Karst terrain on Earth occurs when water dissolves layers of bedrock, leaving dramatic rock outcroppings and sinkholes. Comparing images of White Canyon in Utah, the Darai Hills of Papua New Guinea, and Guangxi Province in China to an area of connected valleys and ridges on Titan known as Sikun Labyrinthus yields eerie similarities. The materials may be different - liquid methane and ethane on Titan instead of water, and probably some slurry of organic molecules on Titan instead of rock - but the processes are likely quite similar.
“Even though Titan is an alien world with much lower temperatures, we keep learning how many similarities there are to Earth,” said Karl Mitchell, a Cassini radar team associate at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “The karst-like landscape suggests there is a lot happening right now under the surface that we can’t see.”
Indeed, Mitchell said, if the karst landscape on Titan is consistent with Earth’s, there could very well be caves under the Titan surface.
Work on these analogies was spearheaded by Mike Malaska of Chapel Hill, N.C., an organic chemist by trade and a contributor in his spare time to unmannedspaceflight.com, a Web site for amateur space enthusiasts to try their hand at visualizing NASA data. Malaska approached radar team member Jani Radebaugh at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, about collaborative work after meeting her at last year’s Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.
The BBC reports UUP leader Reg Empey’s comments this evening - “If we can deal with parades, why can’t we deal with education? And we are looking at this as a litmus test of whether the Executive is going to be capable of taking on any more powers”.
On Thursday, Sir Reg said: “The Ulster Unionist Party has long stated its concerns at the dysfunctional nature of the Executive, and we are determined to address its most glaring example - the failure to deal with the crisis in education.
“There is a shocking contrast between daily meetings to discuss parades, and the failure of the Executive to discuss education for two whole years.
“If the Executive cannot fix education - a power we currently have - then it is certainly not in any position to take on something as important as policing and justice,” he said.
When the Speaker informed the NI Assembly yesterday that Peter Robinson had decided to return “to exercise the functions of the office of First Minister”, a point of order from the SDLP’s Alex Attwood - calling for the publication of legal opinion which Peter Robinson has stated clears his name - was met with short shrift, “Those are matters for the First Minister to deal with.” As the BBC noted. However, today in the Assembly, Alex Attwood was back. This time armed with a copy of Erskine May. And he got a much different response from the Speaker. As this clip from BBC NI’s Stormont Live shows. Of course the NI Secretary of State, Shaun Woodward, has already stated that he thinks that the First Minister “has cleared his name.” Although, it’s not clear whether he’s seen that legal opinion…
Hubble’s view isn’t sharp enough to see craters or mountains, if they exist on the surface, but Hubble reveals a complex-looking and variegated world with white, dark-orange, and charcoal-black terrain. The overall color is believed to be a result of ultraviolet radiation from the distant Sun breaking up methane that is present on Pluto’s surface, leaving behind a dark, molasses-colored, carbon-rich residue. Astronomers were very surprised to see that Pluto’s brightness has changed — the northern pole is brighter and the southern hemisphere is darker and redder. Summer is approaching Pluto’s north pole, and this may cause surface ices to melt and refreeze in the colder shadowed portion of the planet. The Hubble pictures underscore that Pluto is not simply a ball of ice and rock but a dynamic world that undergoes dramatic atmospheric changes.
Below the fold astronomers explain the significance of the revealed changes. In the meantime, as spotted at WiredScience, here’s an animation of the latest Hubble images of Pluto. Video Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Buie (Southwest Research Institute).
Adds For a rough comparison here is the Nasa/Esa animation of the Hubble images taken in 1994. These images were taken in blue light when Pluto was at a distance of 3 billion miles from Earth.
Astronomers explain the significance of new Hubble images revealing changes on the surface of Pluto. Video Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Estacion (STScI).
New Horizons will pass by Pluto so quickly that only one hemisphere will be photographed in detail. Particularly noticeable in the Hubble images is a bright spot that has been independently noted to be unusually rich in carbon monoxide frost. It is a prime target for New Horizons. “Everybody is puzzled by this feature,” Buie said. New Horizons will get an excellent look at the boundary between this bright feature and a nearby region covered in pitch-black surface material.
“The Hubble images also will help New Horizons scientists better calculate the exposure time for each Pluto snapshot which is important for taking the most detailed pictures possible,” Buie said. With no chance for re-exposures, accurate models for the surface of Pluto are essential for properly exposed images.
The Hubble images surface variations a few hundred miles across that are too coarse for understanding surface geology. But in terms of surface color and brightness, Hubble reveals a complex-looking world with white, dark-orange and charcoal-black terrain. The overall color is believed to be a result of ultraviolet radiation from the distant sun breaking up methane present on Pluto’s surface, leaving behind a dark and red-carbon-rich residue.
Nasa’s Mars Exploration Rover, Spirit, has been stuck in soft soil on Mars since May last year. After failing to free it in the months since, NASA has now designated the once-roving scientific explorer “a stationary science platform”. Below the fold JPL news celebrates 6 years of roving by the “little rover who could”. But first, here’s a short compilation of the sights they’ve seen.
Northern Ireland Acting First Minister, the DUP’s Arlene Foster, MLA, responds to the comments by Sinn Féin vice-president Mary Lou McDonald - noted by Eamonn earlier.
“The sort of deadline that has been given by Sinn Fein is very, very unhelpful and we may have reached the point where we need government facilitation in relation to move matters on.”
“We’ve had a team of negotiators sitting around all day waiting to talk to Sinn Fein about the outstanding issues and they have not been here,” she said.
“Sinn Fein’s position seems to be that they expect us to move to them. That’s simply not how negotiations work,” Mrs [Foster] told UTV.
“There’s been a certain element of stone-walling going on.
“What we want to see is a real resolution of the outstanding issues.
“We’re up to do this deal. We want to see it happen.
“But I have to say, I question Sinn Féin’s bona fides in all of this.”
The new galaxies, along with other recent discoveries like the violent supernova explosion of a star only 620 million years after the Big Bang, take astronomers deep into a period of cosmic history known as the dark ages, which has been little explored. It was then that stars and galaxies were starting to light up vigorously in larger and larger numbers and that a fog of hydrogen that had enveloped space after the Big Bang fires had cooled mysteriously dissipated.
“These are the seeds of the great galaxies of today,” said Garth Illingworth of the University of California, Santa Cruz, who discussed the new galaxies last week at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington. “We are pushing Hubble to the limit to find these objects.” Richard Ellis of the California Institute of Technology, one of many astronomers who have been working with the observations, said, “We’re reaching the beginning where galaxies formed for the first time.”
The Swift satellite detection of gamma-rays from an exploding star in a galaxy “only 625 million years after the Big Bang” mentioned in the NY Times article was noted previously - “the last blank bit of the map of the universe”
The BBC reports that NI Finance Minister, the DUP’s Sammy Wilson, has outlined “how £367m is going to be cut from the NI budget next year.”
Mr Wilson said water charges would continue to be deferred in 2010-11, at a cost of £213m to the executive. The Department of Health faces cuts of £113.5m and the Department of Regional Development faces cuts of £80.3m.
A couple of short clips of events in the Northern Ireland Assembly today, via BBC NI’s Stormont Live. Below the fold Speaker Will Hay informs the Assembly that DETI Minister Arlene Foster is to act-up as the interim NI First Minister. And here is the acting NI First Minister, the DUP’s Arlene Foster, making her first short statement and answering her first question in the role - there a slight glitch in the recording at the end, but listen out for the insufficiently independent departmental solicitor’s opinion. AddsHansard record here
The Acting First Minister: I thank the Member for her question. First of all, the Departmental Solicitor’s Office has already considered the allegations made in the ‘Spotlight’ programme and advised Peter Robinson that he was not in breach of the ministerial code, the Pledge of Office, the ministerial code of conduct or the seven principles of public life. It is important to say that first of all. As well as that, Peter Robinson has now written to the Chairpersons of the Committees on Standards and Privileges in both Westminster and the Assembly to ask them to conduct a full investigation into the allegation made by the BBC ‘Spotlight’ programme. It needs to be made very clear that the process that the First Minister has asked to be initiated involving senior counsel is not intended to be an alternative to other processes that may, and undoubtedly will, be carried out.
As Mick has said, and this UTV report reiterates, Peter Robinson has “asked officials in the OFMDFM to look at the allegations and indicate whether the First Minister should have been responsible for disclosing the information to the Assembly or Westminster.” Although, I’m not entirely convinced that the departmental solicitor’s opinion will be a sufficiently independent response to what the Guardian’s Michael White identifies as the political problem - “the political problem is transparency and accountability in a world which now demands it even in Northern Ireland, as it does for the once untouchable Adams.” Anyway, here’s UTV’s Ken Reid’s interview with NI First Minister, the DUP’s Peter Robinson.
This month’s Nature’s cover story of the discovery in southeast Poland of “a trackway and an isolated footprint that were made by early four-legged land vertebrates (tetrapods) almost 400 million years ago” - 18 million years older than the earliest known tetrapod body fossils, and 10 million years older than the oldest elpistostegids - prompts The Guardian’s Adam Rutherford to celebrate “the intellectual freedom of pure research that led them to this awesome discovery.” Which may be a bit of a stretch… The BBC report provides some of the detail from the Nature story. An earlier Guardian article adds
Ahlberg and his co-authors, mainly from the Polish Geological Institute in Warsaw, say their findings highlight how little we know of the earliest history of land vertebrates. They write that the prints “force a radical reassessment of the timing, ecology and environmental setting of the fish-tetrapod transition, as well as the completeness of the body fossil record”.
List of 25 Blasphemous Quotes Published by Atheist Ireland
1. Jesus Christ, when asked if he was the son of God, in Matthew 26:64: “Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.” According to the Christian Bible, the Jewish chief priests and elders and council deemed this statement by Jesus to be blasphemous, and they sentenced Jesus to death for saying it.
2. Jesus Christ, talking to Jews about their God, in John 8:44: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.” This is one of several chapters in the Christian Bible that can give a scriptural foundation to Christian anti-Semitism. The first part of John 8, the story of “whoever is without sin cast the first stone”, was not in the original version, but was added centuries later. The original John 8 is a debate between Jesus and some Jews. In brief, Jesus calls the Jews who disbelieve him sons of the Devil, the Jews try to stone him, and Jesus runs away and hides.
3. Muhammad, quoted in Hadith of Bukhari, Vol 1 Book 8 Hadith 427: “May Allah curse the Jews and Christians for they built the places of worship at the graves of their prophets.” This quote is attributed to Muhammad on his death-bed as a warning to Muslims not to copy this practice of the Jews and Christians. It is one of several passages in the Koran and in Hadith that can give a scriptural foundation to Islamic anti-Semitism, including the assertion in Sura 5:60 that Allah cursed Jews and turned some of them into apes and swine.
4. Mark Twain, describing the Christian Bible in Letters from the Earth, 1909: “Also it has another name - The Word of God. For the Christian thinks every word of it was dictated by God. It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies… But you notice that when the Lord God of Heaven and Earth, adored Father of Man, goes to war, there is no limit. He is totally without mercy - he, who is called the Fountain of Mercy. He slays, slays, slays! All the men, all the beasts, all the boys, all the babies; also all the women and all the girls, except those that have not been deflowered. He makes no distinction between innocent and guilty… What the insane Father required was blood and misery; he was indifferent as to who furnished it.” Twain’s book was published posthumously in 1939. His daughter, Clara Clemens, at first objected to it being published, but later changed her mind in 1960 when she believed that public opinion had grown more tolerant of the expression of such ideas. That was half a century before Fianna Fail and the Green Party imposed a new blasphemy law on the people of Ireland.
5. Tom Lehrer, The Vatican Rag, 1963: “Get in line in that processional, step into that small confessional. There, the guy who’s got religion’ll tell you if your sin’s original. If it is, try playing it safer, drink the wine and chew the wafer. Two, four, six, eight, time to transubstantiate!”
6. Randy Newman, God’s Song, 1972: “And the Lord said: I burn down your cities - how blind you must be. I take from you your children, and you say how blessed are we. You all must be crazy to put your faith in me. That’s why I love mankind.”
7. James Kirkup, The Love That Dares to Speak its Name, 1976: “While they prepared the tomb I kept guard over him. His mother and the Magdalen had gone to fetch clean linen to shroud his nakedness. I was alone with him… I laid my lips around the tip of that great cock, the instrument of our salvation, our eternal joy. The shaft, still throbbed, anointed with death’s final ejaculation.” This extract is from a poem that led to the last successful blasphemy prosecution in Britain, when Denis Lemon was given a suspended prison sentence after he published it in the now-defunct magazine Gay News. In 2002, a public reading of the poem, on the steps of St. Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square, failed to lead to any prosecution. In 2008, the British Parliament abolished the common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel.
8. Matthias, son of Deuteronomy of Gath, in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, 1979: “Look, I had a lovely supper, and all I said to my wife was that piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah.”
9. Rev Ian Paisley MEP to the Pope in the European Parliament, 1988: “I denounce you as the Antichrist.” Paisley’s website describes the Antichrist as being “a liar, the true son of the father of lies, the original liar from the beginning… he will imitate Christ, a diabolical imitation, Satan transformed into an angel of light, which will deceive the world.”
10. Conor Cruise O’Brien, 1989: “In the last century the Arab thinker Jamal al-Afghani wrote: ‘Every Muslim is sick and his only remedy is in the Koran.’ Unfortunately the sickness gets worse the more the remedy is taken.”
11. Frank Zappa, 1989: “If you want to get together in any exclusive situation and have people love you, fine - but to hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud-Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you’ve been bad or good - and cares about any of it - to hang it all on that, folks, is the chimpanzee part of the brain working.”
12. Salman Rushdie, 1990: “The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas - uncertainty, progress, change - into crimes.” In 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie because of blasphemous passages in Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses.
13. Bjork, 1995: “I do not believe in religion, but if I had to choose one it would be Buddhism. It seems more livable, closer to men… I’ve been reading about reincarnation, and the Buddhists say we come back as animals and they refer to them as lesser beings. Well, animals aren’t lesser beings, they’re just like us. So I say fuck the Buddhists.”
14. Amanda Donohoe on her role in the Ken Russell movie Lair of the White Worm, 1995: “Spitting on Christ was a great deal of fun. I can’t embrace a male god who has persecuted female sexuality throughout the ages, and that persecution still goes on today all over the world.”
15. George Carlin, 1999: “Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!”
16. Paul Woodfull as Ding Dong Denny O’Reilly, The Ballad of Jaysus Christ, 2000: “He said me ma’s a virgin and sure no one disagreed, Cause they knew a lad who walks on water’s handy with his feet… Jaysus oh Jaysus, as cool as bleedin’ ice, With all the scrubbers in Israel he could not be enticed, Jaysus oh Jaysus, it’s funny you never rode, Cause it’s you I do be shoutin’ for each time I shoot me load.”
17. Jesus Christ, in Jerry Springer The Opera, 2003: “Actually, I’m a bit gay.” In 2005, the Christian Institute tried to bring a prosecution against the BBC for screening Jerry Springer the Opera, but the UK courts refused to issue a summons.
18. Tim Minchin, Ten-foot Cock and a Few Hundred Virgins, 2005: “So you’re gonna live in paradise, With a ten-foot cock and a few hundred virgins, So you’re gonna sacrifice your life, For a shot at the greener grass, And when the Lord comes down with his shiny rod of judgment, He’s gonna kick my heathen ass.”
19. Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, 2006: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” In 2007 Turkish publisher Erol Karaaslan was charged with the crime of insulting believers for publishing a Turkish translation of The God Delusion. He was acquitted in 2008, but another charge was brought in 2009. Karaaslan told the court that “it is a right to criticise religions and beliefs as part of the freedom of thought and expression.”
20. Pope Benedict XVI quoting a 14th century Byzantine emperor, 2006: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” This statement has already led to both outrage and condemnation of the outrage. The Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the world’s largest Muslim body, said it was a “character assassination of the prophet Muhammad”. The Malaysian Prime Minister said that “the Pope must not take lightly the spread of outrage that has been created.” Pakistan’s foreign Ministry spokesperson said that “anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence”. The European Commission said that “reactions which are disproportionate and which are tantamount to rejecting freedom of speech are unacceptable.”
21. Christopher Hitchens in God is not Great, 2007: “There is some question as to whether Islam is a separate religion at all… Islam when examined is not much more than a rather obvious and ill-arranged set of plagiarisms, helping itself from earlier books and traditions as occasion appeared to require… It makes immense claims for itself, invokes prostrate submission or ‘surrender’ as a maxim to its adherents, and demands deference and respect from nonbelievers into the bargain. There is nothing-absolutely nothing-in its teachings that can even begin to justify such arrogance and presumption.”
22. PZ Myers, on the Roman Catholic communion host, 2008: “You would not believe how many people are writing to me, insisting that these horrible little crackers (they look like flattened bits of styrofoam) are literally pieces of their god, and that this omnipotent being who created the universe can actually be seriously harmed by some third-rate liberal intellectual at a third-rate university… However, inspired by an old woodcut of Jews stabbing the host, I thought of a simple, quick thing to do: I pierced it with a rusty nail (I hope Jesus’s tetanus shots are up to date). And then I simply threw it in the trash, followed by the classic, decorative items of trash cans everywhere, old coffeegrounds and a banana peel.”
23. Ian O’Doherty, 2009: “(If defamation of religion was illegal) it would be a crime for me to say that the notion of transubstantiation is so ridiculous that even a small child should be able to see the insanity and utter physical impossibility of a piece of bread and some wine somehow taking on corporeal form. It would be a crime for me to say that Islam is a backward desert superstition that has no place in modern, enlightened Europe and it would be a crime to point out that Jewish settlers in Israel who believe they have a God given right to take the land are, frankly, mad. All the above assertions will, no doubt, offend someone or other.”
24. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, 2009: “Whether a person is atheist or any other, there is in fact in my view something not totally human if they leave out the transcendent… we call it God… I think that if you leave that out you are not fully human.” Because atheism is not a religion, the Irish blasphemy law does not protect atheists from abusive and insulting statements about their fundamental beliefs. While atheists are not seeking such protection, we include the statement here to point out that it is discriminatory that this law does not hold all citizens equal.
25. Dermot Ahern, Irish Minister for Justice, introducing his blasphemy law at an Oireachtas Justice Committee meeting, 2009, and referring to comments made about him personally: “They are blasphemous.” Deputy Pat Rabbitte replied: “Given the Minister’s self-image, it could very well be that we are blaspheming,” and Minister Ahern replied: “Deputy Rabbitte says that I am close to the baby Jesus, I am so pure.” So here we have an Irish Justice Minister joking about himself being blasphemed, at a parliamentary Justice Committee discussing his own blasphemy law, that could make his own jokes illegal.
Finally, as a bonus, Micheal Martin, Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, opposing attempts by Islamic States to make defamation of religion a crime at UN level, 2009: “We believe that the concept of defamation of religion is not consistent with the promotion and protection of human rights. It can be used to justify arbitrary limitations on, or the denial of, freedom of expression. Indeed, Ireland considers that freedom of expression is a key and inherent element in the manifestation of freedom of thought and conscience and as such is complementary to freedom of religion or belief.” Just months after Minister Martin made this comment, his colleague Dermot Ahern introduced Ireland’s new blasphemy law.
Some festive fun from the imaging team at Nasa’s Cassini mission who constructed this musical interlude featuring Saturn’s moons from original images captured between Aug. 27 and Nov. 8, 2009. Video credit: NASA/JPL.
To celebrate the holidays, the Cassini imaging team has created a video collection of “mutual events,” which occur when one moon passes in front of another, as seen from the spacecraft. Imaging scientists use mutual event observations to refine their understanding of the dynamics of Saturn’s moons. Digital image processing has enabled scientists to turn these routine observations into breathtaking displays of celestial motion. The original images were captured between Aug. 27 and Nov. 8, 2009.
In one scene that synthesizes 12 images taken over the span of 19 minutes, Rhea skates in front of Janus, as Mimas and Pandora slide across the screen in the opposite direction. While the dance appears leisurely on screen, Rhea actually orbits Saturn at a speed of about 8 kilometers per second (18,000 mph). The other moons are hurtling around the planet even faster. Mimas averages about 14 kilometers per second (31,000 mph), and Janus and Pandora travel at about 16 kilometers per second (36,000 mph).
It’s been 26 years since the last infrared sky survey, and on Monday Nasa’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer [WISE] launched successfully from Vandenberg Air Force Base on a Delta II rocket - BBC report here and full launch video here. WISE will be used to identify objects as diverse as the most luminous galaxies known, over 10 billion light-years away, and potentially hazardous Near Earth Objects (NEOs) [see fun video here]. Those NEOs do occasionallyget very close. As well as everything in-between - including neighouring brown dwarfs, stars without sufficient mass to sustain nuclear fusion. From the JPL press release
After a one-month checkout, the mission will spend the next nine months mapping the cosmos in infrared light. It will cover the whole sky one-and-a-half times, snapping millions of pictures of everything from near-Earth asteroids to faraway galaxies bursting with new stars. “The last time we mapped the whole sky at these particular infrared wavelengths was 26 years ago,” said Edward (Ned) Wright of UCLA, who is the principal investigator of the mission. “Infrared technology has come a long way since then. The old all-sky infrared pictures were like impressionist paintings—now, we’ll have images that look like actual photographs.”
Below the fold there’s the more detailed pre-launch science briefing. But first, here’s a short introduction to the WISE mission by Amy Mainzer, deputy project scientist for the mission at JPL.
“Consistent with our desire to re-connect parading and related issues to the political process, we believe that their effective resolution can best be achieved within the wider context of the transfer of policing and justice, while recognising that the timing of these matters remains the prerogative of members of the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Government.”
I think Brian’s right that this is “no further forward, but no further back either”. And that’s an interesting position to note given that Sinn Féin have avoided public discussion of the latest “crisis” over the past week. They’re not out of that corner yet, though. Even if the end of UTV’s Ken Reid’s report on the public disagreement between the Northern Ireland First Minister and the deputy First Minister in Limavady today sees both men smiling for the cameras before lunch. Here’s the blogging Ken Reid’s video report on the press conference. It sounds as if there was another “we’re not in May” moment too..
“We hope to be able to deliver our final report to the Secretary of State in the autumn of 2008. But it is, in our view, more important to get this right, and to take time to get buy in, than it is to get it done quickly. We also recognise that transferring responsibility for public assemblies to the Northern Ireland Executive will not happen in isolation. The transfer of policing and justice matters to the Executive is part of the wider jigsaw of politics in Northern Ireland and progress in these areas is very likely to affect progress on the transfer of responsibility for parading issues.” [added emphasis]
“Consistent with our desire to re-connect parading and related issues to the political process, we believe that their effective resolution can best be achieved within the wider context of the transfer of policing and justice, while recognising that the timing of these matters remains the prerogative of members of the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Government.”
If you’re fortunate enough to have clear skies this weekend, and the signs are good, don’t forget that the Geminids are due to make their annual appearance. Unlike last year, the moon has decide to take Sunday night off so conditions should be perfect for a good show when maximum activity is expected - Monday morning at 0510 UT. But there should still be plenty to see from around 9pm either tonight or tomorrow. The Irish Astronomical Association has viewing tips. Plenty of background - first observed in 1862 - and links at a previous reminder. Space Weather has a short video clip of an early arrival and points to a live video feed from Nasa’s all-sky meteor camera at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. As the Nasa press release/podcast says, “Recent trends favor a good show. Enjoy the Geminids!”. If they’re right, you can thank the extinct comet 3200 Phaethon - pictured right - the 5km wide potentially hazardous Near Earth Object… And our friend and lord, Jupiter. [What? Not the great Ogdy?! - Ed] No. Here’s some of what the camera at Huntsville saw last year even with the moon in view.
