UFO Turkey / Istanbul / Kumburgaz

Clearly visible UFO recorded from Turkey Istanbul - Kumburgaz

Video recorded by Yalcin Yalman

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UFO Photograph Hailed as One of the Best

This photo of a UFO over Cornwall is hailed by experts as one of the best ever taken in Britain.

UFO sightings at Cornwall 55-year-old Kelvin Barbery snapped the mystery object on Dec 29 (2007) from a coastal path between Swanpool and Maenporth, near Falmouth.

In a weird twist, Kelvin did not even see the UFO at the time. He thought he was just taking a sea view… but when he loaded the digital camera card on to his computer, the round metallic ‘craft’ was in the centre of the shot, about two miles away.

This news surprisingly didn’t make it big on international papers. Perhaps people are getting bored over pictures, reports, news and videos about UFO sightings, which are often found as fraud in the end.

Eruption of the Etna September 2007

Mount Etna eruption updates for 4-5 September: For all the night, in the depression on the east flank of the crater of S-E, is in course an intense and spectacular strombolian activity with lava fountains that catch up a height of several hundreds of meters. A small tap of lava heads towards the Bove Valley. Moreover present is an ash column of approximately two kilometers that go towards east on Fornazzo and Milo.

It's for the ash that it has been decided, beginning from 1:00 Am of this night, the closing of the airport of Catania.
The 29 August on the east flank of the south-east crater has been recorded an elevated frequency of strombolian outbreaks. Such outbreaks are not compatible with an increasing of magma flow but with collapses produced by an emptying of a superficial magmatic tank.
The investigators of the national institute of Geophysicist and volcanology (http://www.ct.ingv.it) have directly observed the collapse that in its inside shows a slag cone. The explosive activity is accompanied by ash emission.

• See live webcam here
• Mount Etna 2007 eruption history
• Etna excursions
  

500 days at Venus, and the surprises keep coming

These images were taken in eight orbits within 10 consecutive Earth days (between orbits 299 and 309) with VIRTIS, in February 2007. The chosen wavelength was approximately 2.3 micrometres. The images were all taken on the night side, in the evening sector. The quarter that is observed is that which is experiencing late evening, or pre-midnight hours. It should be taken into account that Venus rotates very slowly as compared to Earth (one venusian day is 243 Earth days). The distances from the spacecraft to the region observed span 50 000 to 65 000 km. The contrast seen results from deeper cloud layers, at an altitude of about 50 km. The south pole is just outside the image, in the upper right hand side. It seems that the mid latitudes form a sort of transition region with mostly laminar flow. Moving equatorward, there is more convective flow in the atmosphere, whereas the polar region or the ‘black hole’ in the upper right hand side is where the vortex dominates. The meteorology of the planet, also its deep atmosphere, is highly variable. The images in the bottom row as well as the leftmost image in the middle row show laminar flow. The rest of the images show turbulent flow. Intense, bright colours show less cloudy areas, while darker, black areas, show more cloudy regions. This is because radiation coming from hotter regions below the clouds is blocked by thicker clouds. Credits: ESA/ VIRTIS/ INAF-IASF/ Obs. de Paris-LESIA
Venus Express has now orbited Earth’s twin for 500 Earth days, completing as many orbits. While the satellite maintains steady and excellent performance, the planet continues to surprise and amaze us.

In spite of experiencing a challenging environment, Venus Express is in an excellent condition. It receives four times the amount of solar radiation as compared to its sister spacecraft, Mars Express, but modifications to the spacecraft design have worked just as intended and operation has been very stable.
Many different activities transpire on board with each orbit: instruments are switched on and off, they change modes and targets and the spacecraft checks out and monitors its subsystems more or less continuously. The few anomalies that occurred were quickly resolved by vigilant spacecraft controllers.

An impressive amount of data - about 1 Terabits, or one million million bits - has been transmitted to Earth over the first 500 days.

Håkan Svedhem, Venus Express Project Scientist says, "The scientists analysing the data have a challenging but exciting task ahead.” They will have to archive the data and extract the most important detail from this immense collection of images, spectra and profiles of temperature, pressure and chemical composition.

Some of the first detailed analyses are now being completed and will soon be published in acclaimed scientific journals. Among many other findings that have surprised scientists, Venus’ atmosphere seems extremely fickle. Recent observations with the Visible and Near-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIRTIS), the atmospheric structure changes quite rapidly, from day to day.

Source: ESA

Exploding Lunar Eclipse

On Tuesday morning, Aug. 28th, Earth's shadow will settle across the Moon for a 90-minute total eclipse. In the midst of the lunar darkness, Cooke hopes to record some flashes of light--explosions caused by meteoroids crashing into the Moon and blasting themselves to smithereens.

"The eclipse is a great time to look," says Cooke, who heads up NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office (MEO) at the Marshall Space Flight Center. The entire face of the Moon will be in shadow for more than two hours, offering more than 7 million sq. miles of dark terrain as target for incoming meteoroids.

Lunar explosions are nothing new. Cooke's team has been monitoring the Moon since late 2005 and they've recorded 62 impacts so far. "Meteoroids that hit Earth disintegrate in the atmosphere, producing a harmless streak of light. But the Moon has no atmosphere, so 'lunar meteors' plunge into the ground," he says. Typical strikes release as much energy as 100 kg of TNT, gouging craters several meters wide and producing bursts of light bright enough to be seen 240,000 miles away on Earth through ordinary backyard telescopes.

"About half of the impacts we see come from regular meteor showers like the Perseids and Leonids," says MEO team-member Danielle Moser. "The other half are 'sporadic' meteors associated with no particular asteroid or comet."

The MEO observatory is located on the grounds of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and consists of two 14-inch telescopes equipped with sensitive low-light video cameras. Moser and colleague Victoria Coffey will be on duty Tuesday morning.

During the eclipse, they hope to catch an elusive variety of meteor called Helions.

"Helion meteoroids come from the direction of the sun," Cooke says, "and that makes them very difficult to observe." They streak across the sky most often around local noon when the sun's glare is too intense for meteor watching.

Wait a minute. Meteors from the sun? "The sun itself is not the source," he explains. "We believe Helion meteoroids come from ancient sungrazing comets that laid down trails of dusty debris in the vicinity of the sun."

No one can be certain, however, because Helion meteoroids are so devilishly difficult to study. Astronomers see them only in small numbers briefly before dawn or after sunset. Attempts to study Helions via radar during the day have been foiled, to a degree, by terrestrial radio interference and natural radio bursts from the sun—both of which can drown out meteoroid "pings."

Enter the eclipse.

During the eclipse, the Man in the Moon (the face we see from Earth) will be turned squarely toward the sun—"perfect geometry for intercepting Helion meteoroids," says Moser. "And with Earth's shadow providing some darkness, we should be able to see any explosions quite clearly."

"Watching Helion meteoroids hit the Moon and studying the flashes will tell us more about their size, velocity and penetration," she adds. That, in turn, will further the MEO's goal of estimating meteoroid hazards to spacecraft and future Moon-walking astronauts.

No one has ever seen a lunar impact during an eclipse, "but there's a first time for everything," Cooke says.

Source: Science@NASA, by Dr. Tony Phillips

Dreamy Lunar Eclipse

Close your eyes, breathe deeply, let your mind wander to a distant seashore: It's late in the day, and the western sun is sinking into the glittering waves. At your feet, damp sand reflects the twilight, while overhead, the deep blue sky fades into a cloudy mélange of sunset copper and gold, so vivid it almost takes your breath away.

A breeze touches the back of your neck, and you turn to see a pale full Moon rising into the night. Hmmm. The Moon could use a dash more color. You reach out, grab a handful of sunset, and drape the Moon with phantasmic light. Much better.

Too bad it's only a dream...

Early Tuesday morning, August 28th, the dream will come true. There's going to be a colorful lunar eclipse visible from five continents including most of North America: map.

The event begins 54 minutes past midnight PDT (0754 UT) on August 28th when the Moon enters Earth's shadow. At first, there's little change. The outskirts of Earth's shadow are as pale as the Moon itself; an onlooker might not even realize anything is happening. But as the Moon penetrates deeper, a startling metamorphosis occurs. Around 2:52 am PDT (0952 UT), the color of the Moon changes from moondust-gray to sunset-red. This is totality, and it lasts for 90 minutes.

To understand why the change occurs, close your eyes and dream yourself all the way to the Moon. Once again, you're standing on a seashore—the Sea of Tranquillity. There's no water. You're surrounded by hundreds of miles of dusty, hardened lava. Overhead hangs Earth, nightside down, completely hiding the Sun behind it. The eclipse is underway.

With the Sun blocked, you might expect utter darkness, but no, the ground at your feet is aglow. Why? Look back up at Earth. The rim of the planet seems to be on fire. Around Earth's circumference you see every sunrise and sunset in the world—all at once. This incredible light beams into the heart of Earth's shadow, transforming the Moon into a landscape of copper moondust and golden hills.

Wake up! This is really going to happen, and some planning is necessary. Start times of totality are listed in the table below. Set your alarm an hour or so in advance to gather snacks and dress warmly. (Even in August, four o'clock in the morning can be chilly.) Waking up early also allows you to catch some of the partial eclipse before totality.

The eclipse will be visible from Australia, Japan, parts of Asia and most of the Americas, but not from Africa or Europe. Pacific observers are favored. On the west coast of the United States, the entire eclipse will unfold high in the post-midnight sky. On the east coast, totality will be truncated by sunrise. That's okay; even a little eclipse can be a dream.

...nasa...