Rainbows

There was a nice rainbow over Malden today after the thunderstorm. It’s actually a double rainbow but you can’t really see it here:

The Sun and the Moon

In honor of Father’s Day, here’s a manipulated shot of the moon passing in front of the Sun (Credit: NASA/SDO/LRO/GSFC):

Ok, I don’t know how this connects to Father’s Day, but it’s a nice picture. Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers out there.

Black Hole

Another lazy day. Here’s a picture of jets of particles pushed away from a black hole at millions of miles per hour (Credit: NASA):

At some point someone will invent space surfing. Imagine riding a wave of particles going a million mph (hmm, I wonder how well you can judge your speed in space?).

Pictures of Boston

Here are some pictures I’ve taken of Boston over the years

From Malden, taken today:

this past February:

and some fall:

 

from the Harbor Islands from a beach:

and from a hill:

from Boston itself:

and from Waltham in the summer:

and the fall:

 

Venus stuff

I’m being lazy today, so I’m just going to put up  a couple of pictures related to Saturn. The first is of a polar storm (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI):

The second is a picture of one of its moons, Enceladus, showing its plume spraying into space (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute):

The Sun shines

NASA has great videos of the Sun that show how it changes over a period of three years. The main one is here. To give you an idea of what it looks like, here’s a time-lapse picture (Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO/S. Wiessinger):

and here’s the actual video (Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center):

You can find a bunch of variations of the video here and you find these interesting bits in the video:

00:30;24 Partial eclipse by the moon

00:31;16 Roll maneuver

01:11;02 August 9, 2011 X6.9 Flare, currently the largest of this solar cycle

01:28;07 Comet Lovejoy, December 15, 2011

01:42;29 Roll Maneuver

01:51;07 Transit of Venus, June 5, 2012

02:28;13 Partial eclipse by the moon

Boston from above

Now that, hopefully, the Boston Marathon terrorists are now in custody or dead, we can again look at the beauty of Boston. Here’s a picture taken from the International Space Station of the Boston Metro area (taken on April 6; Credit: NASA):

The Sun is exploding

This picture of the Sun makes it look like it’s going to explode. You need to click on the picture to get the full effect (Credit: NASA/SDO):

 

Pioneer 11

I’m a couple days late, but this is the 40th anniversary of the launch of Pioneer 11. This was a low budget project in preparation of the Voyagers, but it still gathered important information and some nice pictures. Such as this one of Jupiter (Credit: NASA Ames):

and this one of Saturn (Credit: NASA Ames):

And here’s a completely different picture, the mountains of Alaska (Credit: NASA/Goddard/Christy Hansen):

Middlesex Fells

I ended up going for a walk in the Middlesex Fells today (the Fells is in parts of Malden, Melrose, Medford, and Stoneholm). It doesn’t look much like Spring yet (as you can see), but it was still a nice day for a walk:

 

Echo

This is an interesting picture (Credit: NASA, ESA):

This is an echo of a light burst from a star in the Milky Way. I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as a light echo and this one has a diameter of about 6 light years.

Star Clouds

Taken from the Astronomy picture of the day, here is N11 (Credit: NASA,  ESA,  J. Lake (Pomfret School)):

More snow in Malden

It seems to have snowed here in Malden, so I went for a walk in the Pine Banks park

and took the obligatory picture of snow on a cannon in the Forestdale cemetery

The sun and warming

Hmm, there’s another study (or go here or here) showing that global warming is real and caused by humans (go to one of the latter two sites to see the graph where it looks obvious):

Here’s what happened. After the end of the ice age, the planet got warmer. Then, 5,000 years ago, it started to get cooler — but really slowly. In all, it cooled 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit, up until the last century or so. Then it flipped again — global average temperature shot up.

“Temperatures now have gone from that cold period to the warm period in just 100 years,” Marcott says.

I’m guessing this will not only not help convince anyone but will probably be attacked.

Anyway, here’s a picture of the Sun (Credit: NASA/SDO):

Spinning

Because I feel like I’m going down the drain, here’s a whirlpool galaxy (Credit: NASA/Hubble):

Have a heart

NASA put this up as the Celestial Valentine. I’m not sure it really looks like a heart, but it is pretty (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian):

Stars and some music

It’s Friday, so I’m lazy. Here’s a picture of the Andromeda galaxy showing off (Credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech/NHSC):

and some music from some band called Cake:

Inauguration from space

Here’s a picture of Washington DC taken from the international space station (Credit: NASA):

Can you see the crowd? It would be tough, especially since was taken the day before the inauguration.

Here’s a picture of the rings of Saturn (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute):

You can see two of the moons through the gaps in the rings, in fact the gaps in the rings are caused by the moons–obviously these moons really want to be in the picture.

Clouds

I’m a bit out of it today, so here’s a picture of some clouds (Credit: NASA– this was taken over the Pacific at the beginning of January from the space station):

Fire, ice, and some stars

I really like this picture (Credit: NASA Earth Observatory):

It’s the picture of the volcano Tolbachik in the Kamchatka region of Russia. If you click on it you can see a lava flow (black) under the snow and even a current eruption (look for the orange bit).

I’ll also throw in a spiral galaxy, just because they look good (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/DSS):