Penumbral Lunar Eclipse with Harvest Full Moon

Nemesis Maturity (video); Yuttadhammo Bhikkhu; Dhr. Seven, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly

The Buddha (Haluzman/flickr)

After the solar eclipse another big celestial event is set to take place on Friday, September 16, 2016. On Friday, sky gazers will be treated to a penumbral lunar eclipse, which will coincide with the Harvest Moon.

The penumbral lunar eclipse, which will occur on Friday, is the last lunar eclipse of the year. This lunar eclipse will be different from the total eclipse, as it is coinciding with Harvest Moon. The lunar eclipse will be visible at 18:54 Universal Time (UTC) (2:54 am EDT/ 18:54 GMT). More

A penumbral lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes through the Earth's partial shadow, or penumbra. During this type of eclipse the Moon will darken slightly but not completely. The eclipse will be visible throughout most of Eastern Europe, Eastern Africa, Asia, and Western Australia.

The total duration of the eclipse is 3 hours and 59 minutes. The Moon is above the horizon during this eclipse, so with good weather conditions the entire eclipse will be visible. The lunar eclipse is also the last eclipse of 2016. Clips and images credit: ESO, ESA/Hubble, and NASA More

Buddhist Lunar Observance

Yuttadhammo Bhikkhu

ASK A MONK: "Is it okay to practice [the weekly Eight Precept lunar observance called] uposatha once a month instead of the usual weekly times? I have a mild blood pressure problem and fasting seems to really cause my blood pressure to drop to the point I feel light headed."

Half way to Pluto

Artist’s impression of how the surface of Pluto might look according to new atmospheric study. The image shows patches of pure methane on the surface (ESO/L. Calçada).

Spacecraft Hits Midpoint on Flight to Pluto
Feb. 26, 2010

A NASA spacecraft speeding across the solar system has officially covered half the distance of its trip to Pluto and its moons. On Thursday, NASA's New Horizons probe zoomed past the 1.48 billion-mile (2.39 billion-km) mark, completing half the travel distance between Earth in 2006, when it launched, and where Pluto will be when the spacecraft arrives in July 2015.

"From here on out, we're on approach to an encounter with the Pluto system," said New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. "The second half of the journey begins."

New Horizons has been billed as NASA's fastest mission to visit another world. It is zooming across the solar system at about 36,000 mph (nearly 58,000 kph). Next month, it will cross the orbit of Uranus.

The spacecraft is headed to study the dwarf planet Pluto and its three moons — Nix, Hydra and Charon. New Horizons will not stop and orbit Pluto. Instead, it will record detailed observations during a flyby and then head out into the Kuiper Belt on the edge of the solar system to study the icy objects lurking in that cosmic realm.

Thursday's distance marker is the latest in a string of mission milestones for New Horizons. In December 2009, the probe hit its first waypoint directly between the sun and Pluto's location. On April 20, the spacecraft will be at the midpoint between the sun and where Pluto will be in 2015.

On Oct. 17, New Horizons will have completed the first half of its decade-long trip, by flight time.
Pluto is an oddball world that was discovered 80 years ago this month by astronomer Clyde Tombaugh. In 2006, it was downgraded from a planet to dwarf planet.

New Images of Pluto

Released earlier this month, they were taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. They revealed that the icy world's seasons change and affect its color.

• Top 10 Extreme Planet Facts
• Pluto, Discovered 80 Years Ago, Still a Big Mystery
• Images: New Horizons Bound for Pluto

Spiral galaxies 6 billion years ago

Spiral galaxies were "ugly ducklings" 6 bn yrs ago: Astronomers
(Brahmand.com, Feb 05, 2010)
Image created from data provided by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey demonstrates that the Hubble sequence six billion years ago was very different from the one that astronomers see today (Hubble).

WASHINGTON (PTI) - The beautiful spiral galaxies of modern universe were ugly ducklings six billion years ago, European astronomers have claimed. Using data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the team led by Francois Hammer of the Observatoire de Paris has created a census of galaxy types and shapes from a time before the Earth and the sun existed, up to the present day. After sampling 116 local galaxies and 148 distant galaxies, they found that contrary to contemporary thought, more than half of the present-day spiral galaxies had peculiar shapes as recently as six billion years ago. More>>

• It is interesting to note that Indian thought believes the "universe," or at least a single "world system" within what we in the West regard as a universe [multiverse], has a very particular shape. Jain cosmology describes it in literal terms that do not change.

Ocean found on Saturn's Moon

VIDEO: Spacecraft finds ocean on Saturn's moon

(ESA/AP) The Cassini spacecraft has detected new evidence that one of Saturn's moons has an ocean beneath its surface.