More cool science & astronomy photos and images from Bad Astronomy

I am not in a good mood today. As I wrote earlier, elsewhere, I am not wearing my happy face today.  Blah, it is all just a messy mud puddle of fear, ego, and insecurity.

Pretty pictures.  These should help...

October’s solar blast, seen from the side | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine: 

The energy and raw power of this event is staggering: a billion tons of matter was hurled away from the Sun at several million kilometers per hour. This completely dwarfs into nothing all of humankind’s energy output, and is vastly greater than the explosive yield of all nuclear weapons at the height of the Cold War combined.

And during its active phase, the Sun tosses these things off like a gourmand barely stifles a belch.

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Tripping the light fantastic | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine:
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NASA spies the birth throes of a new iceberg | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine:

This is wonderful science, studying how our dynamic planet changes over time. And to get to see such an amazing event as it’s just getting started is very exciting! You can see other pictures from this flight on the NASA Ice Flickr page, and I suggest you do: the images are really cool (har har) and the science they’re doing is important — as the Earth warms (and it is) our ice is disappearing. Missions like IceBridge will help us understand how that is happening and what the effects are.

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