Postcards from Jupiter.

Jupiter is offered as seen in the night sky of Auckland. Which is an indicator that summer is beckoning. With that in mind that could means suggestions of the swimming, surfing,  the beach and warm weather activities. For us Southern Hemisperers more sunshine after two seasons of deprive sunlight. Yes!…. more sunlight, thawing us out from winter. I can hear the dripping water drops already!

When viewing Jupiter for the very first time, it’s is breathtaking as to for Saturn, Omega Centauri, Orion’s Nebula, and many more in the night sky. For the very first time, you could see band of divisions colours pallettes of browns  to light kakai, when looking further, with a stronger lens, you could make out the, storms, the layering of sheer gaseous steaming atomsphere. Other thing is that it’s one of the brightest stella objects in the night sky due to it’s large reflective sphereical volume.  next to Venus, making the rusty Mars looks, well light red dull in comparsion.

Other mind numbing  breathtaking aspect is looking back in time, due to that it takes time for packets of light/ photons to travel over extended distance to reach to your eyes.  For Jupiter it’s only least two hours reflect one way, so when  texting, Facebooking, twittering back expect delays, and a very large power and phone bill. But if you do the math of considering that the velocity of light is constant, using Velocity= Distance over Time, figuring out time is Time=Distance over Velocity! and there you go the Time it takes to your messaging from Jupiter.

Being the fifth planet in the Solar system. Jupiter can be seen during the night sky rising from the east to west like most other planets, behaves in the same manner in the Southern Hemisphere. Unless you’re Pluto, which decides to be the cool trendy, rebellious one out there having it’s own slightly angle  path from the others.

Jupiter’s atmosphere is not Kyoto Protocol friendly. The atmospheric gases contains Methane, Ethane, Hydrogen, Ammonia, water, and other minor gases.  Jupiter itself is pretty much of a violent environmental beautiful disater, then again Jupiter hardly sign up for the Protocol after all, then again it’s a gasous Planet.

 Within the shears of layers of Jupiter’s atmosphere, it become even more dense. An internal  core  containing seas of  liquid metallic Hydrogen.  Other features of Jupiter is the red-eye which is the best feature of the Planet, which is an ongoing storm having a size of larger than Earth, which definitely out storm any Earth’s  cyclone or hurricane.

Jupiter has four main moons, which is larger than our, Earth’s own moon Lunar. the first four Castillo, Ganymede, Europa, and Io plus sixty other moons.  Some are susceptive of containing the traces of life forms.  Some say that Jupiter and Saturn are keeping a tally of saying whom have the most moons! Then again the numbers are ever so rise on discovery.

Jupiter itself is a natural defensive system for Earth, it deters asteroids into itself, away from Earth. This is due to the immense nature of Gravity it has to pull objects into clouded stomach, something like a big brother protecting  it’s smaller brothers and sisters. like the Shoemaker Levy incident which has been one of the astronomical highlights of the late twentieth Century   One unquiet aspect of Jupiter, it has a ring which expanse ever so slim that its other brother Saturn which is ever so promenade profound. Hadn’t for the largest two Planets Jupiter and Saturn Earth would be a different place right now, past,  present and future.

Jupiter will be up for till the end of the Auckland’s summer night season, till then another promande object in the night sky will prevail Saturn, with is own story… that’s yet to be fortold!

Armageddon 2009 | AKL

Armageddon 2009,  is Auckland version of Comic Con. In which happens every year in the late months of October. This year it has a much larger convention center than the last location which outgrew itself due to the popularity due to the same as the San Diego Comic Con which has now grew into  three convention centers, pretty much the same  as the Auckland one, going from to five times the size.

Auckland Armageddon is pretty much like Comic Con SD, but only smaller, it has the Cosplays, Computer gaming on all platforms, the panels of Actors, and merchandising stalls of sorts, which have grown diversity in the range of products. well all of the awesomeness spirit of well-being Comic Con with all.

The photos taken are a little much like JJ Abrams, shuttering and Jerky, at the time, I was using my first digital camera HP 435, 3.3MP,  and 5xzoom. But my degree of photography isn’t that great, at that time, due to the equipment or without a decent tripod. or simply that I’ve may have way too… many energy drinks on that day!

Armageddon is pretty much an annual event, a tradition for me.  Also for the place where I work at the Stardome planetarium  Obseveratory.  Traditionally we run a stall promoting what Stardome is promoting Astronomy, the planetarium Ether and Suther shows on a Digstar 4 systems. It’s also about, meeting  great exciting people too!   Oh, there’s another thing to shopping for hard to find awesome stuff that’s not yet in retail yet which is a treat.

The gaming is immense with game houses, Sony Playstation, Microsoft 360’s EA, Electronic Arts, Rocstar games, and there are lots loads more. Another part of gaming is the card gaming, like WOW, War of Warcraft. Pokemon, Dungeon and Dragons.  Most of the time I just stand there and watch and learn, seldom when’s ever there’s  an opening……. it’s all game on!

This year it’ll be a little different, the first year of Armageddon at ASB Expo’  everyone  was at this stage experimenting, trying, testing it out, see what works, what doesn’t and what improvements can be made from going to a large venue from small one…..

When October comes, I’ll blog it, and let you know how this years differs from the last!