On Comet LOVEJOY

COMET LOVEJOY’S ACTIVE TAIL: Amateur astronomers around the northern hemisphere are reporting activity in the tail of naked-eye Comet Lovejoy (C/2013 R1). In Nagano, Japan, astrophotographer Kouji Ohnishi could see big changes in less than an hour of monitoring:

Michael Jäger saw the same “disconnection event” from his observatory in Masenberg, Austria, on Dec. 5th. The disturbance could be caused by a gust of solar wind or perhaps an episode of vigorous outgassing in the comet’s core.

Comet Lovejoy is now about as bright as a 4th magnitude star. It is visible to the unaided eye from the countryside and is an easy target for backyard telescopes even in urban areas. Monitoring is encouraged. Comet Lovejoy rises in the east just before the morning sun

from:    spaceweather.com

Of Comet ISON

THE GHOST OF COMET ISON: On Friday, Dec. 6th, leading researchers from NASA’s Comet ISON Observing Campaign (CIOC) held an informal workshop at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. One of the key questions they discussed was, Did Comet ISON survive? It might seem surprising that anyone is still asking. After all, the “comet” that emerged from the sun’s atmosphere on Thanksgiving day appeared to be little more than a disintegrating cloud of dust. This movie from the STEREO-A spacecraft (processed by Alan Watson) shows the V-shaped cloud fading into invisibility on Dec. 1st:

The answer hinges on the contents of that cloud. Is it nothing more than a cloud of dust–or could there be some some fragments of the disintegrated nucleus still intact and potentially active?

A key result announced at the workshop comes from SOHO, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. According to the spacecraft’s SWAN instrument, the comet stopped producing so-called Lyman alpha photons soon after its closest approach to the sun. Karl Battams of the CIOC explains what this means: “Without getting technical, Lyman-Alpha is a consequence of sunlight interacting with hydrogen, and if we are not seeing that interaction then it means that the levels of hydrogen (and hence ice) are extremely low. This is indicative of a completely burned out nucleus, or no nucleus at all.”

“The evidence appears strong that at some point approaching perihelion – whether days or hours – Comet ISON likely began to completely fall apart,” he continues. “What remains of ISON now is going to be either just a cloud of dust, or perhaps a few very depleted chunks of nucleus. Either way, it’s not going to flare up at this point and we should assume the comet’s show is over.”

“However, we do need to verify this,” says Battams. “Hopefully the Hubble team can come to the rescue! In mid-December, Hubble will be pointed in the direction of where ISON should be and they’ll try and image something. If no fragments are surviving, or they are tiny, then Hubble will not be able to find anything, but that negative detection will tell us something: namely that ISON is indeed gone for good.”

fr/spaceweather.com

your Color VIbe for Sunday, December 8

Sunday, December 8:    Blue Grass:

Today is a day for some excitement, however you might be discovering that your current idea of excitement is not what it used to be.  There can be excitement in watching the sunset.  There can be excitement in seeing the petals of a flower unfold.  There can be excitement in see a soufflé rise perfectly.  There can be excitement in watching delight erupt in the face of a child.  Things are changing, and along with them, so are you.  You can find that words that once meant one things to you have different nuance.  There are times today when you might find that you do not recognize yourself in how you react, in what you say, in how you are feeling.  This is all part of how you are reacting to the new energies as they flow around you.  There is creativity in all of this.  And right now, you greatest act of creativity is creating the new you.

Your COlor Vibe for Monday, 11/25

Monday, November 25:     Dark Blue

Open to your sense today.  They are very aware of everything that is going on around you.  And these are not just the physical sense but also the spiritual and emotional sensitivities that can bring information to you in new ways.  There are symbols that will be appearing in some of this, so it would be well to investigate what they mean.  Also, you will be finding that some of your friends and colleagues might be looking at you a bit askance right now.  That is because you are changing and no longer are the predictable personality that they could depend upon, go to, manipulate, whatever.  This can result in some interesting exchanges.  All in all, this day brings some revelations and some new information.  You are walking forward in your power, and it is time that you saw the effects of how you are changing and the evidence of your own power.

DSCI6467

 

Volcanic Activity: Etna & Sinabung

Eruption Update for November 24, 2013: Sinabung and Etna

Webcam capture of the November 23, 2013 eruption of Etna in Italy. Image: @Culturevolcan / Twitter

Quick post as I get ready for our Thanksgiving Week trip to the great white north (also known as Chicago):

Indonesia

The PVMBG has moved Sinabung up to its highest alert after a series of powerful explosions overnight reaching 2-8 km (6,500-25,000 feet). In the region around the volcano, over 12,000 people in over 17 villages have been evacuated due to the increasingly hazardous activity at the volcano. Right now, it seems like no one is quite sure what is going to come next — all that we know is that activity has been on the increase over the last month. Although the ash from these explosions have cause some flight disruptions, it is not yet a threat to people living in the regional capitol, roughly 50 kilometers (31 miles) away.

Italy

Meanwhile in Italy, Etna had yet another paroxysm, this time less than a week since its last one. This one produced a significant ash plume with lava fountaining, but little-to-no lava flow activity. One of the more impressive videos I’ve seen for the eruption was one taken by hikers on Etna who had basaltic scoria rain down on them. VolcanoDiscovery also posted a time-lapse of yesterday’s eruption.

from:    http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/eruptions/

Wall Street OCCUPY-ists Buying Personal Debt

Occupy Wall Street activists buy $15m of Americans’ personal debt

Rolling Jubilee spent $400,000 to purchase debt cheaply from banks before ‘abolishing’ it, freeing individuals from their bills
Occupy Wall Street
‘Our primary purpose was to spread information about the workings of this secondary debt market,’ said Andrew Ross. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

A group of Occupy Wall Street activists has bought almost $15m of Americans’ personal debt over the last year as part of the Rolling Jubilee project to help people pay off their outstanding credit.

Rolling Jubilee, set up by Occupy’s Strike Debt group following the street protests that swept the world in 2011, launched on 15 November 2012. The group purchases personal debt cheaply from banks before “abolishing” it, freeing individuals from their bills.

By purchasing the debt at knockdown prices the group has managed to free $14,734,569.87 of personal debt, mainly medical debt, spending only $400,000.

“We thought that the ratio would be about 20 to 1,” said Andrew Ross, a member of Strike Debt and professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University. He said the team initially envisaged raising $50,000, which would have enabled it to buy $1m in debt.

“In fact we’ve been able to buy debt a lot more cheaply than that.”

The group is able to buy debt so cheaply due to the nature of the “secondary debt market”. If individuals consistently fail to pay bills from credit cards, loans, or medical insurance the bank or lender that issued the funds will eventually cut its losses by selling that debt to a third party. These sales occur for a fraction of the debt’s true values – typically for five cents on the dollar – and debt-buying companies then attempt to recoup the debt from the individual debtor and thus make a profit.

The Rolling Jubilee project was mostly conceived as a “public education project”, Ross said.

“We’re under no illusions that $15m is just a tiny drop in the secondary debt market. It doesn’t make a dent in the amount of debt.

“Our purpose in doing this, aside from helping some people along the way – there’s certainly many, many people who are very thankful that their debts are abolished – our primary purpose was to spread information about the workings of this secondary debt market.”

The group has focussed on buying medical debt, and has acquired the $14.7m in three separate purchases, most recently purchasing the value of $13.5m on medical debt owed by 2,693 people across 45 states and Puerto Rico, Rolling Jubilee said in a press release.

“No one should have to go into debt or bankruptcy because they get sick,” said Laura Hanna, an organiser with the group. Hanna said 62% of all personal bankruptcies have medical debt as a contributing factor.

Due to the nature of the debt market, the group is unable to specify whose debt it purchases, taking on the amounts before it discovers individuals’ identities. When Rolling Jubilee has bought the debt they send notes to their debtors “telling them they’re off the hook”, Ross said.

Ross, whose book, Creditocracy and the case for debt refusal, outlines the problems of the debt industry and calls for a “debtors’ movement” to resist credit, said the group had received letters from people whose debt they had lifted thanking them for the service. But the real victory was in spreading knowledge of the nature of the debt industry, he said.

“Very few people know how cheaply their debts have been bought by collectors. It changes the psychology of the debtor, knowing this.

“So when you get called up by the debt collector, and you’re being asked to pay the full amount of your debt, you now know that the debt collector has bought your debt very, very cheaply. As cheaply as we bought it. And that gives you moral ammunition to have a different conversation with the debt collector.”

from:    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/12/occupy-wall-street-activists-15m-personal-debt

Your Color Vibe for Sunday, 11/24

Sunday, November 24:    Bermuda Blue

There can be some really enjoyable moments today as things seem to relax into some kind of routine.  With that, you might just realize that the old routines have by and large become fractured, and you have been living and working day to day without that sense of predictability that comes from having a routine.  Today is a day to stop what you are doing and look around you.  What it is there on your horizon that you are desiring to come into focus?  What are the changes that you are needing to make in order to ameliorate how you are feeling?  What are the things you need to say and do in order to know that you can move forward?   Peace and action, peace in action, these are some of the themes of the day.  Relax into your power.

ISON & Encke Movie

UPDATE: New ISON and Encke Movie

Submitted by Karl Battams on Fri, 11/22/2013 – 15:52
Comets C/2012 S1 (ISON) and 2P/Encke continue to race through the solar system in this updated sequence! CLICK TO ANIMATE! [Image Credit: Karl Battams/NRL/NASA-CIOC]

Here’s the latest awesome movie I have of Comet’s ISON and Encke in the NASA STEREO-A HI-1 field of view! Click the image opposite and enjoy (it’s about 4.7MB so might take a moment to load)

I’ll spare you a repeat of the details I gave yesterday, and instead will just encourage you to read that blog post, in which I describe some of the background info here, including why this movie is so amazing and why it’ll just keep getting better!

There are a couple of new things I want to say here though. First I received a good question via Twitter that was along the lines of “where exactly is the Sun relative to all this?“. I briefly mentioned it yesterday but it’s worth elaborating on a tad. The Sun sits outside of the field of view of this camera, off to the right as you look at this movie. What I’m not showing you here (purely in the interest of small file sizes) is the full field of view of this camera. Here is a full field image, complete with a CME that appears to be blasting towards the comets… Will it hit them? We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we!

Second, I want to make a note of some interesting dynamics in ISON’s tail. You’ll see that Encke has kind of long waves in the tail, whereas ISON’s seems almost like high-frequency “puffs”. Off the top of my head I can think of two possible reasons, though one is really speculative.

The less speculative (and most likely) is that ISON is simply in a faster stream of the solar wind. Imagine holding a flag on a slightly breezy day. The flag will waft gently in the breeze. Now imagine holding it in really strong winds. The flag will be rippling violently, but those ripples will be smaller in amplitude. We need to look at solar wind velocities in that area to be sure, but that’s the guess I’m planting my flag [unintended] into.

The more speculative one would be that maybe it has something to do with ISON’s rotation. But I really don’t think ISON is rotating that fast or we’d have detected it from the ground. I also don’t know that a fast rotation would show up like that anyway. I’m really just thinking out loud on this one. If anyone asks you, I’d definitely stick with the solar wind speed argument for now – it’s much safer.

I don’t know when I’ll next get more data to update this movie. The STEREO spacecraft are far from Earth and they don’t send down this high-res data in realtime, or anything close to it. Hopefully some point tomorrow I’ll get some more but – just to forewarn you – it can take up to two or three days sometimes. If that happens, it’s because of DSN schedule conflicts and not because of some “omg it’s aliens” reason. Let’s please save the tin-foil for making turkey this week, not hats! [That’s a Thanksgiving Holiday reference, for you non-US folks.] Spacecraft data connections are spotty but we will absolutely do our best to get what we can, when we can. Keep checking back, and follow my Twitter feed (link below) for the latest updates.

frfom:    http://www.isoncampaign.org/karl/updated-ison-encke-movie

On Meridians & Emotions

Meridians And Emotions

Find out how closely your health is related to your emotions

by: Evelyn Mulders

A meridian story relating the emotions to a situation that you may be able to relate to. If this is you, then look at the meridian attributes for reassurance. This confirmation offers you insight on knowing which meridian in your body needs the most attention.

Balancing choices for the meridians could be meridian tracing or vibrational remedies.

Meridians and Emotions

The approach to disease in Western allopathic medicine can be likened to the bug spray approach to garbage. You can spray the garbage with bug spray all week but as long as there is garbage, there will be bugs and flies and their eggs. The Eastern meridian approach to disease is to simply get rid of the garbage, the flies will disappear with the garbage.

Let’s consider the notion of disease or discomfort by comparing the philosophy between western allopathic medicine and traditional Chinese medicine. With the teachings of allopathic medicine, the belief is that we get sick because of germs. If this was true then we would be dead the minute we were born. Germs remain dormant rather than a threat to us as long as we have a healthy immune response.

Discovering the fundamentals of the immune response, three dimensionally by observing the eastern meridian approach is the key to body balance and your health.

The Eastern Five Element theory teaches us that we have two immune responses. One physical immune system with the endocrine and lymphatic system, same as the allopathic model but also an energy immune system; the meridians. By following the teachings of Allopathic medicine only the physical immune system can be strengthened to gain health, but by considering the effects of meridians from the Traditional Chinese medicine, a secondary resource is adopted to enhance our well being. The flow of the meridian is as critical as the flow of blood; your life and health depend upon it. If meridian energy is blocked or unregulated, the system it feeds is jeopardized.

 

that exist in our personal environment. The Eastern Meridian and Five Element approach to health theorizes that sickness is caused by “weather conditions” that exist in our personal environment. The weather conditions are described as “external weather”; physical exposure to the outside climate and “internal weather”; emotional vulnerability to your internal atmosphere.

External weather is simply being over exposed to the five elements. Heat, Damp, Dry Cold and Wind. As an example: Being form Canada and going to the equator in the middle of winter may be too much heat, often shown up as small intestine imbalance or loose stools or worse, diarrhea. What about sitting in a fishing boat on rainy day?? Too much damp creates the sniffles. Being over-exposed to dryness often creates breathing issues and being too cold can set off infections in your kidney and bladder and being exposed to constant wind takes toll on the liver.

Internal weather, is emotional stress from being caught up in our personal drama, causing us to fester about scenarios and propelling us into a state of emotional imbalance which eventually affects the physical body in the way of pain or discomfort. The five elements filter emotional themes: with fire it is joy.. too much or too little, if it is out of balance the fire element meridians have to fluctuate to bring resolve to the integrity of the meridian flow. For earth it is sympathy, for metal it is grief, for water it is fear and for liver it is irritation and anger.

Emotions are meant to stir us and move us into appropriate action, this is defined inside the word emotion: emote is to feel and motion is to take action. Emotions move through us every second of the day, it’ s what we do with them that guarantees balance. It’s when we get caught off guard with an incident or situation and we let it fester that the emotion gets stuck and adversely affects a meridian that ultimately affects our harmonious balance. This is what the traditional chinese medical practitioners coin “internal bad weather”.

“Bad weather” from emotional disturbance (internal environment) or overexposure to environmental elements (external environment) causes the body to become sick. The micro-organism balance in the body becomes upset, hence bacteria, fungus and viruses invade the body. This is the time we seek Western medicine but there are no longer the signs of “bad weather” just symptoms. The allopathic medical model then proceeds to treat the symptoms of bacteria, fungus and virus, but never explores the cause or “bad weather”. By understanding the importance of the meridians in regards to our immune system, we can explore the reasons for the bad weather and prevent the micro-organism imbalance in the body. This is like taking the garbage out.

In Energy Kinesiology we can easily explore the causes of bad weather by assessing the integrity of the meridians, offering physical balance and knowing the basic emotional theme of the elements. With further training in kinesiology the knowledge expands to understanding that each meridian portrays a kaleidoscope with shades of emotions, which brings the client closer to moving a stuck emotion.

Offering the body balance on all three dimensions is the new frontier of health. Balancing the physical body with kinesiology techniques (physical dimension) combined with discovering client awareness (emotional dimension) to the blocked emotion and assisting the emotion to take motion, eventually results in a new outlook spiritual dimension) on situations and with life.

This is ultimately a forecast of “good weather”, for both the “external environment” and the “internal environment”.

To follow are 14 meridian personalities representing the meridian emotional status. Pick the one you most resonate and support that meridian. Use the meridian tracing wheel or use vibrational remedies such as Meridian Sound Essence oils

This information is taken from “Western Herbs for Eastern Meridians and Five Element Theory” by Evelyn Mulders.

from:    http://www.naturalhealthcommunity.org/meridians-and-emotions/13630/

Iran/Iraq Border Earthquake

Strong dangerous earthquake in the Iran / Iraq border area

Last update: November 22, 2013 at 7:24 pm by By Ashish Khanal

Update 19:21 UTC : We do not expect any conclusive assessments before tomorrow morning local time (late night now). Assessment in the dark and probably with difficulty to communicate gives even during daylight many hours of delay.

Update 19:21 UTC : Earthquake-Report.com considers and area of max. 10 km around the epicenter at risk for serious to moderate damage.

Update 19:00 UTC : The image below gives a MMI VII shaking in the epicenter area. MMI VII is considered as dangerous for damage. The reason why these data are giving a higher shaking intensity is the depth of 14 km. Shallower earthquakes (breaking point closer to the surface) are always more dangerous than deeper earthquakes.

Screen Shot 2013-11-22 at 20.19.45

Update 18:58 UTC : The theoretical damage engine of Max Wyss expects NO fatalities but 0 to 20 injured people. We agree with him but the number may higher if the depth of 46 km (which we do not trust) is more shallow (like the one from this morning).

Screen Shot 2013-11-22 at 19.58.52

Update 18:53 UTC : “The citizens in Sulaimaniyah, Kirkuk, Baghdad and Badra district of Wasit province in addition to Diyala noticed the Earthquake

Update 18:48 UTC : The area had a number of earthquakes earlier today, but the current one will be the most dangerous one. We expect a lot of minor damage in the epicenter area.

Screen Shot 2013-11-22 at 19.46.27

149 km NE of Baghdad, Iraq / pop: 5,672,513 / local time: 21:31:02.0 2013-11-22
103 km NW of Īlām, Iran / pop: 140,940 / local time: 22:01:02.0 2013-11-22
34 km SW of Sarpol-e Z̄ahāb, Iran / pop: 51,611 / local time: 22:01:02.0 2013-11-22

Most important Earthquake Data:

Magnitude : 5.7

Local Time (conversion only below land) : 2013-11-22 22:00:59

GMT/UTC Time : 2013-11-22 18:30:59

from:    http://earthquake-report.com/2013/11/22/very-strong-earthquake-iran-iraq-border-region-on-november-22-2013/

(if you can, please visit the site above and donate to keep up this great earthquake reporting)