Time Lapsed: BBC Creatures of the Deep

I saw video a few months ago. The first thing that caught my attention was that it doesn't look like it was shot underwater all - everything is so clear and colorful. It made me thinking that we, living in land is not much different from them under deep. Like these underwater creatures, we are also living in an ocean of air- our atmosphere.  It make sense now to me now that the same as water pressure increase as we go deeper same as atmospheric pressure decreases as we go to higher altitudes. All because of gravity.

One more thought coming to mind while I watching the full BBC Life episode is about alien life. It seems that alien life from other planets might be more probable to look like these creatures in the deep (if you have seen the movie The Abyss great movie btw) rather than what we normally see in most sci-fi movies- a humanoid.

Just recently Cassini captured pictures of what appears to look like water vapor erupting from the surface of Enceladus. This supports more to the claims that liquid are under the water under the icy sheets of some solar system moons including Europa of  Jupiter. And when there is liquid water, there is life- or at least that how it is on earth.

If you want to continue watching the full BBC documentary, see it from youtube links below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59ET-I3mJhM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjF7KvaUFSU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjrX8R3RGcA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asoU8QFR8Sw

Total Lunar Eclipse: December 10-11, 2011

The second lunar eclipse of 2011 will be again visible in its entirety from the Philippines. I enjoyed the last one last July.  I was working at night shift then so I went out several times to see it and took more than my allowed break time.  

This eclipse is quite a short one, with totality lasting 51 minutes.Total eclipse is early at 10:31PM so many will still be awake to witness it.  Here is the timeline of this event.

You can also watch the countdown and full broadcast of live coverage online from  SLOOH.com

The Book That Got Me Into This

I stumbled upon this picture of a  front cover of a book today.

I bought a paperback, pocketbook copy of this  9 years ago. It was from a second hand bookstore in Baguio being sold for about 50 pesos. I was just looking for pass time reading and not particularly about astronomy back then but the moment I started with first page, I was caught to it until the end.

Its is mainly about stellar evolution as well as the general theory of relativity, Einstein-Rosen bridge, and wormholes in spacetime explained in non technical terms. Its also has lots of  illustrations which I appreciated so much.

I picked up a lot from it and this propelled me back to my early wonder on astronomy

This book is a classic. Shame that I was not able to preserve it well. I still have it somewhere, but the last time I saw it, some pages were taken out by termites.

Blooper Today: Uranus

FYI : The answer is Uranus - after the ancient Greek deity of the sky. And many astronomers today (prefer to) pronounce it as "youruh-nus" instead of "your-anus"

Read more Uranus jokes here.