, shot dead.

ABORTION

1935 Iceland becomes 1st country to legalize abortion.

1988 Canada's Supreme court declares anti-abortion law unconstitutional.

SPORTS

1960 NFL announces Dallas Cowboys (1960) & Minnesota Vikings (1961) franchises.

COLLEGE

1878 The first daily college newspaper, Yale News (now Yale Daily News), began publication in New Haven, Conn.

POLITICS

1909 The United States ended direct control over Cuba.

90210

1914 Beverly Hills, California, is incorporated.

PROGRESS

1878 1st telephone exchange (New Haven CT).

1878 George W Coy hired as 1st full-time telephone operator.

CREATED

1915 The United States Coast Guard was created as President Woodrow Wilson signed into law a bill merging the Life-Saving Service and Revenue Cutter Service.

JEWS

1916 Louis D. Brandeis was nominated by President Woodrow Wilson to the Supreme Court; Brandeis became the court's first Jewish member.

2003 Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud party and other hawkish parties won a resounding victory in Israel's parliamentary elections.

ROYALS

2007 Britain's Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, met with New York schoolchildren as they visited Harlem during their whirlwind American weekend.

BORN

1722 Johann Ernst Bach composer.

1825 George Edward Pickett Major General (Confederate Army), died in 1875.

1853 Cuban revolutionary Jose Marti was born in Havana.

1910 John Banner Vienna Austria, actor (Sergeant Hans Schultz-Hogan's Heroes).

1912 Jackson Pollock Cody WY, abstract artist (Lavender Mist).

BIRTHDAYS

Musician-composer Acker Bilk is 79. Actor Nicholas Pryor is 73. Actor Alan Alda is 72. Actress Susan Howard is 66. Actress Marthe Keller is 63. Actress-singer Barbi Benton is 58. Actress Harley Jane Kozak is 51. Movie director Frank Darabont is 49. Rock musician Dave Sharp is 49. Rock singer Sam Phillips is 46. Rock musician Dan Spitz (Anthrax) is 45. Country musician Greg Cook (Ricochet) is 43. Singer Sarah McLachlan is 40. Rapper Rakim is 40. DJ Muggs (Cypress Hill) is 40. Actress Kathryn Morris ("Cold Case") is 39. Rhythm-and-blues singer Anthony Hamilton is 37. Rock musician Brandon Bush (Train) is 35. Singer Joey Fatone Jr. ('N Sync) is 31. Actress Rosamund Pike is 29. Singer Nick Carter (Backstreet Boys) is 28. Actor Elijah Wood is 27.

DEATH

814 Charlemagne German emperor/Roman Emperor (800-814), dies at 71.

1547 England's King Henry the VIII died; he was succeeded by his 9-year-old son, Edward the VI.

1980 Jimmy Durante New York City NY, comedian (Jimmy Durante Show), dies at 86.

2003 John Philip Thompson, who expanded his family's business into the nationwide 7-Eleven chain, died at age 77.

2007 The Rev. Robert Drinan, a priest who'd represented Massachusetts in the U.S. House during the 1970s, died in Washington, D.C., at age 86.

January 28, the 28th day of 2008. There are 338 days left in the year.

compiled by Mondoreb
image:
Sources:
* Today in History
* Today in History



Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page.

Sounds of Saturn: Cassini Mission Brings Back Audio

Wired has a good story on the Cassini mission, which is flying around Saturn--that's the planet, not the car--and gathering data for NASA.

Moogs in outer space! Well, almost. NASA recently published several audio recordings collected during the Cassini-Huygens space probe's exploration of the Saturnian system, and it couldn’t sound more like a theremin-laden soundtrack to a 2001: A Space Odyssey sequel. (And yes we know there’s already a sequel, but we mean a good sequel. Sorry, Roy Scheider. We loved you on SeaQuest DSV.). Saturn is a source of intense radio emissions that are generated along with the auroras of the planet's poles -- similar to Earth's northern and southern lights.

The eerie whistling, epic whooshing and warbling echoes collected by the probe's instruments sound as though they could have been lifted directly from '50s sci-fi classics like Plan 9 From Outer Space or Forbidden Planet.

The audio of the mission's radar echoesare at the NASA site.

Eerie.



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China's Moon Shot

[click to enlarge]
Michael Ramirez at IBD.

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Weird Moons of Saturn Now Revealed

[photo:NASACassini space probe mosaic image shows Saturn's moon Enceladus]

by REBuzzz1

Scientists are discovering, bit by bit, more about the two moons of Saturn. Scientists using the Cassini space probe are able to get close-ups of these two mysterious strangers of the universe, Enceladus and Iapetus. First, Enceladus:

From AFP:
PARIS— Little by little, two moons of Saturn that rank among the enduring enigmas of the Solar System are shedding their mystery.

Using the orbiting US-Italian probe Cassini, scientists are getting astonishing close-up looks of Enceladus and Iapetus, two strange slaves of the Saturnian king.
Enceladus seethes with paradox.

Following an eccentric orbit in Saturn's outer ring, it is named after a giant of Greek mythology yet is just a tiddler, little more than 500 kilometres (310 miles) across.

Odder still, Enceladus's surface is a brilliant white shell of ice -- yet some believe that beneath it lurks a warm ocean, heated by the tidal friction of water molecules pulled by Saturn's gravity -- and if so, this could be a bet for harbouring life.

Enceladus' hotspot is the south pole, where geysers of vapour vent into space.

Thermal geysers, ice caps, tidal friction: all from a tiny space probe launched with some doubt as to whether it would complete it's journey to the outer reaches of our solar system; let alone send back photographs.

Astronomers at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, have carried out a thermal mapping of this region, and found that the jets correlate with the location of "tiger stripes", the name for fractures that run in parallel across the region.

"This is confirmation that the (vented) material's coming from the tiger stripes, or very near the tiger stripes," said Joseph Spitale, co-author with Carolyn Porco of the paper which appears on Thursday in Nature.

"What we've still to discover is what's causing the jetting," he told AFP.

"Tidal energy is probably the ultimate source of the heat, although the exact orbital mechanism that's maintaining that is not entirely agreed upon. Nor is there agreement on the fundamental physical structure that results in this material coming out."

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