Image Of The Day…

May 13, 2014NatarajanLeave a comment

lake baikal 140512

ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by the Expedition 39 crew.

Sun glints off Russia’s Lake Baikal in an astronaut photograph taken on April 22, 2014.

Russia’s Lake Baikal is the deepest lake in the world, but its beauty is skin-deep in a new astronaut photograph.

The lake image, taken by a crew member aboard the International Space Station, shows the southern half of the lake, which is mostly covered by ice. A melted portion catches the sun, creating a silvery, mirrorlike surface. This phenomenon is called sunglint, according toNASA’s Earth Observatory.

Sunglint is a literal trick of the light — sun reflects directly off the surface of the water toward the observer. It can happen in rivers, lakes and on the open ocean, and the color of the sunglint depends on the roughness of the water surface, among other factors, according to Earth Observatory. [101 Stunning Images of Earth from Space]

One of a kind

Lake Baikal is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Its depths stretch down some 5,577 feet (1,700 meters) — twice as deep as the tallest building in the world, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, is high. The lake is also the world’s oldest, dating back about 25 million years, according to UNESCO.

Lake Baikal is also the single largest reservoir on Earth. It contains 20 percent of the fresh, unfrozen water on the planet, and has a rare and diverse ecosystem to match. According to UNESCO, the lake is home to 1,340 animal species and 570 plants. Of these, 745 animals and 150 plants are found nowhere else on Earth.

Perhaps the cutest of these is the Baikal seal (Pusa sibirica), also known as the nerpa. This seal is the only pinniped that lives only in freshwater, according to the Seal Conservation Society. Adults are silver-grey, and pups are a fuzzy, fluffy white. Weighing in around 155 pounds (70 kilograms) max, Baikal seals are some of the smallest pinnipeds on the planet.

Less adorable, but no less amazing, is the golomyanka, a bizarre translucent fish that is more than one-third oil by weight. The fish have no scales and, because of their unique bodies, can move from Lake Baikal’s depths to its shallows without suffering damage from changes in water pressure. The fish are the main prey of the Baikal seal.

Threats and challenges

Despite its storied status, Lake Baikal is not immune to the threat of human activity. Baikal seals are hunted, which may be contributing to declining numbers of the species. Pollution also threatens the lake, particularly agricultural runoff and discharge from nearby industrial plants, according to the Seal Conservation Society.

The lake is also a repository of gas hydrates, which are essentially dissolved gases locked inside solid crystals of water. Lake Baikal hosts huge amounts of methane trapped in these structures in its depths, making it a popular place for research into how to extract these gas hydrates as an alternative source of energy.

There are currently no plans to extract these gas hydrates from Lake Baikal, but similar structures are also found in the oceans and in permafrost. This fact has led to additional concerns about climate change, as melting ice could release large amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

source:::::::BUSINESS INSIDER

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Picture Of Earth as seen From Moon …

May 10, 2014May 10, 2014NatarajanLeave a comment

The Earth rises spectacularly as a tiny blue marble above the moon in a new NASA photo that hints at the fragility of humanity and the vastness of space.

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the image on Feb. 1 with its wide-angle camera, depicting a colorized view of the Earth rising over the 112-mile-wide (180 kilometers) Rozhdestvenskiy crater. The event was one of 12 such “earthrises” that occur every day from the perspective of the moon.

The LRO spacecraft’s wide-angle camera takes images in a different way than most digital cameras. A typical cellphone camera has more than 5 million pixels, whereas a single frame of the LRO camera has fewer than 10,000 pixels. [Amazing Photos of Earth from Space]

But the LRO camera builds up a much larger image by taking multiple exposures as the spacecraft orbits, a technique known as “push-frame” imaging. Over the course of a month, the orbiter camera collects enough images to cover the whole moon.

The LRO usually spends its time staring at the lunar surface looking for signs of water or ice in permanently shadowed craters. But occasionally the spacecraft points into space to image the moon’s exosphere, the thin atmosphere-like layer surrounding it, or to calibrate the craft’s instruments. Sometimes, the spacecraft captures images of Earth (like this one) or other planets making their progress across the heavens.

In the image, Earth is a color composite of several frames, optimized for the colors blue, green and red. These colors match what the human eye detects, so they are true to what an average person might see.

Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter and Google+.Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

earthmoon_square1
This image, captured Feb. 1, 2014, shows a colorized view of Earth from the moon-based perspective of NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

source :::::Business Insider .com …https://www.facebook.com/BusinessInsiderScience…

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World”s Deadliest Animal….

April 29, 2014April 29, 2014NatarajanLeave a comment

Bill Gates posted the graphic below to his blog on April 25.

JENNIFER WELSH in BUSINESS INSIDER AUSTRALIA

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It shows how many people are killed by different species of animal every year. The big red block at the bottom might surprise you:

“The number of mosquito-caused deaths really is a mind-blowing thing. Other than humans killing humans during periods of war, most years, the mosquito wins,” the Mosquito Week trailer says.

The reason?

Mosquitoes carry terrible diseases, including: Malaria (which kills more than 600,000 people every year), dengue fever virus, Rift Valley fever virus, yellow fever, chikungunya virus, West Nile virus, Lymphatic filariasis, and Japanese encephalitis.

These mosquito-borne infections don’t just kill — they debilitate millions of people. Sometimes these people can’t work and can’t support themselves. Billions of dollars in productivity is lost in places where these debilitating infections run rampant — fuelled by mosquitoes.

The deadliest of all is malaria, a parasitic infection that mosquitoes inject directly into our bloodstream when they bite. The parasites then travel to the victim’s liver, where they multiply and reproduce. Their babies travel the bloodstream, destroying the red blood cells.

Usually the infection doesn’t kill, but it’s so abundant in so much of the equatorial world that more than 200 million people are infected every year, and more than 700,000 die from the disease.

Here’s the areas of the world where Malaria is the worst, from the CDC

Malaria map cdc

How to Spot the International Space Station ….

April 27, 2014NatarajanLeave a comment

Every so often, the International Space Station (ISS) becomes visible in your night sky. Here’s how you can spot it.

Is it a meteor? Is it a plane? It might be the International Space Station (ISS).

Every so often, the ISS becomes visible in the night sky. To us on Earth, it looks like a bright star moving quickly above the horizon. The ISS is so bright, it can even been seen from the center of a city. Then, just as suddenly as it appeared, it disappears. How do you know when you can see the ISS in your night sky?

NASA has started a Spot the Station program where people from around the world can sign up to receive alerts when the ISS will be visible from your location. You can receive alerts via email or a text message to your phone. Typically, alerts are sent out a few times each month when the station’s orbit is near your location. Visit the Spot the Station website here to sign up, and view a list of upcoming sighting opportunities.

Notices will only be sent to you when the ISS will be clearly visible from your location for at least a couple of minutes. If you live north of 51.6 degrees latitude (for example, in Alaska), you will likely have to visit the website to find sighting opportunities because notifications in this region would be rare.

The notices contain information on where to look for the ISS in the night sky. Just note where the sun sets and you can easily find the direction where the station will appear (for example, in the southwest or in the northwest). The height at which the station will appear is given in degrees. Just remember that 90 degrees is directly over your head. Any number less than 90 degrees will mean that the station will appear somewhere between the horizon and the 90 degree mark. The station is so bright that it is really hard to miss if you’re looking in the correct direction. Alternatively, you can stretch out your fist at arm’s length toward the horizon, which is equivalent to about 10 degrees. Then, just use the appropriate number of fist-lengths to find the location marker, e.g., four fist-lengths from the horizon would be equivalent to about 40 degrees.

So far, more than half a million people have signed up to receive alerts from NASA’s Spot the Station program. I’ve seen the station fly over twice now and it’s a pretty amazing experience—gets you thinking about how far our technology has advanced.

The first module of the ISS was launched into space in 1998 and the initial construction of the station took about two years to complete. Human occupation of the station began on November 2, 2000. Since that time, the ISS has been continuously occupied and over 214 people have visited to date. The ISS serves as both an orbiting laboratory and a port for international spacecraft. The primary partnering countries involved in operating the ISS include the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan and Russia.

The ISS orbits at approximately 220 miles above the Earth and it travels at an average speed of 27,724 kilometers (17,227 miles) per hour. The ISS makes multiple orbits around the Earth every day. So far, the ISS has traveled more than 1.5 billion miles through space.

Bottom line: Check out the ISS in the night sky the next time it flies over your location. You can sign up to receive alerts with NASA’s Spot the Station program or visit that website to view a list of viewing opportunities.

source:::::Earth skynews site

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The Most Expensive Book In The World… $ 11.5 Million !!!

April 21, 2014NatarajanLeave a comment

A copy of John James Audubon’s Birds of America was sold at an auction in London for £7.3 million ($11.5 million), and thus became the most expensive book ever sold. The auction was a rare chance to own one of the best preserved editions of the 19th century masterpiece, with its 435 hand-colored illustrations. The winning bid was placed by London-based art dealer Michael Tollemache, who outbid three others during the auction.

Only 120 complete sets of Audubon’s 435 hand-colored, life-sized engravings of America’s birds are believed to exist today, with the majority (107) owned by institutions. The last full edition of The Birds of America, which went up for auction in 2010, sold for £7.3m at Sotheby’s, breaking the world record for a single book.

“Birds of America is most significant for its sheer beauty. It’s a masterpiece of illustration,” the words of Richard Davies, a rare and used books specialist. “Aside from being famous in the rare book world, Birds of America has also immense historical and ornithological importance. Some of the birds John James Audubon painted are extinct and he also discovered new species.”

Measuring over three feet in height and running to four volumes, The Birds of America was created by Audubon between 1827 and 1838. The illegitimate son of a French sea captain and his creole mistress, Audubon was an itinerant artist who traveled America’s wilderness drawing the birds he loved. He was insistent that The Birds of America was made up of life-size illustrations, and that it showed all the known species of north America, making the finished volume

Each of the printed book were colored by hand, and it was an extremely laborious process. Even by today’s standards, the vividness of its illustrations of birds is extraordinary but when it was being released in the 1830s it was mindboggling. Audubon employed a rather shocking technique to produce the book. He hunted the birds down and shot them before propping them up on wires to paint. Each drawing would take about 60 hours to complete. Ironically, many of his beautifully rendered subjects are now extinct, such as the Carolina Parakeet, Passenger Pigeon, Labrador Duck, Great Auk, Esquimaux Curlew, and Pinnated Grouse.

Picking up a copy of the “book” is a two-person job, said the dealer, who examined an edition at Sotheby’s once prior to an auction. “The (very nervous) resident expert and I (gingerly) turned the pages together, him at the top and me at the bottom, and peeled them back (respectfully) into just the right conjunction with the rest of the plates,” said Gekoski. “You have to be careful how you handle a gargantuan book worth more than 10 million dollars.”

most expensive book

source::::You Tube & ba-ba mail site

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Lucky Escape …Teen Stowaway in Wheel !!!

April 21, 2014NatarajanLeave a comment

Lucky escape … the teen was found in the wheel well of a Hawaiian Airlines Boeing 767. Source: Supplied

A BOY stowed in the wheel well of a Boeing 767 on a flight from California to Hawaii has miraculously survived unharmed despite freezing temperatures and a lack of oxygen.

FBI officials said staff at Maui’s Kahului Airport noticed the boy on the tarmac after the Hawaiian Airlines plane landed and notified security.

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“Our primary concern now is for the well-being of the boy, who is exceptionally lucky to have survived,” Hawaiian Airlines said.

Breach … security footage from San Jose airport showed the boy jumping a fence to get to the plane. Source: No Source

FBI spokesman Tom Simon in Honolulu said security footage from the San Jose airport showed the boy from Santa Clara, California, hopped a fence to get to Hawaiian Airlines Flight 45 on Sunday morning.

Simon said the boy, who had run away from his family, would would not be charged and was referred to child protective services.

source::::news.com.au

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NASA Announces An Earth like Planet ….

April 18, 2014April 18, 2014NatarajanLeave a comment

NASA and Kepler telescope researchers have just announced that they’ve discovered an Earth-sized planet, circling a dwarf star at a distance that would allow that planet to support liquid water.

A live press conference is currently happening, which includes Douglas Hudgins of NASA’s Astrophysics Division, Elisa Quintana of the SETI Institute at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Tom Barclay of Bay Area Environmental Research Institute at Ames, and Victoria Meadows of the University of Washington and the NASA Astrobiology Institute at Ames.

You can watch live on Ustream and we’ve embedded the video below. Questions for the scientists can be submitted on Twitter using the hashtag #AskNASA.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/46348063
Video streaming by Ustream

The finding was also published today, April 16, in the journal Science.

The new planet, Kepler-186f, is part of a five-planet planet system that orbits a star named Kepler-186, which is cooler and about half the size and mass of our sun.

The newfound system is located about 500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. Kepler-186f is the outermost planet and the only one circling its star at the right distance to have liquid water on it’s surface. Since liquid water is a key ingredient for life to exist, scientists call this sweet spot the “habitable zone.”

On planets that are too close to their star, liquid water boils away. Those that are too far don’t get enough energy from their star to support a climate and atmosphere similar to Earth.

The planets were discovered using the Kepler spacecraft, launched in 2009 to look for Earth-sized planets near stars like our sun. Kepler has found dozens of exoplanets in the habitable zone, but most of these are gas giants. Kepler-186f is the first confirmed Earth-sized planet potentially with an Earth-like atmosphere and water at its surface.

Danielle Futselaar

The artist’s concept depicts Kepler-186f, the first validated Earth-size planet orbiting a distant star in the habitable zone.

Size and composition

Kepler-186f is less than 10% larger than Earth. Scientists confirmed the size of Kepler-186f by measuring how much light it blocks as it passed in front of its host star.

Scientists don’t yet know the mass or composition of Kepler-186f, but think it could have a rocky surface based on planets of similar size – like Earth.

“There’s a very excellent chance that it does have a rocky surface like the Earth,” co-author Stephen Kane, of San Francisco State University, said in a statement.

Here’s how the planets of our inner solar system compare to those of Kepler-186:

NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-CalTech

The diagram compares the planets of the inner solar system to Kepler-186, a five-planet system about 500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.

source::::Business Insider India

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Story Behind the Background Photograph of Windows XP !!!

April 13, 2014April 13, 2014NatarajanLeave a comment

One serene image has been viewed by over one billion eyes, has been seen in videos of the White House and even the Russian government–the default Windows XP computer background.

Even though Microsoft killed off support for Windows XP this week after 13 years, they decided to pay homage to the nostalgic scene.

With many wondering where the image of green grass and blue skies named ‘Bliss’ really came from, the tech company Microsoft released a video in which they interview the photographer Charles O’Rear.

Video Link :

This photo called ‘Bliss’ was taken by former National Geographic photographer Charles O’Rear on 1996 and was made famous by being Microsoft XP’s default desktop photo

This is the same scene where O’Rear took his famed desktop background photo in 1996

O’Rear drove from Napa Valley to Sacramento on an extremely busy and dangerous road

O’Rear, a former National Geographic photographer said he was driving through the Napa Valley on his way to visit his girlfriend in San Francisco when he came across a beautiful landscape with perfect grass and an almost clear sky.

In a video about the photo, O’Rear says that even though the photo appears to be taken in a calm environment, the road there is one of the most dangerous and busy roads he’s driven on.

Despite the dangerous road, the image couldn’t be more placid. He took his old film camera and snapped the famous photo in 1996.

O’Rear says by the time he took the picture there were a few clouds in the sky but when he first saw the photo worthy setting the sky was completely clear.

Several years later, Microsoft commissioned the photo for Windows XP, reports Time. They flew O’Rear out to their offices to personally deliver the photo.

‘I had no idea where it was going to go,’ ‘O’Rear said in the video.

‘Anybody now from age 15 to the rest of their life will remember this photograph.’ he said.

‘I’m thrilled to know that people have had pleasure from looking at that, from looking that a photograph that I made.’

O’Rear stopped to snap the photo as he was driving along this busy road from Napa Valley to Sacramento

Charles O’Rear took the photo with an old film camera back in 1996 and never knew that the picture he took on a whim would be seen by over one billion eyes !!!

source:::: ALEXANDRA KLAUSNER in mailonline.com UK

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NASA Has An Answer to ” Mysterious Light On MARS …” !!!

April 12, 2014NatarajanLeave a comment

Sorry, mysterious glow on Mars is not life !!!

KINDLY SEE MY EARLIER POST ” Mysterious Light On Mars ….Will Somebody Throw Some ” Light ” on This !!! ” before reading this post…

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Washington, April 12 (IANS) The strange “glow” spotted on the Red Planet by Curiosity is not a sign of life. It is either a shiny rock or a glitch in the rover’s camera, NASA has said.

UFO blogger Scott Waring had claimed that the new photograph taken by the rover suggests there are intelligent creatures living underground.

However, NASA said it has now investigated the image, and found it is simply a trick of light.

“One possibility is that the light is the glint from a rock surface reflecting the sun,” a NASA spokesperson was quoted as saying by mailonline.uk.

“When these images were taken each day, the sun was in the same direction as the bright spot, west-northwest from the rover, and relatively low in the sky.

“The rover science team is also looking at the possibility that the bright spots could be caused by cosmic rays striking the camera’s detector.”

NASA’s engineers believe the glow may have been caused by sunlight reaching the camera’s sensors through a vent hole in the camera housing.

The agency said this has happened previously on other cameras on Curiosity and other Mars rovers when the geometry of the incoming sunlight relative to the camera is precisely aligned.

NASA also revealed that such glitches are commonplace.

“Among the thousands of images received from Curiosity, ones with bright spots show up nearly every week.”

Curiosity takes images using two cameras, one in its right eye and the other in its left.

source:::: Techno Storm from Yahoo

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While the image from the right eye shows this bright spot, the same image from the left eye does not.

Mysterious Light On Mars ….Will Somebody Throw Some ” Light ” on This !!!

April 8, 2014April 8, 2014NatarajanLeave a comment

A speck of light can be seen flaring upwards from the hillside on Mars. Credit: Nasa/JPL-Caltech Source: Supplied

THERE may not be life on Mars, but PLEASE: let there be light. And there was light. But where is it coming from?

An unexplained shard of light in a photo from NASA’s Curiosity rover has got UFO enthusiasts excited, the Houston Chronicle reports (technically, it doesn’t appear to be flying so it can’t be a UFO, so there’s one theory quashed – Unless, of course, it’s refuelling).

Scott C. Waring, who runs the UFO Sightings Daily site, posted the photo on April 6.

Here’s another shot of it, in case you were wondering. A speck of light can be seen flaring upwards from the hillside on Mars. Credit: Nasa/JPL-

Caltech Source: Supplied

Waring said the light shines upward, as if from the ground, and is very flat across the bottom.

“This could indicate there is intelligent life below the ground and uses light as we do,” Waring noted on his website. “This is not a glare from the sun, nor is it an artifact of the photo process.”
The strange light, spotted in a photo taken by the rover’s right-hand navigation in a new study area known as the Kimberley, does not appear in pictures from the left-hand camera, suggesting the “light” is actually a speck of lost data, reports NBC. An imaging expert at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the blip appears to have been caused by a cosmic ray hit.

Although the space agency hasn’t issued any statement about the phenomenon, bloggers and NASA watchers have chimed in on what is seen in the photo, which was sent over millions of kilometres of space before being picked up by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the Houston Chronicle says.

Four different types of rock come converge at the Kimberley, which is named after a region of Western Australia.

“This is the spot on the map we’ve been headed for, on a little rise that gives us a great view for context imaging of the outcrops at the Kimberley,” the Curiosity mission’s Melissa Rice, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said.

Follow Andrew Banks on Twitter @newsbanks

source::::news.com.au

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Image Of The Day…

One of a kind

Threats and challenges

Picture Of Earth as seen From Moon …

World”s Deadliest Animal….

How to Spot the International Space Station ….

The Most Expensive Book In The World… $ 11.5 Million !!!

Lucky Escape …Teen Stowaway in Wheel !!!

NASA Announces An Earth like Planet ….

NASA Has An Answer to ” Mysterious Light On MARS …” !!!

Sorry, mysterious glow on Mars is not life !!!

Mysterious Light On Mars ….Will Somebody Throw Some ” Light ” on This !!!