Free Republic

an image of uranus taken using the keck observatory. The planet appears to glow blue against the darkness, with thin, gossamer rings wrapped vertically around its middle Uranus as imaged by the Keck Observatory. (Lawrence Sromovsky, University of Wisconsin-Madison/W.W. Keck Observatory) Uranus marches to the beat of its own weird little drum. Although it shares many similarities with our Solar System's other ice giant, Neptune, it has a bunch of quirks that are all its own. And one of these is impossible to miss: Its rotational axis is so skewed it may as well be lying down. That's a whopping...

Explanation: The Big Dipper is an easy to recognize, well-known asterism in northern skies, though many see the Plough or Wagon. Famous bright nebulae of the north can also be found along its familiar lines, highlighted in this carefully composed scene with telescopic insets framed in the wider-field skyview. All from Messier's catalog, M101 and M51 are cosmic pinwheel and whirlpool on the left, spiral galaxies far beyond the Milky Way. To the right, M108, a distant edge-on spiral galaxy is seen close to our galaxy's own owl-faced planetary nebula M97. Taken on January 16, the wider-field view seems to...

Explanation: This timely, telescopic, two panel mosaic spans about 10 full moons across planet Earth's predawn skies. Recorded as the year began from Tenerife, Canary Islands, near the top of the frame are the faint coma and tail of Comet Borrelly (P/19). A comet with a seven year orbital period, Borrelly's nucleus was visited by the ion propelled spacecraft Deep Space 1 near the beginning of the 21st century. Anchoring the scene at the bottom is brilliant star Arcturus (Alpha Bootes) and Comet Catalina (C/2013 US10) a first time visitor from the Oort Cloud. Catalina's yellowish dust tail extends below...

Explanation: A new year's treat for binoculars, as 2016 begins Comet Catalina (C/2013 US10) now sweeps through planet Earth's predawn skies near bright Arcturus, alpha star of Bootes. But this telescopic mosaic from December 21 follows the pretty tails of the comet across a field of view as wide as 10 full moons. The smattering of distant galaxies and faint stars in the background are in the constellation Virgo. Trailing behind the comet's orbit, Catalina's dust tail fans out below and left in the frame. Its ion tail is angled toward the top right, away from the Sun and buffeted...

Explanation: A crescent Moon and brilliant Venus met in predawn skies on December 7, a beautiful conjunction of planet Earth's two brightest celestial beacons after the Sun. Harder to see but also on the scene was Comet Catalina (C/2013 US10). The fainter comet clearly sporting two tails, lunar night side, bright sunlit lunar crescent, and brilliant morning star, are all recorded here by combining short and long exposures of the same field of view. Pointing down and right, Catalina's dust tail tends to trail behind the comet's orbit. Its ion tail, angled toward the top left of the frame, is...

Explanation: Comet Catalina is ready for its close-up. The giant snowball from the outer Solar System, known formally as C/2013 US10 (Catalina), rounded the Sun last month and is now headed for its closest approach to Earth in January. With the glow of the Moon now also out of the way, morning observers in Earth's northern hemisphere are getting their best ever view of the new comet. And Comet Catalina is not disappointing. Although not as bright as early predictions, the comet is sporting both dust (lower left) and ion (upper right) tails, making it an impressive object for binoculars...

Explanation: Will Comet Catalina become visible to the unaided eye? Given the unpredictability of comets, no one can say for sure, but it seems like a good bet. The comet was discovered in 2013 by observations of the Catalina Sky Survey. Since then, Comet C/2013 US10 (Catalina) has steadily brightened and is currently brighter than 8th magnitude, making it visible with binoculars and long-duration camera images. As the comet further approaches the inner Solar System it will surely continue to intensify, possibly becoming a naked eye object sometime in October and peaking sometime in late November. The comet will reside...

The first of the new large near-Earth asteroid discoveries is named 2013 UQ4, and it is perhaps the most unusual. This approximately 19-kilometer (12-mile) wide object was spotted by the Catalina Sky Survey on Oct. 23 when the asteroid was 435 million kilometers (270 million miles) away from Earth. Not only is this object unusually large, it follows a very unusual highly inclined, retrograde orbit about the Sun, which means it travels around the Sun in the opposite direction of all the planets and the vast majority of asteroids. The only objects usually found in retrograde orbits are comets, which...

On 26 May, JPL's unique orbital calculation software determined that Comet Catalina was on what could possibly be a collision course with Earth, though the odds of such an impact were small: just 1 chance in 300,000 of a strike on June 11, 2085. Based on the 980-metre size estimate, that would produce a 6-gigaton impact - equivalent to 6 billion tonnes of TNT. Astronomers expected the addition of further observations to the calculations to rule out any possibility of a collision, as happens with most newly-seen objects. But that did not quite happen. The comet's predicted pathway actually drew...

Shumaila Shah knows how to cook her husband's favorite dish the way one might say the Pledge of Allegiance. "Cook onions, tomatoes, garlic and ginger crushed together," she said, articulating something so familiar it didn't need words, English or Punjabi. "Salt, pepper, garam masala. Put meat in and add water to make a gravy. Cook until the meat is soft, not tough." How long? She thinks for a moment. "A half-hour; it depends on the meat," she said. "Then add the potatoes, because they take a shorter time to cook. We eat it with naan." The recipe for her aloo...

Limiting US citizenship and the number of mosques in the U.S. are practical matters that can be done to control the threat Islam poses. Just as the right to bear arms is restrained, so should freedom of religion be restrained when it comes to Islam Freedom of religion in the United States is a complex issue. It is an issue that involves both tradition and Constitutional law. Tom Krattenmaker writes, “The freedom to believe as one chooses is crucial to the American way, and belief has little meaning if it cannot be acted upon. Even so…the right to practice religion...

WASHINGTON – First Lady Michelle Obama told Oprah Winfrey that she and Barack are “regular folks” who don’t want to "waste our talents just making money for ourselves.”She said President Obama “hasn’t changed” because he is “an authentic man” who is going to leave the White House as the same person.“So I want to know, what are those days when you just say, mmm, mmm, mmm — look at me in the White House,” Winfrey asked Obama at the White House’s United State of Women Summit in Washington.“There are so — yeah, just sitting up here, mmm, mmm, mmm. There...

Traces of blood discovered on ancient arrowheads in Guatemala prove the Maya took part in bloody ceremonies to communicate with their gods. Bloodletting ceremonies involved piercing the earlobes, tongues and even genitals of willing participants and using the spilled blood to 'feed' their deities. The arrows were collected from five sites in the central American region, including a temple at Zacpetén where it's thought bloodletting ceremonies took place around 500 years ago.

Saturn's biggest and never-been-seen before ring has been discovered.The 'super-sized' halo was found by Nasa's Spitzer Space Telescope. To get a sense of its size it has a vertical height which is about 20 times the diameter of the planet, which is nine times the size of our planet. Furthermore, the entire volume of the ring could hold about one billion Earths. The bulk of the ring starts about 3.7million miles from Saturn itself and extends outward about another 7.4million miles.With it being so huge many will ask how come it was not seen before. This is because the ring...

The Official Google Blog announced that the company was "revamping the Google News homepage" on Wednesday. It's only Saturday, but I already think the Google News redesign is a repeat of The Coca-Cola Company's New Coke disaster in 1985. My first indication that Google was in trouble came from comments to my post on Thursday entitled, Google News Redesign Offers "News for You." Brad said, "The new Google News blows! I want the old one back. I shouldn't need to log in each time I want to check the top news stories (I switch between 5 different computers during a...

Planets orbit stars in the same direction that the stars rotate. They all do. Except one. A newfound planet orbits the wrong way, backward compared to the rotation of its host star. Its discoverers think a near-collision may have created the retrograde orbit, as it is called. The star and its planet, WASP-17, are about 1,000 light-years away. The setup was found by the UK's Wide Area Search for Planets (WASP) project in collaboration with Geneva Observatory. The discovery was announced today but has not yet been published in a journal. "I would have to say this is one of...

hillary clinton: ABUSER, NOT VICTIM   by Mia T, 6.21.05 (retrograde feminist fraud positions herself as victim (again) in order to win White House)[FOOL ME ONCE, SHAME ON YOU! FOOL ME TWICE, SHAME ON ME!] CLINTONS' DOCUMENTED ABUSE OF WOMEN NOTE THE SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE IN CLINTON REACTION TIME AND CONTENT TO THE TWO RAPE CHARGES CATCHING THE CONSCIENCE OF THE KINGFISHdifferential reaction to the two rape charges snares the clintons HILLARY FLUNKED D.C. BAR EXAM "the smartest woman in the world" sought less competitive venue 1st Feminist Prez Impeached(clinton, pushed by the "smartest woman in the world," managed to...

hillary clinton, courtesanretrograde feminist fraud plays victim (again) in order to win White House [FOOL ME ONCE, SHAME ON YOU! FOOL ME TWICE, SHAME ON ME!]   by Mia T, 6.20.05 (viewing movie requires Flash Player 7, available HERE) E-mail AuthorAuthor ArchiveSend to a Friend Version June 20, 2005, 7:54 a.m.The Truth About HillaryAn author tells his story. Q&A by Kathryn Jean Lopez TThe Clintons will always make headlines -- for both their larger-than-life aspects and the simple facts of presidential history (and future presidential history?). The prospect of the former First Lady and current junior-but-star senator Hillary Clinton...

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. 2003 December 16 Retrograde Mars Credit & Copyright: Tunc Tezel Explanation: Why would Mars appear to move backwards? Most of the time, the apparent motion of Mars in Earth's sky is in one direction, slow but steady in front of the far distant stars. About every two years, however, the Earth passes Mars as they orbit around the Sun. During the most recent such pass in August, Mars...