Dwarfed Wavemaker

Like a proud peacock displaying its tail, Enceladus shows off its beautiful plume to the Cassini spacecraft's cameras.

Enceladus (313 miles, or 504 kilometers across) is seen here illuminated by light reflected off Saturn.

This view looks toward the Saturn-facing side of Enceladus. North on Enceladus is up and rotated 45 degrees to the right. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Jan. 18, 2013.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 483,000 miles (777,000 kilometers) from Enceladus and at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 173 degrees. Image scale is 3 miles (5 kilometers) per pixel.

Magic Carpet

It’s the new WALLYCENTO ”Magic Carpet Cubed” training in Palma.

Baja Ha-Ha

If you've been itching to pull the trigger on your Mexico cruising dreams, today is the day to commit. Online registration for the 20th Baja Ha-Ha cruisers' rally begins RIGHT NOW — noon on Monday, May 1.

If you're a regular reader you already know that the Ha-Ha is a 750-mile rally from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas, with two stops along the way at Bahia Tortugas and Bahia Santa Maria. During the 20 years since the inaugural event, in October of 1994, the Ha-Ha has grown to be one of the largest cruising rallies in the world, drawing between 160 and 180 boats a year.

This year's dates are October 27-November 9. To celebrate the 20-year milestone, the Rally Committee is cooking up some special added activities, and there will undoubtedly be many 'repeat offenders' who'll come back to run the course again. In fact, several will take a break from cruising Mexico to start their trek all over again.

Of course once in Mexico, most boater spend the summer sailing the warm waters or continue to head south to the other America's or do the 'puddle jump' to Tahiti. Of course heading north is an option, that is known as the Baja Bash. Bashing back north is a lot harder since you are going into the winds and weather rather than running down the coast.

Singlehanded Sailing Society RRR

The Singlehanded Sailing Society, with a little help from their friends at Berkeley YC, sent 100 boats Round the Rocks on Saturday. Besides the Rock (Alcatraz), Harding Rock, Red Rock and the Brothers served as marks on this Bay tour.

Despite a raging flood, which was especially challenging at Harding Rock, the first finishers made it around the course in less than four hours. Darren Doud and Chris 'Lew' Lewis finished first and corrected out to first in Doublehanded Multihulls in the Corsair 31 Roshambo. The first monohull to finish and first Doublehanded Monohull overall was the JS9000 JetStream with Dan Alvarez and Rob Blackmore.

The first singlehander to finish was Jonathan Livingston on the Wylie 39 Punk Dolphin, but Steve Wonner's Wyliecat 30 Uno corrected out to first place overall. Jeff Dunnavent and Andrew Moore on the J/35 Jarlen smoked not only the entire Non-Spinnaker fleet, but most of the spinnaker boats as well. The trophy ceremony for the Round Rocks Race on May 8 will coincide with the skippers' meeting for May 18's Singlehanded Farallones Race.

New AC72 out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ItiZuU64pnc

A day after the official launch, ORACLE TEAM USA took their second AC72 out on the San Francisco Bay for the first sail.

“We did some tacks, some gybes. We foiled pretty much on the first downwind run we did, which was hard to avoid,” said trimmer Dirk de Ridder. “The boat’s very stiff, so that makes life just easier.”

“Awesome day,” said skipper Jimmy Spithill. “The boat felt fantastic. Very quickly we took it up to maximum load, the boat felt very stiff, very responsive, very quick.”

My brother saw the Oracle one and two out match racing each other. Said it was something to see... Soon all the AC 72's will be in town and out on the water flying, can't wait to see them first hand.

Palomar 2

Palomar 2 is part of a group of 15 globulars known as the Palomar clusters. These clusters, as the name suggests, were discovered in survey plates from the first Palomar Observatory Sky Survey in the 1950s, a project that involved some of the most well-known astronomers of the day, including Edwin Hubble. They were discovered quite late because they are so faint -- each is either extremely remote, very heavily hidden behind blankets of dust, or has a very small number of remaining stars.

This particular cluster is unique in more than one way. For one, it is the only globular cluster that we see in this part of the sky, the northern constellation of Auriga (The Charioteer). Globular clusters orbit the center of a galaxy like the Milky Way in the same way that satellites circle around the Earth. This means that they normally lie closer in to the galactic center than we do, and so we almost always see them in the same region of the sky. Palomar 2 is an exception to this, as it is around five times further away from the center of the Milky Way than other clusters. It also lies in the opposite direction -- further out than Earth -- and so it is classed as an "outer halo" globular.

It is also unusual due to its apparent dimness. The cluster is veiled by a mask of dust, dampening the apparent brightness of the stars within it and making it appear as a very faint burst of stars. The stunning NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows Palomar 2 in a way that could not be captured from smaller or ground-based telescopes -- some amateur astronomers with large telescopes attempt to observe all of the obscure and well-hidden Palomar 15 as a challenge, to see how many they can pick out from the starry sky.

PV Cep

The Universe is rarely static, although the timescales involved can be very long. Since modern astronomical observations began we have been observing the birthplaces of new stars and planets, searching for and studying the subtle changes that help us to figure out what is happening within.

The bright spot located at the edge of the bluish fan-shaped structure in this Hubble image is a young star called V* PV Cephei, or PV Cep. It is a favorite target for amateur astronomers because the fan-shaped nebulosity, known as GM 1-29 or Gyulbudaghian’s Nebula, changes over a timescale of months. The brightness of the star has also varied over time.

Images of PV Cep taken in 1952 showed a nebulous streak, similar to a comet’s tail. However, this had vanished when new images of the star were obtained some twenty-five years later. Instead, the blue fan-shaped nebula had appeared. Twenty-five years is a very short period on cosmic timescales, so astronomers think that the mysterious streak may have been a temporary phenomenon, such as the remnants of a massive stellar flare — similar to the solar flares we are used to seeing in the solar system.

At the same time as this was happening, the star itself was brightening. This provided the light to illuminate the newly formed fan-shaped nebula. This brightening might be related to the start of the hydrogen-burning phase of the star, which would mean that it was reaching maturity.

PV Cep is thought to be surrounded by a disc of gas and dust, which would stop light from escaping in all directions. The fan-like appearance is therefore probably a result of starlight escaping from the dust disc and projecting onto the nebula.

PV Cep is located in the northern constellation of Cepheus at a distance of over 1600 light-years from Earth.

May Day

Historians generally agree that May Day celebrations probably originated in the spring fertility rites of ancient Rome, which occurred at about the same time of year marking celebrations honoring the goddess of spring, Flora.
May Day is a name for various holidays celebrated on May 1 (or in the beginning of May), the most famous one being Labour Day. May Day is exactly a half-year from November 1, All Saints' Day. Marking the end of the uncomfortable winter half of the year in the Northern hemisphere, it has always been an occasion for popular and often raucous celebrations, regardless of the political or religious establishment. May Day was also originally the Celtic holiday 'Beltane' or 'Beltaine', the "Return of the Sun". It is the third and last of the spring festivals. We can see traces of Beltaine when dancing around the maypole or sending a basket of flowers to your neighbor's door. May Day is a time to celebrate the onset of May, the month that sees the Earth reaching itself ready to burgeon to its maximum capacity.

The Finnish celebrate May Day with picnics, carnivals, and by wearing a special hat. Lately, it has become a day for politicians to give important speeches.

The Irish celebrate May Day by lighting huge bonfires to commemorate the end of winter. They also participate in a huge feast called Bealtaine.

Ever since King Charles IX received a "lily of the valley" flower on this day in 1561, it has become a tradition for individuals to exchange these flowers. Often, they are picked and given to a lover, and the government allows them to be sold on May Day free of taxation.

Bad Bolts

Faced with uncertainty over bad bolts, fundraising for the Bay Bridge’s big Labor Day opening bash has been put on hold.

 For weeks, officials have been scrambling to figure out just what caused 32 giant bolts — used to attach earthquake stabilizers to the bridge — to snap. They also are trying to determine if the problem was limited to the galvanizing process used on one set of bolts or if it might extend to hundreds of other bolts used in the construction of the $6.4 billion eastern span.

Transit officials desperately hope the bridge can open on time over Labor Day, because they need to shut the entire bridge for five full days to finalize work on the eastern span. A three-day weekend, when traffic is light anyway, is an ideal time.

NGC 6240

Scientists have used Chandra to make a detailed study of an enormous cloud of hot gas enveloping two large, colliding galaxies. This unusually large reservoir of gas contains as much mass as 10 billion Suns, spans about 300,000 light years, and radiates at a temperature of more than 7 million degrees.

This giant gas cloud, which scientists call a "halo," is located in the system called NGC 6240. Astronomers have long known that NGC 6240 is the site of the merger of two large spiral galaxies similar in size to our own Milky Way. Each galaxy contains a supermassive black hole at its center. The black holes are spiraling toward one another, and may eventually merge to form a larger black hole.

Another consequence of the collision between the galaxies is that the gas contained in each individual galaxy has been violently stirred up. This caused a baby boom of new stars that has lasted for at least 200 million years. During this burst of stellar birth, some of the most massive stars raced through their evolution and exploded relatively quickly as supernovas.

The scientists involved with this study argue that this rush of supernova explosions dispersed relatively high amounts of important elements such as oxygen, neon, magnesium, and silicon into the hot gas of the newly combined galaxies. According to the researchers, the data suggest that this enriched gas has slowly expanded into and mixed with cooler gas that was already there.

During the extended baby boom, shorter bursts of star formation have occurred. For example, the most recent burst of star formation lasted for about five million years and occurred about 20 million years ago in Earth’s timeframe. However, the authors do not think that the hot gas was produced just by this shorter burst.

What does the future hold for observations of NGC 6240? Most likely the two spiral galaxies will form one young elliptical galaxy over the course of millions of years. It is unclear, however, how much of the hot gas can be retained by this newly formed galaxy, rather than lost to surrounding space. Regardless, the collision offers the opportunity to witness a relatively nearby version of an event that was common in the early Universe when galaxies were much closer together and merged more often.

In this new composite image of NGC 6240, the X-rays from Chandra that reveal the hot gas cloud are colored purple. These data have been combined with optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope, which shows long tidal tails from the merging galaxies, extending to the right and bottom of the image.

A paper describing these new results on NGC 6240 is available online and appeared in the March 10, 2013 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.