SIGNS IN THE HEAVENS: Two Suns Appear During Sunset In Zimbabwe - Just Days After A Similar Event Was Witnessed In Indonesia! [PHOTOS]

People living in Mutare, Zimbabwe experienced a double sunset on December 11 2015.  Photo: Peter Lowenstein

December 13, 2015 - ZIMBABWE - These two suns appeared in the clear sunset sky of Mutare, Zimbabwe on December 11, 2015.

Yes these lucky guys had a double sunset last Thursday...

This strange and baffling Two suns phenomenon is not only happening in Indonesia.

This double sun is just just too weird to be true. Photo: Peter Lowenstein

What I would like to know is the mechanism behind this two suns phenomenon. Photo: Peter Lowenstein

And about a minute after it appeared, the second sun just faded away. Photo: Peter Lowenstein

On December 11, 2015, Peter Lowenstein witnessed another double sunset event in drought-sicken Zimbabwe.

The second sun formed as our star was setting behind a cumulus cloud in an almost clear and dry sky.

The diffuse duplicate appeared above the cumulus in a thin veil of more distant high cloud. But this incredible nature spectacle only lasted for over a minute before the optical illusion faded away. - Strange Sounds.

WEATHER PHENOMENON: Signs in the Heavens - Two Suns Appear During Sunset In Indonesia!

These two suns were photographed in the sky of Tarakan, Indonesia on December 4 2015.  © Agoes Suwondo/Radar Tarakan

December 10, 2015 - INDONESIA - Have you ever seen two suns setting in the night sky?

Well, this surreal phenomenon was witnessed at sunset in the sky of Tarakan, Indonesia on December 4, 2015.

A double sun was photographed in the sky of Indonesia last Friday between 17:49:28 and 17:50:46.

These two suns were photographed in the sky of Tarakan, Indonesia on December 4 2015.  © Agoes Suwondo/Radar Tarakan

This strange, otherworldly sight could just be a hoax, but similar optical illusions have been seen before. Lately in Canada on November 2, 2015.

This is not a common optical phenomenon that we’re seeing here. The appearance of a second sun is caused by optical refraction, as atmospheric particles bend light in unusual ways, creating mirages.


 WATCH: Here a video of such a double sun in the sky of China in 2012.

I’m asking myself if this is an artifact of the lens. Or a fake? But I don’t think so.

I assume this incredible atmospheric phenomenon is created by particles of ice or something in the atmosphere aligned in such a way that they would refract the sunlight at that very small angle, but only in one direction, like a mirror.

It would require some fairly peculiar characteristics.

Could this be a giant sundog appearing just on one side of the ‘real’ sun?

A king of collection of the glow creating this haunting orb that makes us think there is an additional sun. - Strange Sounds.

WEATHER PHENOMENON: Omen - Ice Halo Forms In St. Croix, Virgin Islands On Mother's Day!

© stcroixsource.com

May 11, 2015 - VIRGIN ISLANDS - A little before noon Sunday, several diners at the new My Brothers Workshop Café and Bakery on Back Street almost leapt from their chairs and charged into the adjacent parking lot to see why some folks were gazing up in the sky.

Turns out it wasn't the end of the world, as someone had suggested. It was a solar halo surrounding the sun, as the name implies; and it seemed to absorb the whole sky.

According to Wikipedia: A halo, also known as a nimbus, is produced by light interacting with ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere, resulting in a wide variety of colored or white rings, arcs and spots in the sky."

Closer to home, University of the Virgin Islands physics professor David Smith shared a professional view on the phenomenon.

© stcroixsource.com

"Ice crystals in the upper atmosphere create this halo, like little rainbows," he said. "It's produced by light interacting with the ice crystals."

Smith said the phenomenon isn't all that rare further north.

"It's not as common in the tropics, since there are fewer ice crystals in the upper atmosphere," he said.

A previous halo also appeared in the local sky a few weeks ago, Smith said, adding he had seen very few in the 30 years he has lived here.

Of sharing his store of knowledge, Smith had this to say: "When something about the sciences happens, we're usually quite happy to talk about it." - St Croix Source.

WEATHER PHENOMENON: Omen - Mother's Day Sun Halo Appears In Shanghai, China!

The solar halo photographed in Chongming County yesterday.  © CFP

May 11, 2015 - SHANGHAI, CHINA - Moms across the city received a gift from the heavens yesterday when a beautiful pearl-colored halo around the sun greeted them on Mother's Day morning.

While some web users saw this as a celestial blessing for Shanghai moms, the Shanghai Meteorological Bureau had a more prosaic explanation.

It was a result of altostratus cloud, formed by the lifting of a large stable air mass, explained forecasters.

That causes invisible water vapor to condense into cloud, creating optical phenomena — such as the sun halo.

Around 10am, many Weibo and WeChat users posted pictures, with many seeing it as a good omen.

According to a Chinese proverb: "When there is a solar halo, it will rain; when there is a lunar halo, it will blow."

And sure enough, rain was forecast overnight.

Today should see a rainy start to the week with possible rumbles of thunder and a slight drop in temperatures, forecasters said. The mercury will range between 17 and 24 degrees Celsius.

But tomorrow will be sunny with the high likely to soar to 28 degrees, and reaching 30 degrees on a clear Wednesday. Wednesday's low is also expected to rise from 17 degrees to 19 degrees.

Thundershowers are forecast to return to the city late Thursday with the mercury dipping to 27.

Not much change in temperature is expected on Friday with showers or thundershowers still likely.

Lows on Thursday and Friday will remain at around 19 degrees. - Shanghai Daily.

 

SIGNS IN THE HEAVENS: Second Sun Memes - Real-Life 'Tatooine' Planets With Two Suns May Be More Common Than Previously Thought!

NASA's Kepler mission has discovered a world where two suns set over the horizon instead of just one. The planet, called Kepler-16b (illustrated here),
is the most 'Tatooine-like' planet yet found in our galaxy.

April 5, 2015 - SPACE - Luke Skywalker's home planet, Tatooine, may exist only in the make-believe world of Star Wars, but astronomers have long known that planets with two suns exist in the real world too.

So far, mostly gas giant planets have been observed orbiting twin stars. But a new study suggests that rocky Earth-like planets can form in binary star systems -- and are likely quite common in the universe.

"Tatooine sunsets may be common after all," study co-author Dr. Ben Bromley, an astrophysicist at the University of Utah, said in a written statement. “For over a decade, astrophysicists believed that planets like Earth could not form around most binary stars, at least not close enough to support life."

Astrophysicists had speculated that the uneven gravitational pull of twin stars would prevent orbiting rocks and dust from coalescing to form Earth-like planets -- and even send planet-forming material on destructive collision courses.

Kepler 16b has been dubbed Tatooine, due to the double sunset on the Star Wars planet.

“Planets form like dust bunnies under your bed, glomming together to make larger and larger objects,” study co-author Dr. Scott Kenyon, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in the statement. “When planets form around a binary, the binary scrambles up the dust bunnies unless they are on just the right orbit.”

The researchers used computer simulations and mathematical models to show that Earth-like planets could indeed form in a binary star system -- that is, if the planet-forming material orbits its host stars in a concentric, oval-shaped orbit. And the resulting rocky planets may be able to survive for tens of thousands of years, The Telegraph reported.

In this acrylic painting, Bromley illustrates the view of a double sunset from an uninhabited Earth-like planet orbiting a pair of stars.
Ben Bromley, University of Utah

The takeaway, according to Bromley, is that it's just as easy for an Earth-like planet to form around a binary star as it is to form around a single star like our sun.

The study, “Planet Formation Around Binary Stars: Tatooine Made Easy,” was submitted to the Astrophysical Journal and uploaded to the online research archive arXiv.org on March 12, 2015. - Huffington Post.

SIGNS IN THE HEAVENS: Nibiru And Planet X Memes - Houston Skywatcher Films Stunning Object In The Sky, That Appears To Be A Second Sun?!

Screen capture from the YouTube video.

November 10, 2014 - SPACE - You know how you sometimes can sense that something is present even though you can't see it? Well, astronomers are getting that feeling about a giant, hidden object in space.

It orbits our Sun in a far elliptical orbit, and is said to be 4x's the size of Jupiter! It has a helium and hydrogen atmosphere. It's most likely to have moons! This planet fits the exact description of Planet X or Nibiru.

Scientists have known about this planet since 1983 and they've been using WISE and IRAS to monitor it. See the 1983 Washington Post "Front Page" Story - Mystery Heavenly Body Discovered.

This image is taken from 2011 Google Sky and it shows a green square. What is Google hiding behind this square? Is this the position of Nibiru about 4 years ago? Check out the coordinates: 8 20 03, -17 53 34

The last two/three years there is not too much news on this planet X or Nibiru.

Agreements have been made, between the main stream media and government agencies not to publish articles related to the planet X / Nibiru issue, since NASA mistakenly confirms Planet X / Nibiru during a conference in 2011 for updating information about the database of near-Earth asteroids in our solar system, tracked by Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope? See here the article and video on NASA mistakenly confirms Planet X / Nibiru.

It’s hard to get the real proof of the existence of planet X / Nibiru but on October 20, 2014 a skywatcher in Houstan has filmed a remarkable phenomenon what looks like a second sun or a planet.

Below the amazing footage.

WATCH: Second Sun over Houston?

- USH.

SIGNS IN THE HEAVENS: Second Sun And Nibiru Memes - Astronomers Discover Sister To Earth's Sun?!

June 16, 2014 - SPACE - As part of a search into the origins of our galaxy, astronomers at the University of Texas have identified what they believe to be a sister to the Earth’s sun.

Reuters/NASA

According to the Guardian, this potential sibling has not been named, and currently only goes by the title, Star HD 162826. Astronomers currently hypothesize that the sister sun was formed out of the same cluster of stars that ultimately gave birth to our own sun approximately 4.5 billion years ago. If true, the discovery could also shed light on humanity’s search for extraterrestrial life.

Led by astronomer Ivan Ramirez, researchers at the University of Texas said that they've been studying HD 162826 – which is 15 percent larger than our sun – for more than 15 years.

“The idea is that the Sun was born in a cluster with a thousand or a hundred thousand stars. This cluster, which formed more than 4.5 billion years ago, has since broken up,” Ramirez said in a statement. “A lot of things can happen in that amount of time,” he added, including the potential for these stars to shift along to other points in the Milky Way and host other planets.

Although the HD 16286 cannot be seen by the naked eye, it can be spotted with a pair of binoculars thanks to its large size. It’s located in the lower end of the constellation Hercules, and if you’re out stargazing it can be spotted near another star called Vega.

As noted by the Huffington Post, further study into the star’s origins could also reveal information about how and why life formed on Earth.

Image from mcdonaldobservatory.org

"We want to know where we were born," Ramirez said. "If we can figure out in what part of the galaxy the sun formed, we can constrain conditions on the early solar system. That could help us understand why we are here."

One of the more intriguing possibilities is that HD 162826 also delivers life-giving energy other planets in its orbits, much like our own sun does for the Earth. It’s also possible that when the cluster of stars containing our sun broke up, the blueprints for life – such as DNA molecules or bacteria – were spread along all the stars contained within. Potentially, that means that other planets in the galaxy might actually host life that shares a similar make-up as life on Earth.

"The idea is if a planet has life, like Earth, and if you hit it with an asteroid, it will create debris, some of which will escape into space," astronomer Mauri Valtonen of Finland’s University of Turku in Finland said to Space.com in 2012. "And if the debris is big enough, like 1 meter across, it can shield life inside from radiation, and that life can survive inside for millions of years until that debris lands somewhere. If it happens to land on a planet with suitable conditions, life can start there." - RT. 

SECOND SUN MEMES: Solar Siblings - Astronomers Discover Our Sun's Long-Lost Brother?!

May 11, 2014 - SPACE - It turns out that the sun has a long-lost brother -- and now astronomers are racing to map a solar family tree.

Luke Skywalker staring at two setting suns in the sky on his desert-like home planet of Tatooine in the Star Wars film saga.

A new study from researchers at the University of Texas provides clues as to how our sun was formed, whether there are other “solar siblings” in our universe and, perhaps, a better understanding of how life in the universe was formed billions of years ago.

The finding, which will be published next month in The Astrophysical Journal, identifies a star that was almost certainly born from the same cloud of gas and dust as the sun. Located 110 light years away in the constellation Hercules, the star, called HD 162826, is 15 percent more massive than our sun, and can be seen with low-power binoculars.

"We want to know where we were born," University of Texas at Austin astronomer Ivan Ramirez said in a news release from McDonald Observatory. “If we can figure out in what part of the galaxy the sun formed, we can constrain conditions on the early solar system. That could help us understand why we are here.”

Ramirez and his eight-person team discovered HD 162826's relation to the sun by following up on 30 possible candidates found by several groups around the world looking for solar siblings. Ramirez's team studied 23 stars in-depth at McDonald Observatory and several stars, visible only from the southern hemisphere, using the Clay Magellan Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. Both observations required the use of high-resolution spectorscopy to understand the stars' chemical makeup.

The star HD 162826 is probably a "solar sibling," that is, a star born in the same star cluster as the sun. It was identified
by University of Texas at Austin astronomer Ivan Ramirez, in the process of honing a technique to find more solar
siblings in the future, and eventually to determine how and where in the Milky Way galaxy the sun formed.
Ivan Ramirez/Tim Jones/McDonald Observatory

There's even a small chance these solar siblings could host life-sustaining planets. When these stars were born, collisions could have knocked chunks off planets, and these fragments could have traveled between solar systems -- perhaps bringing primitive life to Earth. Conversely, fragments from Earth could have sent life to planets orbiting other stars.

"It could be argued that solar siblings are the key candidates in the search for extraterrestrial life," Ramirez said.

Next, Ramirez’s team wants to create a road map for how to identify solar siblings, operating on the theory that the sun was born in a cluster with up to 100,000 stars. That cluster, however, formed more than 4.5 billion years ago, and has long since broken up, spreading the stars out to different parts of the Milky Way galaxy. Finding more solar siblings will provide the best clues toward discovering our sun’s origin, and Ramirez’s discovery is an important step in streamlining the identification process when it comes to tracking down stars with the same galactic DNA, he told FoxNews.com on Friday.

“Already, we’re getting a lot of data from a number of surveys,” Ramirez told FoxNews.com on Friday. “In five to 10 years from now, we’re going to be able to analyze 10,000 times more stars than what we’re able to do right now.”  - FOX News.

SIGNS IN THE HEAVENS: Weather Phenomenon - Residents In Havana, Cuba Can't Believe Their Eyes As Magnificent "Sun Dog" Appears In The Sky!

April 16, 2013 - CUBA - Those having a beer at Sloppy Joe's Bar in Havana Cuba today, will be hoping they wake up tomorrow remembering their time there.

For above the newly-refurbished and somewhat iconic bar, high in the sky occurred an atmospheric phenomenon known as a 'sun dog'.

The sun was surrounded by a bright ring, caused by a refraction of sunlight by small ice crystal in the atmosphere.

Bright spark: An atmospheric phenomenon known as a 'sun dog' is seen in the sky over Sloppy Joe's Bar, Havana, Cuba.

The 'sun dogs' are red in shape, and they number around the outside of the sun, joined together by a white circle that is often labelled a 'Mock Sun'.

This event normally occurs when the sun is low, although it can happen at other times of the day, but the 'dogs' will be less striking and probably not as bright.

Put down your pint: The rare halo around the sun is caused by the refraction of sunlight by small ice crystals in the atmosphere.

It's a sign: Sloppy Joe's will be hoping the act of nature above its very own roof can bring it good luck.

It is the crystals that refract the sun's light at an angle of 22 degrees. However as the crystals lower and disperse, they become vertically aligned, striking the light horizontally, and this is how the sun dogs are formed.

The famous old-town saloon bar, once frequented by the likes of John Wayne, Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable, has only just reopened after 50 years.

Careful: People look up to the sky, though with a hand for a shield as the sun dog is particularly bright.

And the new owners will be hoping the fantastic spectacle seen above the bar will be a sign of good things to come.

Sun dogs are visible all over the world and at any time of year regardless of the ground level temperature.

In Europe and North America one will be seen on average twice a week if searched for. - Daily Mail.

FIRE IN THE SKY: Near-Earth Asteroid 2012 DA14 Buzzes, Misses Earth In Record Close Flyby!

February 16, 2013 - SPACE - A 150-foot asteroid hurtled through Earth's backyard Friday, coming within an incredible 17,150 miles and making the closest known flyby for a rock of its size. In a chilling coincidence, a meteor exploded above Russia just hours before the asteroid zoomed past the planet. Scientists the world over, along with NASA, insisted the meteor had nothing to do with the asteroid since they appeared to be traveling in opposite directions. The asteroid is a much more immense object and delighted astronomers in Australia and elsewhere who watched it zip harmlessly through a clear night sky.

"It's on its way out," reported Paul Chodas of NASA's Near-Earth Object program at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Asteroid 2012 DA14, as it's called, came closer to Earth than many communication and weather satellites orbiting 22,300 miles up. Scientists insisted these, too, would be spared, and they were right. The asteroid was too small to see with the naked eye even at its closest approach around 2:25 p.m. EST, over the Indian Ocean near Sumatra. The best viewing locations, with binoculars and telescopes, were in Asia, Australia and eastern Europe. Even there, all anyone could see was a pinpoint of light as the asteroid buzzed by at 17,400 mph. As asteroids go, this one is a shrimp. The one that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was 6 miles across. But this rock could still do immense damage if it ever struck given its 143,000-ton heft, releasing the energy equivalent of 2.4 million tons of TNT and wiping out 750 square miles.

By comparison, NASA estimated that the meteor that exploded over Russia was tiny — about 49 feet wide and 7,000 tons before it hit the atmosphere, or one-third the size of the passing asteroid. As for the back-to-back events, "this is indeed very rare and it is historic," said Jim Green, NASA's director of planetary science. While the asteroid is about half the length of a football field, the exploding meteor "is probably about on the 15-yard line," he said. "Now that's pretty big. That's typically a couple times bigger than the normal influx of meteorites that create these fireballs," he said in an interview on NASA TV. "These fireballs happen about once a day or so, but we just don't see them because many of them fall over the ocean or in remote areas. This one was an exception." As the countdown for the asteroid's close approach entered the final hours, NASA noted that the path of the meteor appeared to be quite different than that of the asteroid, making the two objects "completely unrelated." The meteor seemed to be traveling from north to south, while the asteroid passed from south to north — in the opposite direction.

Most of the solar system's asteroids are situated in a belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, and remain stable there for billions of years. Some occasionally pop out, though, into Earth's neighborhood. NASA scientists estimate that an object of this size makes a close approach like this every 40 years. The likelihood of a strike is every 1,200 years. The flyby provides a rare learning opportunity for scientists eager to keep future asteroids at bay — and a prime-time advertisement for those anxious to step up preventive measures. Friday's meteor further strengthened the asteroid-alert message. "We are in a shooting gallery and this is graphic evidence of it," said former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart, chairman emeritus of the B612 Foundation, committed to protecting Earth from dangerous asteroids. Schweickart noted that 500,000 to 1 million sizable near-Earth objects — asteroids or comets — are out there. Yet less than 1 percent — fewer than 10,000 — have been inventoried. Humanity has to do better, he said. The foundation is working to build and launch an infrared space telescope to find and track threatening asteroids.

This finder chart shows the position of the asteroid during its period of visibility. Times given are GMT/UT.
Click here for a larger version. Photograph: University of Hertfordshire

If a killer asteroid was, indeed, incoming, a spacecraft could, in theory, be launched to nudge the asteroid out of Earth's way, changing its speed and the point of intersection. A second spacecraft would make a slight alteration in the path of the asteroid and ensure it never intersects with the planet again, Schweickart said. Asteroid DA14 — discovered by Spanish astronomers only last February — is "such a close call" that it is a "celestial torpedo across the bow of spaceship Earth," Schweickart said in a phone interview Thursday. NASA's deep-space antenna in California's Mojave Desert was ready to collect radar images, but not until eight hours after the closest approach given the United States' poor positioning for the big event. - ABC News.

WATCH: Asteroid 2012 DA14 darts past Earth.

FIRE IN THE SKY: Record Setting Asteroid 2012 DA14 Flyby - "Safeway-Size" Asteroid To Get Closer To Earth Than Satellites This Week, Will Miss Earth By Just "15 MINUTES", Could Take Out Your Phone?!

February 12, 2012 - SPACE - An asteroid half the size of a football field will buzz close by Earth on Friday, coming closer than many weather satellites, but there is absolutely no chance the space rock will hit the planet, NASA says. The asteroid 2012 DA14 will approach within 17,200 miles (27,000 kilometers) of Earth when it zips by the planet on Friday (Feb. 15). It will be 5,000 miles closer than the ring of weather, communications and GPS navigation satellites that orbit the Earth, but it poses no impact threat, NASA scientists assured.

According to detailed observations of the 150-foot (45 meters) 2012 DA14 since its discovery last year, "there is no chance that the asteroid might be on a collision course with Earth," NASA officials said in a statement. But the space rock encounter will mark the closest-ever known Earth flyby of an asteroid the size of 2012 DA14, with NASA scientists and astronomers around the world preparing to take advantage of the event to take a close look at how asteroids work. One study in particular seeks to pin down exactly how the asteroid spins on its axis. "Knowing the direction of spin is essential to accurately predicting its future path, and thus determining just how close it will get to Earth in the coming years," study leader Michael Busch of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) said in a statement.

Busch and his colleagues will use two huge radio telescopes in New Mexico, the Very Large Array and Very Long Baseline Array, along with NASA's Goldstone radar antenna in California in an attempt to determine the direction of asteroid 2012 DA's spin. The telescopes seek out so-called "speckles" in the radio signals reflected by the asteroid's uneven surface, and then compare which observatory detected the speckles first in order to determine the spin direction. Knowing an asteroid's spin is key to understanding how a space rock radiates heat from absorbed sunlight over time. That, in turn, can allow astronomers to project how an asteroid's orbit can change over long periods as it circles the sun. Asteroids, like Earth, have a warmest part of their day, during which time they develop a hotspot that can be observed in infrared light. Later, the asteroid emits the absorbed radiation back out into space, which can serve as a gentle — but firm — jet-like push forward, researchers said.

WATCH: Animation for the asteroid's path.

The phenomenon is called the "Yarkovsky effect" after the 19th-century Russian engineer I.O. Yarkovsky, who first identified it. "When the asteroid passes close to the Earth or another large body, its orbit can be changed quickly by the gravitational effect of the larger body, but the Yarkovsky Effect, though smaller, is at work all the time," Busch said.

This diagram shows how the Yarkovsky Effect slows an asteroid's orbital motion; opposite rotation direction would speed up the orbital motion. Astronomers around the world are preparing to study the close approach of asteroid 2012 DA14 on Feb. 15, 2013.  CREDIT: Alexandra Bolling, NRAO/AUI/NSF.

Asteroid 2012 DA14 was discovered in 2012 by astronomers with the La Sagra Sky Survey at the Astronomical Observatory of Mallorca in Spain. The asteroid will make its closest approach to Earth at 2:24 p.m. EST (1924 GMT) Friday, at which time it may be visible in telescopes and binoculars to observers in Asia, Australia and Europe, where the local time will be nighttime.

Visit SPACE.com each day this week for complete coverage of asteroid 2012 DA14 and its Earth flyby. - SPACE.

'Record Close' Asteroid May Miss The Earth, But It Could Take Out Your Phone.

Scientists have dismissed fears an asteroid due to whizz past the Earth on Friday will 'destroy London' - but it could take out vital telecommunications satellites.  Scientists say they are sure there is no chance of the 150ft (45.7m) wide space rock hitting the planet.  But there is a remote possibility that it could collide with one of more than 100 telecommunication and weather satellites in fixed orbits above the Earth.  The asteroid, 2012 DA14, has been closely tracked since its discovery a year ago.  It is predicted to reach its nearest point to the Earth at around 7.30pm UK time on Friday.  Experts have calculated it will stay at least 17,200 miles (27,681km) away - easily far enough to be safe, but a very close shave in astronomical terms. Scientists have never observed such a narrow miss before.   Dr Dan Brown, from Nottingham Trent University, said telecommunication satellites - that ping data between our mobile phones - could be in danger.  Travelling at between 12,427mph (20,000kph) and 18,641mph (30,000kph) - around five miles (8km) a second, or eight times the speed of a rifle bullet - the asteroid will fly inside the orbits of high geostationary satellites some 22,000 miles (35,406km) above the Earth. 

The path of asteroid 2012 DA14's approach to earth is shown in this graphic from NASA. Photo: NASA/REUTERS.

''These are the satellites that provide us with telecommunications and weather forecasts,'' said Dr Brown.  ''There are loads of them but you're talking about a very big area. It would be very unlucky if a satellite was hit. The asteroid is more likely to hit some space junk, but most of this is only about a centimetre across and the impact won't even be noticed.''  Through binoculars, the object should be visible as a tiny dot of light crossing the sky.  ''It will be too faint for the naked eye but with binoculars it should be visible if you know where to look. It will be low to the north-eastern horizon and moving quite quickly," said Dr Brown.  ''You'll be able to see it pass from the constellation Leo to roughly the Plough, more or less from anywhere in the UK, and it will be bright for about an hour.''  DA14 belongs to dangerous family of near-Earth objects (NEOs) that are small enough to be missed but large enough to cause serious damage.  It was detected in February last year by La Sagra Observatory in southern Spain as it fell under the spotlight of the Sun's rays.  The asteroid will pose no danger to the International Space Station, which orbits at an altitude of only a few hundred kilometres.  Precise calculations showed there was absolutely no possibility of DA14 hitting the Earth, Dr Brown said.  But scientists had a good idea of what the effect of such an impact would be because a similar sized meteor devastated a remote region of Siberia in 1908.  Exploding a short distance above the ground over Tunguska, the object generated a blast 1,000 times more powerful than the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Forest was completely flattened over an area of 830 square miles (2,150 sq km).

WATCH: 2012 DA14 Flyby.

"'We think the object that impacted at Tunguska would have been of a similar size to DA14,'' said Dr Brown.  ''Actually, it exploded in the air. It didn't destroy humanity, but if this object had exploded over London it would have wiped out London. It's not a global impact, but it's a severe impact.''  During the flypast, scientists will use radar to study DA14 and learn about its composition and structure. The knowledge could prove useful if steps have to be taken to remove the threat of another space rock.  The ''Hollywood option'' of blowing up an incoming asteroid has been ruled out by experts. Such a dramatic solution would only result in deadly debris raining down on Earth. Instead, scientists are looking at ways of gently nudging an asteroid onto a safer trajectory.  A future mission planned by the American space agency Nasa, called Dart, will fire a probe into an asteroid to see if it can be moved. However, this may not be for another 10 or 20 years, said Dr Brown.  Meanwhile astronomers are currently tracking up to 400 NEOs that, like DA14, have been categorised as a potential threat. While a number are about the same size as DA14 ''there will also be some considerably larger,'' Dr Brown added.  The American space agency Nasa launched its NEO programme 15 years ago with the aim of finding all ''extinction event'' asteroids and comets 0.62 miles (1km) across and larger. Later, it started focusing on smaller objects.  Dr Don Yeomans, who manages Nasa's near-Earth object office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said at a press conference held by the agency: ''Probably we'd not have found DA14 10 years ago and not known about this close approach. But we still have a lot of improvement to do in finding all of the hazardous asteroids.''  Experts will soon be gathering at the United Nations to discuss how to monitor and deal with potentially dangerous space objects.  Fewer than 10,000 of the asteroids which could one day pose a threat to the Earth have so far been identified.  Dr Lindley Johnson, who heads Nasa's NEO observations programme, said: ''That does represent less than 10 per cent of all the objects that may be out there. It does take quite a bit of capability, both in sensitivity - the ability to detect these small objects - and also time.  ''It is an effort that will take another decade or two even if we have the most sophisticated systems that feasible technology will allow us.'' - Telegraph.

WATCH: Bill Nye - Asteroid 2012 DA 14 Will Miss Earth By "15 MINUTES!"

FIRE IN THE SKY: Record Setting Asteroid 2012 DA14 Flyby - "Safeway-Size" Asteroid To Get Closer To Earth Than Satellites!

February 05, 2013 - SPACE - An asteroid big enough to level a major metropolitan area (probably several of them, actually) will definitely not be doing any such thing this month, but it will come pretty darn close.
First spotted by a Spanish observatory last year, small asteroid 2012 DA14 (in this case "small" means about 150 feet in diameter, or roughly the size of a supermarket) will pass within 3.5 Earth radii of the surface of our planet on February 15. That means that this big, menacing, but ultimately harmless space rock will actually be closer to us than our many satellites in geosynchronous orbit about 22,000 miles above the equator.

NASA's near-earth object (NEO) program at its Jet Propulsion laboratory swears there is no chance the asteroid will strike the Earth, but let's be morbid for just a second and pretend it did. An object that size striking the Earth would be similar to the asteroid that created that really huge crater in Arizona, creating a massive explosion many times more powerful than the atomic bomb blast that destroyed Hiroshima, Japan.

The path of near-Earth asteroid 2012 DA14 is seen passing close to Earth on February 15, 2013.
(Credit: NASA/JPL Near-Earth Object Program Office).

Again, this nuclear winter storyline is pure fiction. But NASA says that asteroid 2012 DA14 will provide a unique opportunity for NEO observation and study on February 15:

On this date, the asteroid will travel rapidly from the southern evening sky into the northern morning sky with its closest Earth approach occurring about 19:26 UTC when it will achieve a magnitude of less than seven, which is somewhat fainter than naked eye visibility. About 4 minutes after its Earth close approach, there is a good chance it will pass into the Earth's shadow for about 18 minutes or so before reappearing from the eclipse. When traveling rapidly into the northern morning sky, 2012 DA14 will quickly fade in brightness.

So get out and enjoy the view and wave as the potential, but thankfully off-target destroyer of our society cruises by. - CNET.

WATCH: 2012 DA14 Flyby.

FIRE IN THE SKY: Record Setting Asteroid 2012 DA14 Flyby - NASA Declares "We've Never Seen An Object This Big Get So Close To Earth"!

January 29, 2013 - SPACE - Talk about a close shave. On Feb. 15th an asteroid about half the size of a football field will fly past Earth only 17,200 miles above our planet's surface. There's no danger of a collision, but the space rock, designated 2012 DA14, has NASA's attention.  "This is a record-setting close approach," says Don Yeomans of NASA's Near Earth Object Program at JPL. "Since regular sky surveys began in the 1990s, we've never seen an object this big get so close to Earth."

Earth's neighborhood is littered with asteroids of all shapes and sizes, ranging from fragments smaller than beach balls to mountainous rocks many kilometers wide. Many of these objects hail from the asteroid belt, while others may be corpses of long-dead, burnt out comets. NASA's Near-Earth Object Program helps find and keep track of them, especially the ones that come close to our planet.  2012 DA14 is a fairly typical near-Earth asteroid. It measures some 50 meters wide, neither very large nor very small, and is probably made of stone, as opposed to metal or ice.  Yeomans estimates that an asteroid like 2012 DA14 flies past Earth, on average, every 40 years, yet actually strikes our planet only every 1200 years or so.  The impact of a 50-meter asteroid is not cataclysmic--unless you happen to be underneath it. Yeomans points out that a similar-sized object formed the mile wide Meteor Crater in Arizona when it struck about 50,000 years ago. "That asteroid was made of iron," he says, "which made it an especially potent impactor." Also, in 1908, something about the size of 2012 DA14 exploded in the atmosphere above Siberia, leveling hundreds of square miles of forest. Researchers are still studying the "Tunguska Event" for clues to the impacting object. "2012 DA14 will definitely not hit Earth," emphasizes Yeomans. "The orbit of the asteroid is known well enough to rule out an impact."

In this oblique view, the path of near-Earth asteroid 2012 DA14 is seen passing close to Earth on Feb. 15, 2013.

 Even so, it will come interestingly close. NASA radars will be monitoring the space rock as it approaches Earth closer than many man-made satellites. Yeomans says the asteroid will thread the gap between low-Earth orbit, where the ISS and many Earth observation satellites are located, and the higher belt of geosynchronous satellites, which provide weather data and telecommunications.  "The odds of an impact with a satellite are extremely remote," he says. Almost nothing orbits where DA14 will pass the Earth.  NASA's Goldstone radar in the Mojave Desert is scheduled to ping 2012 DA14 almost every day from Feb. 16th through 20th. The echoes will not only pinpoint the orbit of the asteroid, allowing researchers to better predict future encounters, but also reveal physical characteristics such as size, spin, and reflectivity. A key outcome of the observing campaign will be a 3D radar map showing the space rock from all sides.  During the hours around closest approach, the asteroid will brighten until it resembles a star of 8th magnitude. Theoretically, that’s an easy target for backyard telescopes. The problem, points out Yeomans, is speed. “The asteroid will be racing across the sky, moving almost a full degree (or twice the width of a full Moon) every minute. That’s going to be hard to track.” Only the most experienced amateur astronomers are likely to succeed.  Those who do might experience a tiny chill when they look at their images. That really was a close shave.  For more information about 2012 DA14 and other asteroids of interest, visit NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program web site: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov - NASA.

WATCH: A new ScienceCast video previews the close flyby of asteroid 2012 DA.

FIRE IN THE SKY: Asteroid 2012 DA14 Will Come As Close As 14,000 Miles From The Earth In February!

January 05, 2013 - SPACE - CNN's Wolf Blitzer and meteorologist Chad Myers discuss the near-Earth asteroid 2012 DA14 in the following video.

NASA says that the asteroid 2012 DA14 will pass within about 3.5 Earth radii of the Earth's surface on February 15, 2013. It will pass inside the geosynchronous satellite ring, located about 35,800 kilometers (21,748 miles) above the equator. The impact energy is listed as 2.41 megatons of TNT. Fortunately, NASA says this asteroid is not Earth bound. The asteroid rates as a 0 on the Torino Scale impact hazard scale.

At its closest approach, Myers says the asteroid could be as close as 14,000 miles from the Earth. The small asteroid is estimated to be about 45 meters (about 150 feet) across. It is not likely to collide with any satellites. However, passing close to the Earth could cause the asteroid's orbit to change and bring it closer to Earth - or father away from Earth - on its next visit.

WATCH: Asteroid to fly between Earth and Moon.

CELESTIAL CONVERGENCE: Fire in the Sky and the Deep Impact - Asteroid 2012 DA14 Won't Hit Earth, NASA Says, But Don't Rule Out Satellites!

Space scientists at NASA have an eye on asteroid 2012 DA14. Why? The 45-meter-wide space rock is expected to come extremely close to Earth next year--on Feb. 15 to be exact--and just might take out a satellite in the process.

In this oblique view, the path of near-Earth asteroid 2012 DA14 is seen passing close to Earth on Feb. 15, 2013.

The asteroid will pass by satellites in geostationary orbit about 35,800 kilometers (22,245 miles) above the equator, reportedly putting a communications satellite at risk of being hit. "That's very unlikely, but we can't rule it out," Paul Chodas, a planetary astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told National Geographic. "The orbit for 2012 DA14 is currently very Earthlike, which means it will be very close to Earth on a regular basis." But other than the small possibility of smashing a satellite, the asteroid poses no serious threat. It has a tiny 0.033 percent--or 1 in 3,030--chance of Earth impact, according to data on NASA's website.


The space rock should, however, offer some cool skywatching. Good binoculars or a telescope are needed to view the flyby since the asteroid will appear faint to the naked eye. "Next year it will be nice to watch through a pair of binoculars, but there is nothing to worry about," Dr. Gerhard Drolshagen, a near-Earth object observer from the European Space Agency's Space Situational Awareness office, told the Press Association. "In future times the possibility of a collision cannot be completely excluded. It is highly unlikely, but the chance is greater than zero." If asteroid 2012 DA14 were to hit Earth, the impact would release the rock's energy of about 2.4 megatons (so think of an explosion around that same size--boom!) The asteroid was discovered by the La Sagra observatory in Spain, and isn't the only rock on NASA's radar. In observing asteroid activity, researchers recently identified about 4,700 near Earth that are "potentially hazardous" if they strike our planet. - Huffington Post.

WATCH: Asteroid 2012 DA14 Close Approach.

CELESTIAL CONVERGENCE: Fire in the Sky & Deep Impact - Near-Miss Asteroid to Return Even Closer Next Year!

An amateur team spotted the unusual asteroid, named 2012 DA14, on February 22. Its small size and orbit meant that it was observed only after it had flown past Earth at about seven times the distance of the Moon. However, current predictions indicate that on its next flyby, due on 15 February 2013, it will pass Earth at just 24 000 km - closer than many commercial satellites.

"This is a safe distance, but it is still close enough to make the asteroid visible in normal binoculars," said Detlef Koschny, responsible for near-earth objects in ESA's Space Situational Awareness (SSA) office. The asteroid was discovered by the La Sagra Sky Survey observatory, in the southeast of Spain, near Granada, at an altitude of 1700 m, one of the darkest, least light-polluted locations on the European mainland. "Considering its path in the morning sky, its rather fast angular motion, the quite faint and fading brightness and its orbit high above the plane of Earth's orbit, it was a slippery target - and easily could have escaped undetected during this Earth visit," said Jaime Nomen, one of the discoverers. "A preliminary orbit calculation shows that 2012 DA14 has a very Earth-like orbit with a period of 366.24 days, just one more day than our terrestrial year, and it 'jumps' inside and outside of the path of Earth two times per year."  While an impact with Earth has been ruled out on the asteroid's next visit, astronomers will use that close approach for more studies and calculate the Earth and Moon's gravitational effects on it. "We will also be keen to see the asteroid's resulting orbit after the next close approach in order to compute any future risk of impact," said Koschny.

The La Sagra Sky Survey is operated by the Observatorio Astronomico de Mallorca and has recently joined ESA's SSA programme. In the future it will provide observations to the asteroid data hub that ESA is developing. Together with information on space weather and debris, its information will help European scientists and policy-makers understand and assess hazards, particularly if an Earth-threatening asteroid is ever found. The discovery of 2012 DA14 is particularly significant for the Agency's SSA office, because it is typical of the estimated half a million undiscovered near-Earth objects up to 30 m across. "The goal is to be able to spot them at least three weeks before closest approach to Earth. We are developing a system of automated optical telescopes that can detect asteroids just like this one, with the goal of being able spot them at least three weeks before closest approach to Earth," said Koschny. To achieve this, ESA specialists supported by European industry are planning a network of 1 m-diameter telescopes with a combined field of view large enough to image the complete sky in one night. - Phenomenica.

WATCH: Orbital path of Asteroid 2012 DA14.

CELESTIAL CONVERGENCE: Fire in the Sky & Deep Impact - Out of the Blue, Deadly 197 Feet Asteroid 2012 DA14 B Could Collide With Earth in February, 2013?!

To avert a new apocalypse – this time set for February 2013 – scientists suggest confronting asteroid 2012 DA14 with either paint, or big guns. The tough part of either scheme is that time has long run out to build a spaceship for any operation. ­NASA confirms the 60-meter (197-feet) asteroid, spotted by Spanish stargazers in February, has a good chance of colliding with Earth in eleven months.

The rock's closest approach to the planet is scheduled for February 15, 2013, when the distance between the planet and space wanderer will be under 27,000 km (16,700 miles). This is lower than the geosynchronous orbit kept by the Google Maps satellite.

Fireworks and watercolors
With the asteroid zooming that low, it will be too late to do anything with it besides trying to predict its final destination and the consequences of impact. A spaceship is needed, experts agree. It could shoot the rock down or just crash into it, either breaking the asteroid into debris or throwing it off course. “We could paint it,” says NASA expert David Dunham. Paint would affect the asteroid’s ability to reflect sunlight, changing its temperature and altering its spin. The asteroid would stalk off its current course, but this could also make the boulder even more dangerous when it comes back in 2056, Aleksandr Devaytkin, the head of the observatory in Russia’s Pulkovo, told Izvestia.

Spaceship impossible?
Whatever the mission, building a spaceship to deal with 2012 DA14 will take two years – at least. The asteroid has proven a bitter discovery. It has been circling in orbit for three years already, crossing Earth’s path several times, says space analyst Sergey Naroenkov from the Russian Academy of Sciences. It seems that spotting danger from outer space is still the area where mere chance reigns, while asteroid defense systems exist only in drafts. Still, prospects of meeting 2012 DA14 are not all doom and gloom. “The asteroid may split into pieces entering the atmosphere. In this case, most part of it will never reach the planet’s surface,” remarks Dunham. But if the entire asteroid is to crash into the planet, the impact will be as hard as in the Tunguska blast, which in 1908 knocked down trees over a total area of 2,150 sq km (830 sq miles) in Siberia. This is almost the size of Luxembourg. In today’s case, the destination of the asteroid is yet to be determined. - RT.

WATCH: Orbital path of Asteroid 2012 DA14.

Here are several links that will provide more information on the asteroid:
JPL Orbital Diagram for DA14.

Earth Impact Risk Summary.


Impact Risk.

DWARF STAR/SECOND SUN & EXTRATERRESTRIAL MEMES: Red Dwarf Stars May Be Best Chance for Habitable Alien Planets!

Stars known as red dwarfs might have larger habitable zones friendly to ‘life as we know it’ than once thought, researchers say. Red dwarfs, also known as M stars, are dim compared to stars like our sun and are just 10 to 20 percent as massive. They make up roughly three-quarters of the stars in the galaxy, and recently scientists found red dwarfs are far more common than before thought, making up at least 80 percent of the total number of stars.

The fact that red dwarfs are so very common has made astrobiologists wonder if they might be the best chance for discovering planets habitable to life as we know it. More and more planets are getting discovered around red dwarfs — for instance, a potentially habitable "super-Earth" at least 4.5 times the mass of Earth, GJ 667Cb, was recently found orbiting the red dwarf GJ 667C. "More of these planets are being found, so research is moving from being theoretical and predictive to using actual data from extrasolar planets," said researcher Manoj Joshi, an atmospheric physicist at the University of East Anglia in England. The habitable zone of a star is defined by whether liquid water can survive on its surface, given that life exists virtually wherever there is liquid water on Earth. Too far from a star, and a world is too cold, freezing all its water; too close to a star, and a world is too hot, boiling all of its water off. [Vote Now! Strangest Recent Alien Planet Finds]

Since red dwarfs are so cold compared to our sun, planets would have to be very close in to be habitable to any life as we know it —  in many cases, less than the distance between Mercury and our sun. This closeness actually makes them appealing to hunters of alien worlds — planets near their stars eclipse them more often, making them easier to detect than planets that orbit farther away. However, being too close to a star can have its disadvantages. For instance, the gravitational pull of the star would cause tides that could wreak havoc on such a world, perhaps leading to a so-called "tidal Venus" scenario where it loses all of its surface water. Also, young red dwarfs less than 3 billion years old may be very active, firing off flares several times per day, causing ultraviolet radiation to jump by 100 to 10,000 times normal levels and potentially sterilizing the surface of a nearby planet or even helping to strip off its atmosphere. Now scientists find that planets may remain habitable farther away from a red dwarf than once thought. This in turn could mean there is a chance there are far more habitable worlds around red dwarfs than previously suspected. The habitability of a star depends on how warm or cold it is, which in turn rests in large part on how much starlight it absorbs and reflects. Frozen water such as ice and snow reflects light, which means it helps cool planets, including Earth. "If a rocky planet forms around an M-star and it has water on it, if it gets cold enough, that'll turn to ice or snow," Joshi said. "As for the odds of rocky planets forming around M-stars, Neptune- and sub-Neptune-sized objects have been found, so chances could be good."

The researchers modeled how reflective ice and snow would be on simulated planets orbiting two real-life red dwarfs. Ice and snow are less reflective against longer, redder wavelengths, while red dwarfs obviously have fairly red light to begin with. The scientists found that any such planets encircling red dwarf stars would absorb more of their light than previously thought, leading to significantly warmer surfaces. This means the outer edge of the habitable zone around red dwarfs might be 10 to 30 percent farther away from its parent zone than once suggested. "I was surprised that the effect was as large as it was," Joshi told Astrobiology Magazine. "The zone where liquid water is stable on a planet's surface is farther away from such stars than previously thought." Joshi cautioned they only looked at the effects of water ice and snow, when other kinds might be important when considering how much energy a planet absorbs and reflects, such as frozen carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane. Also, "we didn't look at the effects of atmospheric absorption of radiation by gases such as water vapor or carbon dioxide," he added. "That should be done in future." Joshi and Robert Haberle detailed their findings in the Jan. 23 issue of the journal Astrobiology. - SPACE.

CELESTIAL CONVERGENCE: Signs From the Heavens - Two Suns Photographed in the Republic of Crimea, Ukraine?! UPDATE: Two Suns Seen Over Taganrog as the High Strangeness in Russia Continues!

The following images of two suns in the daytime sky were taken in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Ukraine. It was originally posted on the Vseneprostotak webpage on February 11th, 2012 with the following description "These photos were taken this morning in the Crimea. I do not know how to explain this phenomenon."

UPDATE: Two Suns Seen Over Taganrog as the High Strangeness in Russia Continues!

Here's another sighting of two suns from the seaport city of Taganrog in Rostov, Oblast, Russia.

For more pictures, click HERE.

One can't be sure if these images have been "doctored" by using computer software like Adobe Photoshop; or if it is part of the natural atmospheric phenomenon parhelion, otherwise known as sun dog; or simply just photographic effects. One thing for sure, is that, there seems to be something really weird happening in Russia. I recently reported on a series of bizarre incidents in the Urals Mountains, Ufa, Bashkortostan, Novobureysky, and Chelyabinsk, where residents witnessed the strange appearance of crop circles, unidentified flying objects (UFOs), as well as dead carcasses of hares following the sighting of these aerial anomalies.

Residents in the remote village of Chelyabinsk, Russia, were interviewed on national TV about a UFO they'd witnessed recently. The footage does show a circular, unidentified flying object ringed by flashing lights which doesn't look like any known aircraft.


The remoteness of the area makes the possibility of some kind of private advertising service, or sky writing, unlikely. What is the object which has the citizens of the village too scared to sleep at night? In the TV news piece, naturally in Russian, it's clear what the witnesses are saying to the reporter, even without translation. A news crew films the area in which the UFO was flying at night and shows that, in the daylight, it's obviously a frozen wilderness and not any kind of an airfield.


The witnesses (an elderly farmer and a worried husband and wife with several children) appear to be remarking how the object was circular and that they feel a bit spooked by the incident. In the description written by the YouTube poster, there is the comment that the villagers are losing sleep over the encounter. It's obviously a big enough story, with some unanswered questions, to be taken seriously by a Russian news organization. What is it? - Gather.

WATCH: Strange UFO over Russia, the TV report.

Read more on these strange occurrences HERE.

SECOND SUN MEMES: EXOPLANETARY DISCOVERY - NASA's Kepler Mission Discovers 2 New Planets With Double Suns; Now 3 Such Known Systems in the Galaxy!

A team of NASA scientists has discovered two new planets, each of which revolves around its own double suns.

They are named Kepler-34b and Kepler-35b, and together with Kepler-16b, discovered last September, there are now three such known systems in the galaxy. While the phenomenon of binary stars has been well known for centuries, the recent discoveries prove that binary suns can also support planets. "This work further establishes that such 'two sun' planets are not rare exceptions, but may in fact be common, with many millions existing in our galaxy," said William Welsh of San Diego State University who led the study. "This discovery broadens the hunting ground for systems that could support life."


At 4,900 and 5,400 light years from Earth, located in the constellation Cygnus, Kepler-34b and Kepler-35b are among the most distant planets discovered by NASA's Kepler satellite. The findings were published recently in the journal Nature. Most suns in the universe exist in pairs, said Tsevi Mazeh of Tel Aviv University's Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics and director of the Wise Observatory. These partnerships closely resemble human relationships so that if two suns are formed together, they stay together, unless a third star comes too close to the pair and breaks the bond.


The two new planets are both gaseous Saturn-size planets. Kepler-34b orbits its two sun-like stars every 289 days, and the stars orbit one another every 28 days. Kepler-35b orbits its smaller and cooler host stars every 131 days, and the stellar pair orbit each other every 21 days. The planets reside too close to their parent stars to be in the "habitable zone" — the region where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface.


During sunsets on both planets, one sun will descend first, followed by a twilight period. Afterwards, the second sun will set and night will fall. Our solar system, which revolves around one sun, is more unusual, though we can't dismiss the possibility that our sun has an undiscovered distant companion, said Mazeh. "We shouldn't limit our search by assuming that all the planets are like those in our solar system. Some of them are very different from what we have here, and every time we find a new planet, we're explorers landing on unknown territory." - CBC.