The next few evenings, during the twilight magic, you can see the two interior planets appearing just about 3 degrees apart, above the western horizon. Look just after sunset to find the brighter of the two, Venus. Look closer to the horizon and just a bit to the north (right, as you look west) to find Mercury.

Many people have yet to see Mercury, since Mercury is so close to Sun. Venus should help to find the smallest planet during the next week.

Buzz Aldrin has not held back his comments about dry docking the Space Shuttles. In his blog, Aldrin wrote about preparing the shuttles for the next step in the space program: going onward and outward to Mars. Aldrin advocates keeping the shuttle program going to save jobs, to save time, and to save our momentum for future space exploration. Read all of his comments in his blog entry. He makes many good points.

A life form was recently discovered on a planet that has been studied for centuries. No, not Mars or Venus. The discovery was made here on Earth.

A small shrimp-like creature, a marine life called amphipod, was seen when scientists lowered a camera into an 8-inch hole in an Antarctic ice shelf. The scientists were studying the depletion of glacial ice, but they discovered a glint of color in the video feed. It turned out that the small creature was swimming in the freezing waters that filled the hole.

Glaciologists have seen sea life under the cold waters before, but this life form was new to them. If the shrimp-like creature can survive in -2 to 1 C temp waters on Earth, who is to say that life (as we know it) could not exist in the frigid fluids of the outer worlds?

See it for yourself: video of the 3-inch-long creature.

The big news about Earth’s axial shift, caused by the Chilean earthquake, sounded amazing. The quake not only shifted the axis, but it also shifted the length of a day on Earth. But the “normal” shifts are so much greater.

Since Earth is not a perfect sphere, it has axial shifts all of the time to try to find spherical equilibrium. How do the big earthquakes affect things? “The Chilean quake shifted enough material to change the mass balance of our entire planet,” said Richard Gross, JPL. The shift in material caused the wobble in Earth’s axis to increase by about three inches. The wobble changes as Earth’s mass progresses toward being a perfect sphere. A normal axial shift is about 10 centimeters per year, but the 8.8 magnitude quake hurried it along this year.
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The current solar cycle has proved to be different from what was predicted. We have not seen the many sunspots and other activity we hoped to see, but new discoveries have been made to help in find out what is going on.

It seems that the Sun’s “conveyor belt”, the activity that moves plasma from the lower areas to the visible surface and back around, has been speeding up. The “conveyor belt” not only moves material around, but it seems that it also disrupts forming features like sunspots.

The motion moves solar plasma from the equatorial region to the polar region, and the speeding up of the motion may be what is causing a solar cycle that is much quieter than expected. Research is continuing to find out more information to help put the pieces of the puzzle together.

In case you missed it, here is a short video of Astronaut Mike Massimino’s appearance (July 16, 2009) on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Although only ten minutes in duration,  he quickly describes his personal experience during his space journeys.

Mike was selected as an astronaut candidate by NASA in May 1996. He traveled on STS-109 (March 1-12, 2002) and STS-125 (May 2009) and has logged over 571 hours in space with 30 hours 4 minutes of that on four spacewalks. He has served as CAPCOM  (spacecraft communicator) in Mission Control and as the Astronaut Office Technical Liaison to the Johnson Space Center EVA Program Office.
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Vernal Equinox occurs Saturday, 20 March 2010, 17:32 UT. Springtime! (For the Northern Hemisphere and Autumn for the Southern Hemisphere.)

“Equinox” comes from the Latin “equal night”. An equinox occurs when Sun crosses the celestial equator, making the length of time of daylight equal to (or nearly equal to) the length of time of night. Days are longer than nights the farther from the equator you observe daylight on an equinox. It all has to do with sun angles and paths across the sky. I found a good explanation at the Date and Time web site.

Daylight Saving Time begins again on Sunday (14 March 2010). “Spring forward” is the phrase being shared all across the parts of the world where DST is practiced.

Seventy countries practice DST, which originated with Benjamin Franklin in 1784. The idea was that people who rose before sunrise used more electricity in the morning than they would if they rose an hour later in the summer. So, the hour hand on the clocks are shifted forward an hour in the spring and shifted back an hour in the fall.
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