Venus In Transit This June 6
Venus is going to do a rare transit of the the Sun on 6 June. The next one will be in 2117. What does it mean by transit? Venus will cross in between Sun and Earthand seen as a small black dot against the disk of the Sun.
This year transit will commence t 4:10pm when Venus first touches the edge of the Sun.
Where can you see the transit? Most of North America, Pacific Ocean, Japan, north-eastern Asia, New Zealand, eastern Australia, and high Arctic locations including Greenland and Iceland. In North America, north-western South America, and the Caribbean.
First 3D Images Of the Sun
NASA has revealed the first 360 degree view of the entire sun today. The photo comes courtesy of NASA’s twin STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) spacecrafts launched in 2006 and they have been orbiting the Sun ever since.
Solar Tsunami To Hit Earth
Earth is bracing for a cosmic tsunami as tons of plasma from a massive sun eruption is heading directly toward Earth. The eruptions, dubbed coronal mass ejections, started early Sunday and was captured by cameras aboard NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). The effect of this eruption will reach earth on August 4, 2010.
Source: Solar Storm Headed for Earth Tonight; May Spawn Auroras
NASA Takes HD Photos Of Sun
NASA has released new high definition images of the sun, taken from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft. The video and images shows clear eruptions from the sun. The SDO carries four telescopes along with other high-tech equipment, will examine the sun’s magnetic field and its impact on the Earth’s atmosphere and climate.
Source: NASA Mission YouTube Channel
Comets Dived Into The Sun
Space telescope on the orbiting SoHo observatory, caught comets diving into the sun. Images clearly show a major solar flare from the Sun soon after each impact.
From Discovery: The wayward comets are called sungrazers. They are a class of comet that likes to live dangerously. Sungrazers can skirt within a few thousand miles of the sun’s roiling photosphere. Many are torn apart or evaporate as they streak along at a blazing 1 million miles per hour. As their orbits are perturbed, surviving sungrazers can collide with the sun on a subsequent passage.
Sun CEO Schwartz Tweeted His Resignation With $12 Million
Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz is the first CEO that tweeted his resignation with a 140-character haiku:
Today’s my last day at Sun. I’ll miss it. Seems only fitting to end on a #haiku. Financial crisis/Stalled too many customers/CEO no more.
He walks out with $12 million and it is reported that take over giant Oracle CEO dislike him.
NASA’s Ibex To Study Boundaries Of Solar System
NASA gas launched space probe Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) to study the violence and turbulence at the very edge of the solar system.
IBEX will orbit high above the Earth to take pictures of the interstellar boundaries for the first time. These boundaries separate our heliosphere from the local interstellar medium of our Galaxy. The region is a vast expanse of turbulent gas and twisting magnetic fields. This mission of taking pictures and recording those interstellar boundaries will take two years.
David McComas, IBEX said, “The interstellar boundary regions are critical because they shield us from the vast majority of dangerous galactic cosmic rays, which otherwise would penetrate into Earth’s orbit and make human spaceflight much more dangerous”.
Source: NASA launches probe to study edge of solar system
Sun Open Source Solaris
Sun Microsystems will launch a supported version of OpenSolaris operating system at the CommunityOne conference in San Francisco. OpenSolaris is based on the Solaris kernel and uses many of its features like the Zettabyte File System (ZFS) and Dynamic Tracing (DTrace), which offers predictive self-healing capabilities. Sun wants to compete with Linux and aiming this open source software at web developers.
Source: OpenSolaris Ready for Prime Time
Sun mySQL Deal Stinks
Sun has bought open-source software maker MySQL of Sweden for $1 Billion. So what is Sun going to do with this purchase.
John Dvorak from MarketWatch said that Sun Microsystems gobbling up MySQL is perhaps the worst single event he has ever witnessed in the history of tech mergers and acquisitions. His reasons lies in Sun having a bad track record with its acquisitions.
John go on further linking Oracle, strategic partner of Sun, paying the billion to kill off mySQL.
A likely story?
Source: The Sun-MySQL deal stinks
