first rickroll in space

I love video of uncontrolled helium balloon descents.

I had to look this up because I am a nerd.

Bridge abstract
Originally uploaded by raindog.

A friend of mine on Facebook asked whether it's true that, as she heard on today's Giants/Phillies broadcast, it's true that there's enough wire in the Golden Gate Bridge to go around the earth three times.

So I looked:

The Bridge's official site says:
Total length of galvanized steel wire used in both main cables: 80,000 mi = 129,000 km

Matt at geography.about.com says:
The circumference of the earth at the equator is 24,901.55 miles (40,075.16 kilometers).

Thus: Yes.

In other news. I've been slacking way off here, and I don't want to. I might ask friends to write guest posts, and I might just frontload like crazy out of my Delicio.us tags, or I might continue to make excuses. We eagerly await the birth of what is bound to be a very smart and cute baby, which is leaving me in a dreamy haze.

I will try, though, to make this blog more readable and comment-friendly.

-Mary

NASA GOES-13 Full Disk view of Earth September 24, 2010

NASA GOES-13 Full Disk view of Earth September 24, 2010
Originally uploaded by NASA Goddard Photo and Video.

How can I not want to work to protect this? Its shield is so fragile, and the space underneath that shield is getting so messy.

NASA GOES-13 Full Disk view of Earth September 24, 2010

NASA/NOAA GOES 13 satellite image showing earth on September 24, 2010 17:45 UTC.

Credit: NOAA/NASA GOES Project

US Map

US Map
Originally uploaded by Andrew Goldsmith.

so that's what tornado sirens sound like

This is from a couple of hours ago, as a tornado moved across Dallas, and everyone with a camera found a place to video from.

Christchurch earthquake pictures

Christchurch earthquake
Originally uploaded by johnstewartnz.

(way down at the bottom are quake preparedness commentary and a video)




(Look at that vertical displacement!)
(edit: A couple of friends have since reminded me that "displacement" is a specific geologic term with regard to quakes. This offset might not be ground displacement as much as separation due to liquefaction or localized sinking.)






(above photos by digitalsadhu








(above photos by John Stewart




(above photos by Brendan Gloistein


After I looked at these, I reminded my husband that we haven't replaced the attachment hardware for our bookshelves, so we'll do that this weekend.

We also need to re-inventory our quake kit and find out what we need to replace. My favorite list of supplies is sfgate.com.

Folks from Christchurch respond to last night's big quake:



The panicky woman couldn't have known then (and many folks don't know, in general) that the quake wasn't really big enough for a tsunami, especially given as it was centered under land. They're usually from bigger quakes centered under water, with specific seismological conditions. But when the ground has bounced you out of bed in the wee hours of a winter's morning, that's probably not your first thought.

there's a lot going on down there

It's not exactly as good as being on the ISS, but it's still amazing:



Timelapse of Earth from low orbit. The lights below, the aurorae, just lovely. I want to lie in the cupola and stare.

Earl: Now, in AQUAVISION

Oh, how neat is this? The blue shows water vapor, or as the caption states:

Aquavision False color image from GOES-E Satellite taken on September 2, 2010 0000 UTC.

RGB[IR4, IR2, WV] composite. In the image Category 4 Hurricane Earl moves northwest towards a frontal system draped across the North America that had deformed in to a straight wall. The blue water vapor outflow of Hurricane Earl swoops down to the SW, while the overall flow of the frontal system moves water vapor from the tropical system near Baha California up towards Greenland.

Image credits: EUMETSAT / NEODASS / DSRS / NASA / processing by Mike Malaksa

A beer company chimes in on saving the Colorado

And I find this just as a friend from New Mexico tells me of some rather horrible water conservation mayhem in her neck of the woods, so I'm going to get on top of some research -- oooh, content. This blog might have content!



(Note: On a scale of NSFWness, this is a 3 on a 1-10 scale, where 1 is Mister Rogers.)

Hurricane Earl from Space

Hurricane Earl from Space
Originally uploaded by NASA Goddard Photo and Video.

Hurricane Earl takes up a huge chunk of planet. Regardless of whether the eye makes landfall -- and it still seems likely that the track will curve to the north then east, and miss land -- this is going to make one heck of a stormy Labor Day Weekend on the east coast of North America.

Crescent Moon

Crescent Moon
Originally uploaded by lrargerich.

‎"The Church says that the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church." — Ferdinand Magellan

Cotopaxi volcano

What a lovely Milky Way, just rotating right over the top of it!

(Found via Lane Hartwell, a local photographer.)

Earth from the ISS, cloud shadows

"From space I saw Earth,
indescribably beautiful
and with the scars of national boundaries gone."
Muhammad Ahmad Faris, astronaut

Ah, India

Bangalore to Mysore distance by road is about 140 kilometers. The approximate driving time is 3 hours, including a short brake in between.

orographic terminology

My friend Joe asks a specific cloud question:

Joe: Okay, an earth sciencey sort of question for you. In greenland I often saw cloud formations that sort of formed a belt half way up a cliff, e.g.,

Roughly speaking, my question is "does that have a cool name?" and "what's up with that?" Okay, that's two questions. :)

Can you explain? Is there a name for that kind of cloud position/type?

(I did tell him why the cloud formed there - but beyond that, I know not.)

Joe's going back to Greenland in a few days to take more pictures. Check out the rest of his Above the Arctic Circle work, -- he's good at making geography visible.

Maybe I need a geotat theme blog

Another geotat off tumblr.

In Santa Cruz, once, I saw someone with California on his entire right arm, Lake Tahoe at the elbow, etc. Seeing it move was weird, especially as there aren't any fault that make the state move just like that. ;)

And if you like tattoos, you should definitely check out Carl Zimmer's Science Tattoo Emporium!

way slow lightning

Watch the timestamp move. The whole video is slowed down to 1/300 speed.

It's interesting to watch the big bolts form, and disappear, but I am in love with all the tiny baby bolts.

I love this tattoo so much I could pop

The caption on the tumblr page says,
"pangaea. hoping it will stretch into it’s current positions as I get older and fatter."

Oh yeah. :D

(Note: This is not ink on me. I found it tumblrward.)

that weird green stuff

How cool is this?
As I explore my Yosemite astro-timelapses, I realize my Canon 5dM2 was picking up faint aurora borealis the whole time! (from @YosemiteSteve on twitter)

What an awesome treat, and it looks hard to have noticed in the moment.

2009's Atlantic/Caribbean tropical storms, all at once

NASA and NOAA have put together a four-minute time-lapse animation of the 2009 hurricane season:



I find myself trying to peer beyond the bottom right corner, to see what's going on between the Caribbean and Africa.

At least as interesting as watching the tropical depressions form and move, though, are the way clouds form over Central America. I'd like to watch a time lapse of Panamanian skies from the ground below, based on this.