Mars and full moon pair up for celestial spectacle via YoughalOnline.com,
These pictures were sent in to Youghalonline.com by local photographer John Hennessy and were taken last Friday night 29th Jan. 2010. The planet Mars lined up above and to the left of the moon, allowing both to be seen by Earth-based astronomy enthusiasts. Photo: John Hennessy
The red planet, now 62 million miles from Earth, will be at its brightest this year as it lines up opposite the sun. At around 9pm, last Friday, Mars was above and to the left of the moon, about the length of an outstretched fist away.
A standard SLR camera fitted with a telephoto lens is all you needed to capture the scene
Mars is at its most spectacular when close to the Earth at opposition. In 2003 the planet was just 35 million miles away as it faced the sun, and more than four times brighter than seen...
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Actually, it’s quite the challenge to balance a pint glass of water on a mars bar.
This was the Astronomy picture of the day from 2005, so I’m only 4 years and 4 months behind in seeing it. Some catching up to do....
Like most 10 year old boys at the time I was absolutely fascinated by the Apollo 11 mission. You can re-live it minute-by-minute here at we choose the moon which is currently streaming the mission as a 'live transmission' as it unfolded in the run up to the actual landing 40 years ago tomorrow morning, at 2.56GMT on 21st July 1969.It is a brilliant reminder of the extraordinary achievement of Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins (and NASA). To my mind the greatest human achievement of the 20th century. Will we better it in the 21st century? Alas, I'm with Boris Johnson who laments that we are now so spineless that we will likely never see a man walk on Mars. Truly they were...
Holst on there a minute. I'm not posting twice in one day really. I'm just thieving interesting content from other people's blogs again. I think I may be the only one, and I am so ashamed.Anyway, over that now. Kevin Dunne's views on marketing are never less than a kernel of common sense wrapped up in a layer of cop on, and all covered in a creamy coating of smart. Go visit and see.Like when he points to the hideously stupid thinking from Mars - of all people - that made them put a cease and desist order on digital agency Poke, for daring to dream up a website called Snckrz! where people could have fun with the Snickers logo.Don't look for it any more. It's not there. I'll let Kevin tell you...
Few things are more impressive than a co-ordinated version of the above. Dancefloor erupting, Mars bars flying out of pockets hitting against high heels, looks of disapproval from anyone more than twice your age. I'm not quite sure how to describe the difference between Oliver Reed dancing and any other kind, except maybe that it's the same difference between a lack of regular sex and a regular lack of sex. One happens when you get older, one happens when you don't bother anymore.I had a great weekend. The improbability of /my last entry/ coming true was the setup, Saturday was spent being hungover, drinking Sake with my back turned to the Rugby (I assume Ireland were playing Japan) returning to a flat with no television to play movie Charades (how the hell are you supposed to convey...
This entry is dedicated to the cultural linchpin that is MARVIN MARTIAN - a Looney Tunes character who goes mostly unnoticed or unmentioned when juxtaposed with the more prominent humans, hares, birds and predators. Yet, when considering most modern sci-fi aspects, his influence is a vertex of almost every single character, or is visible in almost every story arc, or is heard in almost every line. His creation even predated Roswell!Copycats,Chuck Jones described him as a man of actions that are "incredibly destructive and legitimately dangerous". Seen as the antithesis to Yosemite Sam, Marvin was supposed to be quiet-spoken, clever and utterly ridiculous. A space-termite who dressed like the Roman (about) God Mars.A Roman God, Thursday.Among Marvin's achievements areBlowing up Earth's...
Fragmentation: it needn't affect the overall taste.Pic thanks to Dirty Bunny.Skittles has gone the next step. They've pretty much done away with their 'own' website and just harnessed themselves into a Facebook page.Kind of.If you go looking at their pics page, it's hosted on Flickr. Their videos? A link to a Skittles page on - you guessed it - Youtube. Click on the Chatter link and you're straight to their Twitter page. Even the links to product information bring you to Wikipedia.They've put themselves in a very interesting place: totally visible at the centre of a very public web of communications.It's awesome, it's obvious and it's a brave step for Mars nonetheless, embracing as it does the underlying ethos of 'social' in the term social media. There are almost 600, 000 fans on the...
I wrote this piece for a woman’s magazine over the valentines period but alas, it was not published. So I’ll throw it up here, it may interest a few people. Most of the information was sourced from psychology books (special thanks to a few of my psych-student friends, you know who you are) and other similar publications from different fields. The information I could find reliable online sources for are linked.
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Showing a woman silent footage of several individual infants lying in their crib will you tell you a lot. Most will be able to identify which child wants to be fed, which one needs changing and which wants to be picked up, instinctively, by reading the baby’s body language.
Show the same footage to a man and he’ll probably be able to identify which...
“Whatever you do, don’t water the orchid”, she said.
I heard the word “water” and the word “orchid”.
So of course I watered the orchid.
...
As I seem to be one of the few people around these days who is still genuinely fascinated by space exploration I have been keeping a very geeky eye on the fortunes of NASA's most recent toy, the Phoenix robotic spacecraft which touched down on the surface of Mars last week. Perhaps it’s a sign of my years but there is something remarkable about this man-made object being sent off on a two year journey to another world, arriving there safely and then it being controlled remotely by people millions of miles away in order to carry out experiments. The first pictures beamed back by Phoenix were also enthralling for an aging nerd like myself, though at the same time I suppose I can't really complain if people half my age aren't getting all worked up about photographs of sand, red skies and...
Later today (or early tomorrow morning depending on your current time zone), the Phoenix probe lands on Mars to investigate if life, or traces of ancient life, exists in Mars’ polar wastes. There is a fascinating video on APOD today showing the probe entering Mars’ atmosphere and unfurling its instruments.
It is possible that today may mark one of the greatest discoveries in human history - finding life on another planet. But what are the repercussions, really?
From a religious perspective, there appears to be two possibilities: many of the moderate religions would be relatively open to the idea that the universe is teeming with life, a view bolstered by the Vatican astronomer recently. The fundamentalist religions would appear to have a problem, having accepted that the...
Given my brief (admittedly lacklustre) childhood flirtation with astronomy - and my ongoing chuminess with the worlds of Sci-Fi, comics etc. - it should come as no surprise that I’ve always been a big fan of the planet Mars (if, indeed, one can be a fan of a planet).
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