Why would the Venusians name a class of battleships after a Japanese Admiral?
argh. i knew it ... no bad intensions or prejudices here ... it is the name of the powerful vessel/gun in starcraft pc game ... it's all my imagination. sorry.
I knew the source.....sometimes I just like to be difficult. :) Of course the question remains Why would the Venusians name a class of battleships after a Japanese Admiral?
Because their lack of teeth and floppy lips make it impossible to pronounce sibilants? Or maybe "yamamoto" means "exploder of planets" in Venusian, and the homophonic similarity to the neval personage is mere coincidence ...
Why would the Venusians name a class of battleships after a Japanese Admiral?
argh. i knew it ... no bad intensions or prejudices here ... it is the name of the powerful vessel/gun in starcraft pc game ... it's all my imagination. sorry.
I knew the source.....sometimes I just like to be difficult. :) Of course the question remains Why would the Venusians name a class of battleships after a Japanese Admiral?
Because their lack of teeth and floppy lips make it impossible to pronounce sibilants? Or maybe "yamamoto" means "exploder of planets" in Venusian, and the homophonic similarity to the neval personage is mere coincidence ...
In honor of the 10th anniversary of NASA's Earth Observatory project, viewers have voted for the Top Ten Photo-of-the-Day images from their gallery. I think the voters did a pretty good job choosing images with both scientific and aesthetic merit. Check it out ...
Very cool. Some of the other photos there are equally awesome.
Fun factoid... the most populous organism in the oceans, Pelagibacter, is estimated to have 10^27 individuals. This is about 10,000 times the number of stars in the observable universe.
Last Friday night Kirbic and I observed with a good sized group under dark skies about 30 miles south of Madison, and there were an unusually high number of bright meteors that night as well. I missed most of them, being glued to my camera and Mars, but I counted the gasps at one point that evening and recorded a record rate!
Very cool. Some of the other photos there are equally awesome.
Fun factoid... the most populous organism in the oceans, Pelagibacter, is estimated to have 10^27 individuals. This is about 10,000 times the number of stars in the observable universe.
Ha, glad someone posted this... saw it earlier today, read Tony Phillips' write-up, and was amazed. Actual (water ice) snowballs (big ones!) surrounding the comet core. Made up of tiny "snowflakes" of ice outgassed with the CO2 jets. Darn good thing the probe passed outside the diameter of this snowstorm!
Set your alarm clocks! Starting tomorrow (Wednesday, 5/11), there will be prime viewing of a four-planet conjunction in the southeastern sky just before dawn: Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter will be grouped in an area the size of your hand at arm's-length.
I don't want to curse myself, but the weather is looking good here for Tuesday! I'll need to be shooting West, unlike the last transit, where I was shooting East just after Sunrise. No opportunity for a reprise of this shot:
ETA: For all those who may have missed the 2004 transit, don't miss this one! the next one is in 2117. You read that right, 105 years from now!
