Today's astronomy picture is of an annoying little asteroid.  Well, actually, this looks more like two asteroids stuck together.  This pair of asteroids is completely alone in the universe and it just wanders around looking for an orbit to hang out in.  Asteroids are pretty interesting because they look a lot like Nerd candies.  Nobody knows where asteroids come from, but scientists are pretty certain where they are going.  Nowhere.  Well, nowhere in particular.  Sometimes asteroids will form belts and make it look like they are interesting just because they're all together, but they're not.  They're just annoying.  Most people who study asteroids really wish that they had never started because they picked a stupid part of science to study.  How are they supposed to write a research paper about a goddam asteroid?!?  It's a fucking space rock.  I bet all of the other astronomy scientist make fun of the asteroid scientists and use tiny little asteroids as paperweights for their stacks of nebula research papers. 

Today's picture is a fantastic shot of the sun at Stonehenge on the solstice.  I think the solstice is around this time of year so this is appropriate.  Did you know that if you lived on the equator, the solstice would be about as exciting as it is for the rest of us?  The solstice used to be exciting for cavemen probably because they lived in a time before anything fun was invented.  That's why they built Stonehenge and then once they invented something more fun, they left it in the middle of that field.  Modern people like to go to Stonehenge nowadays because we have so much fun stuff that its nice to pretend to be bored as shit. 

Alright losers, here's your APOD.  This one is from my own vault of research.  I keep a vault for all of my graphs and charts because one of my troglodyte assistants can't wash the grease off his hairy palms and always smudges my papers.  Anyways, this chart represents a lot of different things.  There are green, blue and red markings which I won't even get into right now.  The important aspect of this is the dotted line that goes up and down.  That's called a pattern and almost everything in the universe behaves in patterns.  So, you could pretty much make this chart mean whatever you want and it would probably be true.  Just don't mess with those green, blue and red markings.  Those are important.

So I had some free time at work today and I've been really kind of amazed that some internet stranger stumbled onto one of my old posts and thought highly enough of it to re-post on his/her own site. 

http://triggur.livejournal.com/

Anyways, in the course of investigating this strange phenomenon, I decided that I would put Timbo's new Google capabilities to the test and see if my blog would come up for 'Worst blogger ever'.  Turns out, a lot of people claim to be the 'worst blogger ever'.  While reading through some of their claims, I found that most of them were just negligent bloggers who apathetically watched (or unwatched) their blog atrophy away to nothing.  That's so fucking tame.  In my eyes, it is analogous with a mercy killing, and rightly so.  Your blogs sucked.  Grow a pair and at torture the fuck out of your blog with a stupid fake science shtick or at least mock it incessantly until it develops an eating disorder.  Blogs are so lame they are practically begging for a beating.  My dipshit blog in particular.  I would kick this blog to within an inch of its life and then politely ask it to help me figure out what I'm going to eat.  Once I've regained my strength from its nutritious decision, I will continue to beat the living hell out of it.  You hear me blog!  I have no patience for you stupid blogs!  You are the worst thing to happen to the internet since those goddam bananas!  God, I hate blogs. 

Alright, let's see here...this picture is of a galaxy in outer space.  It's probably really pretty but, like most of this outer space crap, it's likely to be boring as hell.  Nothing ever seems to happen in outer space.  Sure, it makes for a decent photograph, but really though...whatever.  Who gives a crap about this stupid galaxy?  I suppose I have to since I'm spotlighting it for my APOD.  God, I hate this crap.  Anyways, this galaxy is probably like a thousand miles across and weighs like fifty tons.  Fucking science.

Oh yeah, I should give a shout out to some random internet person who thought one of my previous posts was worthy enough to re-post on his/her own site.  Hi!

http://triggur.livejournal.com/

If you look closely at this picture, you will notice that there are tiny little points of light scattered all over the place.  Those little lights are stars.  Contrary to popular belief, stars do not, in fact, twinkle.  The reason most people think they are twinkling is because people are always drunk and mistaking the strobe lights on passing jets for stars.  Some people have even briefly described the heavens as 'spinning' before falling face-down in the mud.  While it is concievable for the stars to appear to spin because of the rotation of the Earth, you would have to be a retard to wait long enough to notice any change. 

Today's picture comes to us from somewhere deep in outerspace.  I know this because it's a total mess out there.  Sometimes I get really upset about this because I like things to be neat and orderly and all of the messiness just bothers the hell out of me.  Just yesterday I was at my observatory taking notes and writing down a bunch of numbers about stuff when I got sorta irritated at the dishevelment so I spilled my coffee on my assistant in a fit of rage.  I made it look like an accident and apologized, but I just really wanted to scald her.  She's sorta messy and has bad handwriting so I felt like I was taking a positive step towards fighting universal messiness. 

At first, even my trained astronomy eyes had a little difficulty in determining exactly what was taking place here.  NASA had incorrectly idenitfied this phenomenon as a sunspot, but I could tell that they were just making stuff up again because their instruments are not calibrated properly.  Turns out, this is a Hell Kegger.  This picture was taken by NASA's crappy Hubble Telescope and, as we all know, that thing is lame.  I have a better one at my place and I was able to detect the Solo cups strewn about the landscape here.  I think this Hell Kegger was thrown because it was Satan's son's bar mitzvah.  They grow up so fast. 

Today's astronomy picture is from Jupiter I think.  Jupiter is the biggest planet in the whole world and so far, mankind has been unable to find a way to completely screw it up.  One of the biggest problems facing this unspoken challenge is that Jupiter is so far away from the Sun that scientists hypothesize it could take years to globally warm it.  One method currently proposed by George Bush would be to shoot a laser at it.  His claim that lasers are 'awesome' has spurred scientist around the world to seriously consider them as a viable option in the warming of Jupiter.  Once Jupiter has reached the critical warming point, it is the dream of the world at large that it will do something really cool like sparkle or smoke or something.  Well, it appears to be smoking in this picture, but that's just like a little bit of smoke.  We need to get that whole thing going. 

This cloud of outerspace smoke is called Debbie.  Debbie was formed in 1983 when somebody decided to switch Bryan Adam's regular coffee with Foldgers Crystals.  He got really pissed off about that and blew up his tour bus.  The resulting explosion was so massive that the smoke and debris formed this giant cloud of smoke and debris.  Those purple lights are probably blacklights that survived the initial blast.  There's some orange crap in the two corners there and scientists believe that is Bryan's talent.  You see, in outerspace, talent coagulates and turns orange.  Bryan has been searching for this talent for decades now and since he enlisted the help of NASA's Hubble Telescope, he may finally be able to find it.  Unfortunately, the mission to retrieve it has been postponed indefinitely because somebody switched Bryan's regular foam heat plates with new Foldger's Crystal heat plates and, as always, he got really pissed off and blew up the space ship. 

This is Uranus I guess.  I suppose it could be anything.  But I'm the expert here and I say this is Uranus.  Probably the coolest part about Uranus is the 'anus' part.  Don't let anyone try to tell you that its pronounced Yur-unus because it's not.  That's just not good science.  Anyways, Uranus was discovered by some dork with a telescope and a lot of free time.  I'd guess it was probably pretty recently too because all of the pictures I found of Uranus kind of sucked so it's probably really far away.  As you can tell from the picture, Uranus is really fucking boring and there is nothing to do there.  Scientists generally concede that Uranus is one of the boringest places in the universe and they have given up studying it.  They are also pretty sick of that one scientist who is still making Uranus jokes.  We get it buddy. 

A good friend of mine died Sunday morning and I really don't know what to say about it.  He had a heart attack in his sleep.  He was 23.  I saw him just over two weeks ago and we laughed and joked and talked about crazy things he had done.  Looking back, it is kind of surreal because how often do you reminisce with someone just days before they die? 

Dan and his three brothers lived next door to my best friend Silberman all growing up.  He was the middle child and hung out with us a lot.  He would come up to the gas station when I was working night shift and hang out for hours on end.  We mostly 'front porched' it at Silberman's house next to his.  Just sitting there until the sun went down and sometimes longer.  All summer long during the high school years.  He was part of the neighborhood crew and was always around.  God, this sounds so stupid and I don't even know why I'm writing it. 

Anyways, Dan's wake is today and my brother and I are going after work.  I really don't want to fucking go see my friends corpse laying in a box.  I really don't want to.  Fucking Gorski...

What is happening to that volcano? It's erupting! The first person to note that the Aleutian Cleveland Volcano was spewing ash was astronaut Jeffrey N. Williams aboard the International Space Station. Looking down on the Alaskan Aleutian Islands two weeks ago, Williams noted, photographed, and reported a spectacular ash plume emanating from the Cleveland Volcano. Starting just before this image was taken, the Cleveland Volcano underwent a short eruption lasting only about two hours. The Cleveland stratovolcano is one of the most active in the Aleutian Island chain. The volcano is fueled by magma displaced by the subduction of the northwest-moving tectonic Pacific Plate under the tectonic North America Plate.

 IC 443 is typical of the aftermath of a stellar explosion, the ultimate fate of massive stars. Seen in this false-color composite image, the supernova remnant is still glowing across the spectrum, from radio (blue) to optical (red) to x-ray (green) energies -- even though light from the stellar explosion that created the expanding cosmic cloud first reached planet Earth thousands of years ago. The odd thing about IC 443 is the apparent motion of its dense neutron star, the collapsed remnant of the stellar core. The close-up inset shows the swept-back wake created as the neutron star hurtles through the hot gas, but that direction is not aligned with the direction toward the apparent center of the remnant. The misalignment suggests that the explosion site was offset from the center or that fast-moving gas in the nebula has influenced the wake. The wide view of IC 443, also known as the Jellyfish nebula, spans about 65 light-years at the supernova remnant's estimated distance of 5,000 light-years.

Hello ladies and gentlemen.  Please take a seat, the show is about to begin.  The opening act tonight comes to you courtesy of 1994.  That's when I bought this shirt.  It just dawned on me that that makes this shirt 12 years old.  I've seriously been wearing it almost half my life.  It shows too.  I have a problem getting rid if my old clothes for some reason.  I just can't do it.  Something about my old crusty shirts just appeals to me...and only me probably.  I've definitely had my way with this shirt.  It is haggard.  It's like some used up old concubine that I completely defiled for 12 years non-stop and now I'm just comfortable with her.  I feel at home in her threadbare embrace. 

Cornerstone

Cornerstone

Cornerstone

NGC 6188 is an interstellar carnival of young blue stars, hot red gas, and cool dark dust. Located 4,000 light years away in the disk of our Galaxy, NGC 6188 is home to the Ara OB1 association, a group of bright young stars whose nucleus forms the open cluster NGC 6193. These stars are so bright that some of their blue light reflects off of interstellar dust forming the diffuse blue glow surrounding the stars in the above photograph. Open cluster NGC 6193 formed about three million years ago from the surrounding gas, and appears unusually rich in close binary stars. The red glow visible throughout the photograph arises from hydrogen gas heated by the bright stars in Ara OB1. The dark dust that blocks much of NGC 6188's light was likely formed in the outer atmospheres of cooler stars and in supernovae ejecta.

Hey everybody!  I'm in Baltimore!  Baltimore is awesome.  I like Baltimore.  Went to the Yankees game last night and it kicked major ass.  Jeter knocked in the winning run in the top of the 9th and I went ballistic.  The weird thing about games in Baltimore is that there is a pretty even Yankees/Orioles dispersement in the stands.  This can be a recipe for disaster as well...I saw two fights last night alone.  We're going to the 4:30 game today as well as the 1:00 game tomorrow afternoon.  Hitting up the Babe Ruth museum this afternoon too.  Go Yankees!

Saturn's ragged moon Rhea has one of the oldest surfaces known. Estimated as changing little in the past billion years, Rhea shows craters so old they no longer appear round – their edges have become compromised by more recent cratering. Like Earth's Moon, Rhea's rotation is locked on Saturn, and the above image shows part of Rhea's surface that always faces Saturn. Rhea's leading surface is more highly cratered than its trailing surface. Rhea is composed mostly of water-ice but is thought to have a small rocky core. The above image was taken by the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn. Cassini swooped past Rhea two months ago and captured the above image from about 100,000 kilometers away. Rhea spans 1,500 kilometers making it Saturn's second largest moon after Titan. Several surface features on Rhea remain unexplained including large light patches.