Could this be the first solar activity of Cycle 24? I hope so!

The solar physics community is abuzz this week. No, there haven't been any great eruptions or solar storms. The source of the excitement is a modest knot of magnetism that popped over the sun's eastern limb on Dec. 11th, pictured below in a pair of images from the orbiting Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).

It may not look like much, but "this patch of magnetism could be a sign of the next solar cycle," says solar physicist David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center. For more than a year, the sun has been experiencing a lull in activity, marking the end of Solar Cycle 23, which peaked with many furious storms in 2000--2003.

"Solar minimum is upon us," he says.

Above: From SOHO, a UV-wavelength image of the sun and a map showing positive (white) and negative (black) magnetic polarities. The new high-latitude active region is magnetically reversed, marking it as a harbinger of a new solar cycle.

The big question now is, when will the next solar cycle begin? It could be starting now! "New solar cycles always begin with a high-latitude, reversed polarity sunspot," explains Hathaway. "Reversed polarity " means a sunspot with opposite magnetic polarity compared to sunspots from the previous solar cycle. "High-latitude" refers to the sun's grid of latitude and longitude. Old cycle spots congregate near the sun's equator. New cycle spots appear higher, around 25 or 30 degrees latitude. The region that appeared on Dec. 11th fits both these criteria. It is high latitude (24 degrees N) and magnetically reversed.

Just one problem: There is no sunspot. So far the region is just a bright knot of magnetic fields. If, however, these fields coalesce into a dark sunspot, scientists are ready to announce that Solar Cycle 24 has officially begun. Many forecasters believe Solar Cycle 24 will be big and intense. Peaking in 2011 or 2012, the cycle to come could have significant impacts on telecommunications, air traffic, power grids and GPS systems. (And don't forget the Northern Lights!) In this age of satellites and cell phones, the next solar cycle could make itself felt as never before.

The furious storms won't start right away, however. Solar cycles usually take a few years to build to a frenzy and Cycle 24 will be no exception. "We still have some quiet times ahead," says Hathaway. Meanwhile, all eyes are on a promising little active region. Will it become the first sunspot of a new solar cycle?

Stay tuned!

Today's Edition of Katy with a Y's favorite LOL Cats

Teddy? WTF???

So I was cleaning my room tonight, and I found my old teddy bear, "Teddy". I looked at him and thought, "What the hell happened to you???"

Let me tell you a couple of things about this teddy bear. First off... I still remember the first time I saw it. We were at a craft fair or flea market- something like that- and from the moment I laid eyes on Teddy... I knew I had to have him. The next thing I remember is throwing a complete hissy fit at my parents until they they agreed that it was worth $15 for me to shut up.

One more silly fun fact about me and teddy... I once tried playing hide-and-go-seek with just me and teddy. I hid him in the chest by our front door. I didn't find him again for over a month. What was my IQ at that age?? haha

I remember one incident for sure... my cousin's golden retriever, Sandy, got a hold of him once at the Cape house and gave him a good lickin'. However, WHEN THE FUCK DID HE GET AN AUTOPSY, HOW AND WHY???

Ideas? Theories? I'd love to hear them. Perhaps Teddy's sad history is buried deep in my subconscious... along with other childhood memories!!!

I'm giving a special award to whoever comes up with the best story!!!! (submissions due via blog comment 12/31/2007 11:59pm)

Today's Edition of Katy with a Y's favorite LOL Cats

Geminid Meteor Shower This Week!! Go outside and look up!!

Mark your calendar: The best meteor shower of 2007 peaks on Friday, December 14th.
"It's the Geminid meteor shower," says NASA astronomer Bill Cooke of the Marshall Space Flight Center. "Start watching on Thursday evening, Dec. 13th, around 10 pm local time," he advises. "At first you might not see very many meteors—but be patient. The show really heats up after midnight and by dawn on Friday, Dec. 14th, there could be dozens of bright meteors per hour streaking across the sky."

The Geminids are not ordinary meteors. While most meteor showers come from comets, Geminids come from an asteroid—a near-Earth object named 3200 Phaethon. How does an asteroid make a meteor shower? Comets do it by evaporating. When a comet flies close to the sun, intense heat vaporizes the comet’s "dirty ice" resulting in high-speed jets of comet dust that spew into interplanetary space. When a speck of this comet dust hits Earth's atmosphere traveling ~100,000 mph, it disintegrates in a bright flash of light—a meteor! Asteroids, on the other hand, don't normally spew dust into space—and therein lies the mystery. Where did Phaethon's meteoroids come from? One possibility is a collision. Maybe it bumped against another asteroid. A collision could have created a cloud of dust and rock that follows Phaethon around in its orbit. Such collisions, however, are not very likely.

If this scenario is correct, Phaethon-the-comet may have produced many rich streams of dust that spent hundreds or thousands of years drifting toward Earth until the first Geminid meteors appeared during the US Civil War. Since then, Geminids have been a regular shower peaking every year in mid-December.

Today's Special: Katy's Brain Diarrhea

I am bored at work today. I started my job two weeks ago so I don't have too much knowledge about anything yet to find something worth-while to do today. It's the day before Thanksgiving. All is quiet at 1340 Centre Street.


It's my burfday this Sunday, and I've started to notice crow's feet in the corner of my eyes!! I know I'm not old, but I'm not getting any younger!



I have exactly $12.61 in my checking account right now (and that's after I shifted the last of my savings' account money into my checking account!), and I'll need to take my container of change to Coinstar after work today so I'll be able to afford enough gas to get myself to Cape Cod later today. I've been spending a lot less money on unnecessary things recently, but I've been without a paycheck in three weeks thanks to my job transition. Those bills are still due regardless.



Last weekend, I took the telescope outside on a beautifully clear night in Chatham and pointed it towards Comet Holmes/17P. It was absolutely amazing! According to articles I've read over the last few weeks, the comet combined with it's debris field is larger than the sun! That's pretty gosh-darn impressive. I thought it looked like a jellyfish or a horseshoe crab through the telescope. It was white and fuzzy, and had a beautiful curve on one side of it. While I was outside, I also saw a great meteor streak by- almost a fireball it was so bright! Thank you Leonids!



I've been feeling really bummed lately about "losing" a friend of mine. He is an ex-boyfriend who I thought I was on good terms with, but he hasn't given me the time of day in almost two months, and it's really starting to bother me that he's written me off. I had a dream about him last night, and it was a beautiful dream. I ran into him on our street, and he ran up to me and gave me a huge long-lasting hug. It was one of those dreams we've all had... a beautiful dream we wake from and damn it to hell... it wasn't real. All I want is my friend back and to not feel like I've been forgotten.



I went to Medway yesterday, and spent all afternoon and evening in the recording studio for my band's new album. There's nothing like recording tracks for an album... it's like someone takes a big ass mirror and holds it up to your face so you can see every single imperfection and blemish. In the end, I finished recording my trombone parts for three songs and my vocals for one. Hopefully, that will be the longest and hardest day I have in the studio. I tried not to get frustrated, but I think everyone shares the same experience... oh wait... except for S.J. Tucker. She is amazing, and every single take of her vocal tracks were mind-blowing.



Also in band news, we're heading out to Goshen in western Massachusetts on Friday for a big party/DVD shoot. I have no idea what this is all going to look like, but it's going to be something like the band with all our friends around a bonfire having a blast... in the freezing cold. I have to decide what I'm going to wear exactly. Jason says we should all have a tribal look. I'm thinking all black and some crazy hair falls... somehow wearing enough layers to look both fabulous and stay warm. The party is also a four-way birthday celebration for Jason, Jake, Tiffany and myself. We're going to Sag-it-out, yo.



That is all the brain diarrhea for now, I think.



To end on a light note... check out this funny shit:

Today's "I can has cheezburger" favs!!!

Cats discuss geopolitical issues.

It's nice to see that in this day of age, we can still have a healthy, yet heated debate, and still kiss and make-up in the end.

Shirtcockers.

Shirtcocker: A man who wears a shirt but nothing from the waist down.

We've all seen them at Burning Man. Men, usually extremely hairy, strutting around with their junk waving around in all its "glory". Although there are plenty of men walking about completely naked, most people find the shirtcockers are a little more visually offensive. They are making a point that they want people looking at their stuff.

SO... I was a bit horrified to make a certain connection last night. Our friend, Porky Pig, IS A SHIRTCOCKER!!! AAAHHHHH!!!!!

Seriously?

Get to know your friend, The Sun!

Whoa! We're up to 19 days with NO sunspots on the sun! WTF? You can thank the stupid solar minimum.

Now, because we don't have fancy-pants sunspot activity to distract us, we can focus on other cool stuff about our friend, The Sun. You may have heard that it takes light approximately 8 minutes to travel from the Sun to the Earth, yes? Well, light is generated by fusion deep inside the sun's core. How long does it take light to escape from the sun's core?

How does 10,000-100,000 years sound to ya? It's true!

Check out this nifty NASA article about it. From http://sunearthday.nasa.gov

Sunlight is produced through nuclear reactions in the sun's core. Originally born as energetic gamma rays, after billions of collisions with matter, this radiation reaches the surface and escapes into space. How old is sunlight by the time it reaches the surface?
Most textbooks say that it takes light between 100,000 years and 50 million years to escape. You would be surprised to know that this simple, and very popular, question seems to be without a firm answer! The reason has a lot to do with the assumptions that textbook authors use in making the calculation. Most astronomers are also not particularly interested in a high-accuracy answer, so they tend not to bother doing the tedious calculation exactly. It is actually a very complex problem in physics!

Once a photon of light is born, it travels at a speed of 300,000 km/sec until it collides with a charged particle and is diverted in another direction. Because the density of the sun decreases by tens of thousands of times from its lead-dense core to its tenuous photosphere, the typical distance a photon can travel between charged particles changes from 0.01 cm at the core to 0.3 cm near the surface. As a comparison, most back-of-the-envelope estimates assume that the sun's interior has a constant density and that the 'free path' distance for the photon is about one centimeter. It is these estimates that find their way into many popular astronomy textbooks.

Once you know, or assume, a typical distance between collisions, you also have to figure out how many steps the photon has to take to travel from the core to the surface. This is called the Random Walk Problem. The answer is that, if you take a sequence of N random steps, each for example of one meter length, the distance you travel from the starting point will be the square-root of N. After 100 random steps you will travel about 10 meters, but it will take 10,000 steps to travel 100 meters, and one million steps to travel about one kilometer, and so on. Because the density of the sun changes from the core to the surface, it is common to represent the interior of the sun as a collection of nested shells of matter, each with a typical average density. You then calculate how many steps it takes for a photon to travel through each shell. During each step, the photon travels at the speed of light so you can calculate the time required for each step. By multiplying this by the number of steps taken, you can calculate how long it takes the photon to traverse each shell, and then add up all the times for the other shells.

When this random walk process is applied to the interior of the sun, and an accurate model of the solar interior is used, most answers for the age of sunlight come out to be between 10,000 and 170,000 years. Rarely do you get answers greater than a million years unless you have made a serious error! Why do you still see these erroneous estimates of '10 million years' still being used? Because textbook authors and editors do not bother to actually make the correct calculation themselves, and rely on older published answers from similar textbooks.

Cool shit, eh?

Katy... out!

Baby On Board

Quick anticdote from Burning Man...

I was doing my usual late-afternnon activity on day, hanging out on the couches on our Esplanade-frontage front porch watching the world go by.

A guy rode by on a bicycle with a "Baby On Board" sign attached to it. There was a rope attached to the back of the bike, and he was dragging along a wood board with a doll baby lying on it.

Baby on board. Brilliant!

WTF, CNN.com?

I'm sorry, but if I remember correctly, CNN.com used to have actual relevant news! If you've been a frequent visitor to CNN.com over the years, you must have noticed that the headlines have become quite sensational lately.

Sure sure... they're no Onion. They still report on the major headlines, but take a look on the right side of the screen under "Latest Headlines". When I see some of those headlines, I say to myself, "WTF, CNN?" What is happening? Is America becoming that dumb? No wonder we have stupid, evil assholes in Washington! No one is paying attention to ANYTHING that matters anymore!!! Don't even get me started on local news broadcasts.

Here are some actual CNN headlines for ya...

Crocs, kids, escalators could be dangerous mix
Armless man quizzed in neighbor's death
Man puts rattlesnake in mouth, gets bitten
Bikini-clad 'Obama Girl' now hot for troops

They've obviously changed their approach to news to attract more, dumber people!!

This sucks. Now I've worked myself up into a tizzy.

If I were in charge, I would require that every person must take a basic test before voting in a general election. It would be a kind of "politically stupid" test to weed out the people who don't know anything about our country, political issues, and the candidates.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to make this "test" so hard that it eliminates too many voters. I would definitely avoid limiting the voting base to only college-educated Americans. It seems to me that people should be able to correctly answer questions like "How many states are there?", "What state was George W. Bush the governor of before becoming president?", or "How many illegal immigrants did Mitt Romney have working on his lawn?" (just kidding on that last one). If you can't answer simple questions to demonstrate your basic knowledge of what's going on, your vote should not count.... or at least... not count as much.

If we can spend millions and millions of dollars on bullshit space probes to check out Pluto, we must have some cash lying around to employ some really smart people to come up with a fair test like this. We could call it the "Voting Qualification Test" or something like that.

Pluto is cold. It's fucking far away. There's nothing there. Get over it.

Let's face it. The reason we're knee-deep in shit right now with the war, global warming, oil prices, the struggling economy, etc is because we have an "elected" fucktard in the White House. People in 2000 and 2004 heard all sorts of soundbites and talking points repeated over and over and over again... until they accepted these little nuggets of shit as the one and only truth. Hearing the term flip-flopper was starting to make my ears bleed in 2004. Unfortunately, I think it was this simplistic, dumbed-down horseshit that too many people actually believed that resulted in our situation. Some of those idiots could have been weeded out with my little system!

And I don't want to hear any shit from you guys saying I'm disenfranchising people because that's exactly what my little test intends to do! It eliminates the lazy assholes (republican, democrat, independent alike) who can't pick up a newspaper, watch a debate, or god-forbid check out CNN occasionally to become more informed about the issues.

Voting Qualification Testing for all!!!

Rant over.

Back to the Default World. Ugh.

Hey kids. I'm back. I've been back for a week, but it feels like a month or more. I think I'm finally caught up on sleep.

It was a year of many "firsts" and many spectacular sights. Here's a VERY short list of some memorable moments and events.

The Man was burned five days early by an arsonist during the lunar eclipse. (He was rebuilt and back up on Thursday! Yay!) You may have heard about this. It made the national news. Me and two friends were right by The Man when it happened. The arsonist was chased by Black Rock Rangers right past us.

We had incredible dust storms on Thursday and Friday afternoons. The one on Friday was worth it, though. We had a full double rainbow appear over the city afterwards.

The Augerid meteor shower DID happen on Saturday morning. I viewed it from the trash fence... away from the city lights and smoke. I saw about 35 meteors in 40 minutes (that's really impressive).

I witnessed my good friend Annie marry her soulmate at the Temple of Forgiveness at dusk on Friday night.

I was attacked my a mob of zombies.

The "Crude Awakening" burn/performance was the most bone-chilling, but also beautiful thing I've ever seen.

I participated in the Monkey Chant at Center Camp on Friday afternoon. Ask me about that later...

I spun fire with my great friends Jewels and Wheylan on Sunday night (the last night I was there) for a wonderful audience. Burning Man was the reason I started spinning in the place. It made my experience complete. I received some of the best compliments of my life afterwards (while fighting back tears of joy).

All week, several people told me that I possess "great energy". The cab driver taking me home in Boston Wednesday morning echoed that sentiment... "you're a very nice, friendly lady, nice to talk to". It really struck a chord with me... that so many people pointed out the exact same trait over and over again.

Life changing again.

Check out this video for starters.

GOING HOME!!!!!!!

Days until launch: 1!

24 hours from now, I will be leaving my house to catch my flight to California. I've been counting down the days for a couple of months now. On Saturday, I will be driving my rental car from Davis, CA to the Black Rock Desert 100 miles north of Reno, NV.

I'm freaking out... so excited. I've got sweaty palms and butterflies in my stomach. I am particulary excited for this year because it's been two years since I've been out there, and this will likely be my last trip to Burning Man. As awesome as it is, I simply can't afford to do it again. I definately could have spent less money on the trip, but there are certain things that I just had to do... like buy space on the Boston shipping container. I figure that I could spend a simliar amount of cash on a trip to somewhere I haven't been before so I decided to really go all out this year. I've also had a rough week, and I need to get out there as soon as possible... need to leave my troubles behind.

One of the nice things about going to Burning Man is that I will be completely occupied for 10 days. It's like being brain-washed. Because I will be off the grid entirely, it's actually hard to think about my problems in "the default world". It's pretty insane to think about how isolated and disconnected we are out there. During my last trip out there in 2005, Katrina hit New Orleans, and no one heard anything about it for days.

This should be my last post for a couple of weeks. I'm sure I will have lots of stories and pictures to share once I return... and after I sleep for a few days.

GOING HOME!!!!!

Where will you be 10 years from now?

It doesn't really matter where in the lower 48 states you are on August 21, 2017... as long as you are there looking up! Ten years from today there will be a solar eclipse across North America!!! Depending on where you are, you will see a partial or total solar eclipse. If I am anything like I am today, I'm guessing I will be out there with my solar telescope having a big party. See you in ten years!

Dr. Strangelove Quote Rings True

Major T.J. "King" Kong: "Survival kit contents check. In them you'll find: one forty-five caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days' concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair of nylon stockings. Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff. "

Or a few good days out at Burning Man with all that stuff. Too bad they've banned firearms. I also recommend more than one issue of prophylactics!

The Cool Stuff Katy Saw

I realized that I need to start logging all the cool stuff I see in the night sky with the telescope (or in some cases without...). I had the telescope out Saturday and Sunday night this weekend, and I don't want to forget the cool nighttime objects. So here is the first installment of "The Cool Stuff Katy Saw".


Here is a list and some descriptions of things I've seen since purchasing my telescope in March 2007.

• Saturn. Could see the rings and it looked fake, like an orange sticker.


• The Moon. Can easily see small craters and texture along the rim of the moon's surface from craters and mountains. Also noted last night, that along the edge of the shadow, it appears that there are more craters. However, my uncle and I concluded that it's only because the shadows are longer the closer they get to the edge of the darkness (just like on Earth approaching sundown). The craters appear more numerous there.


• The Sun. The real reason I bought the telescope in the first place. 2007 has not been very active because we are just coming out of the solar minimum. I've got high hopes for next summer. Solar maximum is due in 2011, though. Horrible timing for me! With my Solar Continuum Filter, I can see some granulation on the surface of the sun.


• Venus. Bright and fairly blurry.


• Mars. Red and fairly blurry.


• Jupiter and four moons. Definitely impressive. Could see cloud bands on Jupiter, but no red spot as of yet. Four moons are usually visible. Sometimes only three because one is in front of or behind the planet.


• Uranus. First sighting on 8/18. Not impressive because my telescope isn't that nice! Blue dot.


• ISS and Space Shuttle Atlantis (mid July '07 I think). Saw the ISS and Atlantis two night before the Atlantis returned to Earth. It was especially cool because the shuttle was doing de-orbit burns. Very impressive!


• ISS and Space Shuttle Endeavour (8/18 and 8/19). On Saturday 8/18, the two were still docked and floated overhead around 8:50pm. Very bright! On Sunday 8/19, the shuttle had undocked from the ISS, and the two trained across the sky around 9:15pm. That was amazing to see the two gliding over together. They got about 2/3 of the way across the sky when they disappeared... out of the sunlight. One more sighting due TONIGHT Monday August 20th. If you are in the Boston area, look up at 8pm. If you are elsewhere, go to http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/ and plug in your location.


• The Double Cluster. Really cool! Two groups of stars next to each other. Cannot see the clusters with the naked eye!


• The Butterfly Cluster. Also very cool! The cluster of stars resembles the outline of a butterfly.


• Dumbbell Nebula. Blurry, but cool to know what you're looking at!


• Andromeda Galaxy. Again, blurry, but cool!


• Ring Nebula. Wicked awesome. Very faint, but you can definitely make out the ring shape.


• Random meteor. While aligning the telescope on 8/18, had my eye on Altair, getting it centered, when a meteor streaked across the telescope view!!

Really Great Burning Man Gift Buttons!

If you can't read them, click on the picture...