Month: December 2009

  • A very RARE kind of Blue Moon Tonight!

    From “skyweather”….

    “Blue Moons are rare (once every 2.5 years).
    Blue Moons on New Year’s Eve are rarer still (once every 19
    years). How rare is a lunar eclipse of a Blue Moon on New
    Year’s Eve?

    A search of NASA’s Five
    Millennium Catalogue of Lunar Eclipses     provides an approximate
    answer. In the next 1000 years, Blue Moons on New Year’s Eve
    will be eclipsed only 11 times (once every 91 years). A year
    of special note is 2848 when there will be two lunar
    eclipses in December–on Dec. 1st and Dec. 31st. Such a double-Blue
    Moon-lunar eclipse ending on New Year’s Eve appears to be
    a millennium-level event. That’s rare.”

    Also… check out my favorite eclipse website for an illustration of the moon and much more!!

    http://shadowandsubstance.com/


  • Wormwood Anyone?

    Maybe the Russians will be our hero….

       Bee

    Russian Spacecraft to Knockout Asteroid

    “MOSCOW – Russia’s space chief said Wednesday his agency will consider
    sending a spacecraft to a large asteroid to knock it off its path and
    prevent a possible collision with Earth. 

    Anatoly Perminov said the space agency will hold a meeting soon to assess a mission to Apophis, telling Golos Rossii radio that it would invite NASA, the European Space Agency, the Chinese space agency and others to join the project once it is finalized.

    When
    the 270-meter (885-foot) asteroid was first discovered in 2004,
    astronomers estimated the chances of it smashing into Earth in its
    first flyby in 2029 were as high as 1-in-37.”

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091230/ap_on_re_eu/eu_russia_asteroid_encounter

  • Unified Arab Currency

    This was very interesting news indeed!!!
      Bee

    “The Gulf monetary union pact has come into effect,” said Kuwait’s
    finance minister, Mustafa al-Shamali, speaking at a Gulf Co-operation
    Council (GCC) summit in Kuwait.



    The move will give the hyper-rich club of oil exporters a
    petro-currency of their own, greatly increasing their influence in the
    global exchange and capital markets and potentially displacing the US
    dollar as the pricing currency for oil contracts. Between them they
    amount to regional superpower with a GDP of $1.2 trillion (£739bn),
    some 40pc of the world’s proven oil reserves, and financial clout equal
    to that of China.

     

    Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar are to launch the first phase
    next year, creating a Gulf Monetary Council that will evolve quickly
    into a full-fledged central bank.”

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/6819136/Gulf-petro-powers-to-launch-currency-in-latest-threat-to-dollar-hegemony.html

    Also…  http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-44735520091215