Blood moon

Hi,
so I am writing here, just to announce that really cool event is coming. It is called either Super-moon eclipse or Blood moon, I am not going to say that the world is about to end but this thing will repeat in the year of 2033.

WHEN: 27/28 September, it depends on where you are but for me.. in Czech Republic I am going to watch it 28th of September in the morning before Sun rises. It is because this event is caused by Earth, casting its shadow right on Moon and leaving just red spectrum of light to go through our atmosphere on Moon surface.

It will definitely be fun, so I wish you nice clean sky so everyone has their chance to see it.

Dragallur

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What could happen to our Universe: Big Bounce

Hi,
with little break from Solar System I am returning to last post about end of our Universe. This time it is very optimistic, but we will die anyway..

Right now the Universe is expanding, it is expanding in high speeds but this theory is assuming that this process due to decreased amount of dark energy reverses at one point and everything will start to shrink back. This would heat Universe over time. About 100,000 years before big crunch space would be hotter than surface of stars which would make them cooked from outside (FUN).

Then all matter would fall into black holes and all of those black holes would fall into each other so that final singularity would be created.

Well then it could start all over again, big bang, zero expansion and big crunch. This scenario also assumes that Universe is going through infinite cycles of banging and crunching. While this is most optimistic, in the new Universe would be nothing from the one before.
Measuring of expansion of Universe does not give much points to big crunch because now it seams that expansion is speeding up. Scientists are not yet able to know why is this happening Big Bounce is still an option.

Dragallur

PS: I just lost the game… Here is post about heat death. And here about big rip.

Planets of our Solar System: Venus

Hi,
here it comes here it goes, post about planet just little smaller than Earth with atmosphere so dense that… well it is very very dense.

But first things first: Venus is second planet from Sun. It is sometimes called “The Evil Twin of Earth”. It is rotating around its axis in the opposite direction from other planets which means that Sun rises there on the west and sets on the east. It is rotating extremely slowly so its day is longer than its year (224:243).
Because of this Venus is also most round planet of all planets in solar system, because no strong centrifugal force is expanding planet at the equator.

Venus is third brightest object on the sky after Sun and Moon. She is easy to see right after sunset and before sunrise.

Even that Venus is 110 000 000 km away from the sun she is hotter then Mercury because of its extremely dense atmosphere which is creating tremendous greenhouse effect (and also pressure which is over 60x greater than our). It is possible that in the past there was water on the surface but positive feedback of greenhouse effect did fast process with it. Now over 95% of Venus´s atmosphere is made up by carbon dioxide. Surface temperatures can rise to over 450°C.

Because of so thick atmosphere it was not possible for long time to observe her surface but now thanks to radars we know that there are over 100 000 volcanoes and 167 of them have diameter greater than 100 kilometers. Structures here are named after women or goddesses from different cultures.

Scientists are not really sure why but sometimes there are holes in the atmosphere through which we can see “down”. Every 100 years or so happens the transit of Venus over Sun. It happens in pairs which are 8 years apart and those who missed it as me are very unlucky since next one will be in the year of 2117 (it is so rare because Venus´s orbit is
moved by 3° so it is usually “above” or “below” us.)

Dragallur

Planets of our Solar System: Mercury

Hi,
here it is, thing I wanted to do a long time: first post about first planet of our lonely Solar System.

Mercury, it is the first and closest planet to Sun. It means one simple thing, it is freaking hot.. but not always.. actually it is not that hot but you would die there, that´s for sure.

Mercury has second highest density of planets in our SS. Right after us. It has pretty big metal core and gravity there is almost the same as is on Mars which is much larger.

The name is same as for Roman god of messengers and travelers. It has strangest orbit of all planets, most elliptical since when you look on other planet´s it looks like circle. Here Mercury is moved by great distance: in Perihelion (close to Sun) it is 0,307 AU away but in Aphelion 0,467 AU. Also orbit is declined by 7° from Earth´s orbit.

This huge piece of rock has really weak exosphere and also really weak magnetosphere. Magnetosphere is probably so weak because axis of Mercury is only 0,1° declined while our is 23° or so… There is no stable atmosphere because Mercury can not hold it from solar winds.
Solar winds are so strong here that they are probably eroding planet´s surface.
Even that there are extreme temperatures so one would except that all water would evaporate but in cracks on poles there are actually tons of tons of water ice!
On the side turned towards Sun can be over 450°C while on the other there is below -170°.

Mercury is not geologically active. It´s year lasts 88 days and day 58 Earth days. This and elliptical orbit create really strange event. When it is about midday on Mercury, Sun stops and for few days it goes backwards and then again it goes in the right way.

Most craters are named by artists and one of them is named Tolkien. There is also one of the biggest craters in whole solar system with 1600 kilometers across and it is called Caloris Basin.

First satellite which mapped the surface was Mariner 10 but much better data was send by Messenger.

Dragallur

Apollo missions: Apollo 9

Hi,
today I am here again with Apollo missions, this time as you can see I will write about Apollo 9.

Again there were three persons in this third manned flight: James A. McDivitt who was captain and this was his second flight. David R. Scott was module pilot and also, this was his second flight. Russel L. Schweickart was flying for the first time ever. (You can see the crew below from right to left McDivitt…)

This mission started on the day of 3rd March 1969 at 16:00. Plan was to go around Earth few times and measure some stuff about our planet and take multi-spectral photos of Earth. Also it was planned that Schweickart will go out of spacecraft and over to other modul but he was space sick so it was not achieved (It is called EVA = extra vehicular activity). They also tested new spacesuit which had its own life support system.

They also moved both parts (lunar module and captain module) apart for more than 6 hours and then successfully joined it back together. Whole mission lasted ten days and one hour before they splashed down near Bahamas.

This was yet another successful mission which was another step to land on Moon.

Dragallur

Celestia: Ultimate space program

Hi,
today I will write about really interesting computer program which is called: Celestia
(maybe this sounds like advertisement, it is not).

Celestia is freeware program, completely. It is simulator of Universe, really good one as everything is made in “real” size.

You will start turned towards Earth but in few moments you will learn how to browse whole Solar system and its moons, comets or asteroids. Celestia gives lot of options like slowing and speeding time. You can see orbits of all this stuff which is lying around. Also you can get really easily out of Solar system but without option: Go to object (Sun), I am pretty sure you will get lost in our Milky Way. You can also see other galaxies but of course you can not visit star by star.

Everything is on you to try it, I found it really fun and still I have not used any “add-on” which can give some bonus stuff to this program.

Dragallur

What could happen to our Universe: Heat death

Hi,
today I am coming with second option for end of our Universe. This one is probably little better since there is nothing ripped apart.

Because most of stuff which is going on in our Universe happens in stars, atoms are slowly decaying into radiation.
That is because of process called thermonuclear reaction which is happening in all stars. Below is scheme of what is going on when two hydrogen atoms merge up together at very high temperatures. Most of energy is decayed in form of gamma rays and then some in neutrinos. This stuff will eventually fly around and it wont ever be used up again.

After lot of generations of stars there will be no more gas to form new ones and all of the energy will be equally spread out which would mean maximum entropy in our Universe. No new reactions and nothing more happening here.

Dragallur

Future challenge

Hi,
about week ago I was future challenged by Star guy so now when I have time I am accepting it.

It seems that I should write about my future but it is not very easy so I visited some page and did some stuff for free to know what will happen:

Since I found cloverleaf I will definitely be lucky.

I used some random dices to see what is my future well… my number is symbol for balance, safety and energy.

Because of some random picture of rune I will definitely be balanced, nothing will lie in my way and I wont think about past anymore.

Well that is my future 😀

So here are other bloggers I will challenge
Abyssbrain

India Travel Diaries

Anne R. Murray

Daily Inspiration Blog

hiddendragonn

Dragallur