Just How Pathetic Are The L.A. Clippers?

They haven't won one Western Conference championship let alone an NBA title, and this team thinks that it earns the right to hang banners—any kind of banners—along the same rafters at STAPLES Center as the Lakers, Kings and Sparks...all champions at some point in this century. Clearly, this lame move was the work of Boston transplant Doc Rivers, who's trying to prevent Chris Paul, Blake Griffin and company from being reminded that they still play in the House of Kobe and Gasol (plus Dustin Brown and Jonathan Quick for that matter). 'Kay, that's enough hatin' on Clipper Nation for now. Have a great weekend, everyone!


Evan Gole / Getty Images

Juno Update...

NASA / JPL - Caltech / Malin Space Science Systems / Adam Hurcewicz

Check out this cool photo of Earth that NASA's Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft took as it flew within 350 miles of our planet for a gravity assist maneuver on October 9. The image of the Moon above was also taken by Juno, but the pic below is a nice preview of how Jupiter will look once the spacecraft's "JunoCam" begins taking snapshots of the gas giant after Juno arrives there on July 4, 2016. Can't wait for that Independence Day!


NASA / JPL - Caltech / Malin Space Science Systems / Gerald - UnmannedSpaceFlight.com

Quote of the Day...

"Besides the obvious difference, there was not much distinction between losing a best friend and losing a lover: it was all about intimacy. One moment, you had someone to share your biggest triumphs and fatal flaws with; the next minute, you had to keep them bottled inside. One moment, you'd start to call her to tell her a snippet of news or to vent about your awful day before realizing you did not have that right anymore; the next, you could not remember the digits of her phone number."

-― Jodi Picoult

The Government Shutdown is Over! (For Now...)

In celebration of the fact that Congress has passed a budget (that will last at least till next January), just thought I'd post this amazing mosaic of Saturn that has been making its rounds around the Internet today. The images that comprise this portrait were taken on October 10 by the Cassini spacecraft, which—like New Horizons, the Curiosity Mars rover, Dawn, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Voyagers 1 and 2 as well as other deep space probes—has been collecting data despite the fact scientists were embargoed from publicly sharing scientific results due to the shutdown. That won't be the case for the next three months, unless Congress gets its act together and actually pass a real budget that will be good for you know, a full year?


NASA / JPL - Caltech / Space Science Institute / G. Ugarkovic

Endeavour Fest...

Yesterday, I drove down to the California Science Center in Los Angeles to view three displays that presented the past, present and future of aerospace and human spaceflight. Along with seeing space shuttle Endeavour and a SpaceX Dragon capsule in person once more (click here to view the photos), I also got to view up-close the Red Bull Stratos capsule from which Felix Baumgartner jumped out of during his historic space dive one year ago today. His pressure suit was also on display, and as you can see from the pic above, it looks like the suit would fit just right on me. Of course, I would need a bit of training and the multi-million dollar support of a company like Red Bull to make me become only the third person in humankind to skydive from outer space, hah. There's always SpaceShipTwo...and me winning the lottery to make that trip happen.

Quote of the Day, Part 2...

"It's much easier to not know things sometimes. Things change and friends leave. And life doesn't stop for anybody. I wanted to laugh. Or maybe get mad. Or maybe shrug at how strange everybody was, especially me. I think the idea is that every person has to live for his or her own life and then make the choice to share it with other people. You can't just sit there and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can't. You have to do things. I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to be who I really am. And I'm going to figure out what that is. And we could all sit around and wonder and feel bad about each other and blame a lot of people for what they did or didn't do or what they didn't know. I don't know. I guess there could always be someone to blame. It's just different. Maybe it's good to put things in perspective, but sometimes, I think that the only perspective is to really be there. Because it's okay to feel things. I was really there. And that was enough to make me feel infinite. I feel infinite."

-― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Quote of the Day...

"How is it possible to miss a woman whom you kept at a distance, so that when she was gone you would not miss her?"

-― Steve Martin, Shopgirl

Visiting Catalina Island...

So yesterday, I drove down to Dana Point in Orange County, California, to embark on a free boat ride to the tropical getaway of Catalina Island. The reason why this boat trip was free (it would've been a $75 round-trip otherwise) was because it was my birthday yesterday. For those of you thinking about visiting Catalina without paying a dime to board the Catalina Express, which is the primary form of travel to a destination that is only 22 miles off the coast of Los Angeles, you have till April 30th of next year to venture to the island without buying a boat pass. I only visited Avalon Bay on this trip...but what makes this locale so awesome is the fact that different parts of the harbor somewhat resemble different coastal regions around the world. If the photos posted with this Blog entry are any hopeful indication, you'll probably think that you're in Hawaii, a European town overlooking the Mediterranean, a beach in Florida and even a village near a South China Sea shoreline in Southeast Asia. But don't take my word for it— Visit this link to sign up for a free voyage to this Southern California tourist spot right away. And no, I wasn't paid by Catalina Express to promote that. Have a great weekend, everyone!

LINK: Click here for more images from my trip to Catalina Island

The Government Shutdown...

Just thought I'd share this pic that one of my friends posted on Facebook today...which sums up just how out of tune the Republican Party is with the American people. The last time the U.S. government shut down was back in 1995-'96...when another Democrat (Bill Clinton) was in the Oval Office—and the GOP wanted to reduce funding to Medicare (as opposed to currently wanting to do away with the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare), public health, education and other programs. It remains to be seen how long this nonsense will last (the '95 shutdown lasted 28 days), but at least the mail is still coming in! Should expect a paycheck or two by today or tomorrow.

On another shutdown-related note, NASA celebrated its 55th birthday on Tuesday...and marked this milestone by ceasing work on everything that didn't involve the International Space Station or robotic probes and satellites already operating out in space. These craft obviously don't include the MAVEN Mars orbiter, which is a little over a month from its scheduled launch date on November 18...but is currently sitting silent at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It remains to be seen if the shutdown will end in time for MAVEN to resume launch preps to meet its November lift-off date, or—like the Curiosity Mars rover (which was originally suppose to depart for the Red Planet in 2009 but had to wait till 2011 to leave Earth)—will have its flight delayed to the next launch opportunity to Mars...which won't be till 2016. If that's the case, then I'd have to thank Congress; for being a bunch of dumbasses. Carry on.

EDIT (3:13 PM, PDT): Looks like Congress isn't completely filled with imbeciles... NASA will be allowed to continue launch processing for the MAVEN spacecraft due to cost issues and the time-critical nature of this mission!

Kepler Update...

NASA / JPL - Caltech / MIT

NASA Space Telescopes Find Patchy Clouds on Exotic World (Press Release - September 30)

PASADENA, Calif. -- Astronomers using data from NASA's Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes have created the first cloud map of a planet beyond our solar system, a sizzling, Jupiter-like world known as Kepler-7b.

The planet is marked by high clouds in the west and clear skies in the east. Previous studies from Spitzer have resulted in temperature maps of planets orbiting other stars, but this is the first look at cloud structures on a distant world.

"By observing this planet with Spitzer and Kepler for more than three years, we were able to produce a very low-resolution 'map' of this giant, gaseous planet," said Brice-Olivier Demory of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Demory is lead author of a paper accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. "We wouldn't expect to see oceans or continents on this type of world, but we detected a clear, reflective signature that we interpreted as clouds."

Kepler has discovered more than 150 exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system, and Kepler-7b was one of the first. The telescope's problematic reaction wheels prevent it from hunting planets any more, but astronomers continue to pore over almost four years' worth of collected data.

Kepler's visible-light observations of Kepler-7b's moon-like phases led to a rough map of the planet that showed a bright spot on its western hemisphere. But these data were not enough on their own to decipher whether the bright spot was coming from clouds or heat. The Spitzer Space Telescope played a crucial role in answering this question.

Like Kepler, Spitzer can fix its gaze at a star system as a planet orbits around the star, gathering clues about the planet's atmosphere. Spitzer's ability to detect infrared light means it was able to measure Kepler-7b's temperature, estimating it to be between 1,500 and 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (1,100 and 1,300 Kelvin). This is relatively cool for a planet that orbits so close to its star -- within 0.06 astronomical units (one astronomical unit is the distance from Earth and the sun) -- and, according to astronomers, too cool to be the source of light Kepler observed. Instead, they determined, light from the planet's star is bouncing off cloud tops located on the west side of the planet.

"Kepler-7b reflects much more light than most giant planets we've found, which we attribute to clouds in the upper atmosphere," said Thomas Barclay, Kepler scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "Unlike those on Earth, the cloud patterns on this planet do not seem to change much over time -- it has a remarkably stable climate."

The findings are an early step toward using similar techniques to study the atmospheres of planets more like Earth in composition and size.

"With Spitzer and Kepler together, we have a multi-wavelength tool for getting a good look at planets that are trillions of miles away," said Paul Hertz, director of NASA's Astrophysics Division in Washington. "We're at a point now in exoplanet science where we are moving beyond just detecting exoplanets, and into the exciting science of understanding them."

Kepler identified planets by watching for dips in starlight that occur as the planets transit, or pass in front of their stars, blocking the light. This technique and other observations of Kepler-7b previously revealed that it is one of the puffiest planets known: if it could somehow be placed in a tub of water, it would float. The planet was also found to whip around its star in just less than five days.

Explore all 900-plus exoplanet discoveries with NASA's "Eyes on Exoplanets," a fully rendered 3D visualization tool, available for download at http://eyes.nasa.gov/exoplanets. The program is updated daily with the latest findings from NASA's Kepler mission and ground-based observatories around the world as they search for planets like our own.

Other authors include: Julien de Wit, Nikole Lewis, Andras Zsom and Sara Seager of Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Jonathan Fortney of the University of California, Santa Cruz; Heather Knutson and Jean-Michel Desert of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena; Kevin Heng of the University of Bern, Switzerland; Nikku Madhusudhan of Yale University, New Haven, Conn.; Michael Gillon of the University of Liège, Belgium; Vivien Parmentier of the French National Center for Scientific Research, France; and Nicolas Cowan of Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. Lewis is also a NASA Sagan Fellow.

The technical paper is online at http://www.mit.edu/~demory/preprints/kepler-7b_clouds.pdf.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

Ames is responsible for Kepler's ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. JPL managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes Kepler science data. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery Mission and was funded by the agency's Science Mission Directorate.

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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NASA